¶ … Defense of Abortion
The author of this piece, Judith Jarvis Thompson, supports abortion, she uses descriptive assumptions creatively, and she makes dramatic -- even outrageous -- examples as juxtapositions to develop her argument and make her points. She also employs value assumptions that are effective in her narrative. But Thompson's theses and her Socratic style of argument carry the most weight as she turns of the positions of the "pro-life" movement upside down as a way to make her own positions shine. Thompson presents all of this two years before the U.S. Supreme Court's historic Roe v. Wade decision, which is impressive in hindsight, given the intensity of the ongoing debate on abortion.
Is the fetus a human being from the time of conception?
In her first paragraph, Thompson notes that people are expected by pro-life proponents to say that the "fetus us a person from the moment of conception." But the premise that life begins when the egg is fertilized is "false," Thompson argues, and she uses the analogy of an acorn. Because an acorn will eventually transition into a tree, does it follow that an acorn is a tree? The logic in her position is Socratic and powerful, albeit anti-abortionists would likely argue that it is not a fair analogy, that human life is far more precious and deserves a moral discussion whereas an acorn is just a tree, with no human, moral, or ethical implications.
"A newly fertilized ovum, a newly implanted clump of cells, is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree," Thompson writes (p. 1). Opponents of abortion...
But, Thompson asks, what if that premise is correct, that a fetus is a person?
The person/fetus then has a right to life, which is "more stringent" than the mother's right to decide what happens in and to her body, then the fetus may not be killed and an abortion cannot be morally justified, Thompson writes as a way to set up the value assumption.
Does a woman have a right to abort a fetus to save her own life?
In this section of her scholarly paper, Thompson uses value assumptions and descriptive assumptions regarding the typical arguments presented by those vehemently opposed to abortion. Let's say the woman is pregnant but she finds out that she has a heart condition that, should she carry the child to the term, she will die. Thompson uses emotion to present her argument in this instance. The anti-abortion people say killing an innocent person (the fetus) would be wrong since the fetus has not committed a crime, hence an abortion is not permitted. Killing an innocent child is "murder," and since murder is against the law and the Ten Commandments, an abortion cannot be performed. Given this premise, then it would be okay to let the mother die rather than killing an innocent person. This is an outrageous idea, and again, the emotion created by Thompson in this instance -- how could anyone justify letting a grown woman die in order to save a fetus growing inside her? -- comes across as very powerful.
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