sordavie

Remember, this was written in the early 70s, prior to the legalization of abortion. The climate in these debates was much different then. Of course when we look back at her argument from today, it doesn't seem all that radical or innovative. That is, her argument isn't radical or innovative today because she concludes that abortions should be allowed in situations in which we already think they should be allowed. But, you have to keep in mind the context: abortion was completely illegal at the time of this article. It was only in 1965 that laws which banned the sale of condoms to married couples was struck down. At the time, this was a highly innovative argument. It did not center the argument around whether the fetus is a person with rights or not--that debate isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Rather, she allowed her opponent that premise, and showed that still abortion should be permissible in certain situations. That's why I say this is a good place to start. Certainly it's not where one should end their inquiry.

Also, it's easy to see how to start extending her argument to nonrape and nonlife-threatening for the mother cases. For instance, cases of unplanned pregnancy where a reasonable amount of precaution was taken (i.e. condom or pill was used). This is already somewhat in the paper with the people seeds example. She could have spelled it out clearer. But, she's not just talking about cases of rape or where the mother's life is in danger. Unplanned pregnancy is seems to be pretty normal. There's a question as to what constitutes reasonable amount of precaution, but she makes a compelling argument that we are justified in aborting in certain nonrape nonlife threatening cases. You can start seeing how she could extend her argument to cases where the mother's health is in danger but it's nonlife-threatening. You can start seeing how she might extend her argument to cases of unplanned pregnancy where other methods of contraception are used (rhythm method, etc...).

Your right that the vast majority of abortions in this country occur under the conditions which she argued they should be allowed to occur. But, instead of wondering why she's arguing for these if it's already common practice, you should wonder how much of a role her argument play in allowing the vast majority of abortions in this country to occur at all. I'm pretty sure this was quite an influential paper in that respect. Note that Roe vs Wade comes just 2 years after the publication of this article. Keep in mind the context in which she was giving her argument and you'll see why it's such an important argument.

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Kerostasis

I was not aware of the context of the article--that does make her line of thought a bit clearer. You may have misunderstood my complaint a bit though. My complaint runs like this:
--Judith's argument attempts to justify termination of a pregnancy resulting from outside interference, specifically rape
--Of the pregnancies terminated by abortion today, the vast majority are NOT the result of rapes, and therefore Judith's arguments do not apply to them, however insightful they may be for the cases where they do apply.

Yes, she did make a small step into the realm of non-rape with the people-seeds analogy. But I consider that to be one of the more poorly chosen analogies presented. Perhaps if the seeds had been presented this way:

A woman owns a flowerbed of the type where the people-seeds can take root. She does not want a people-plant, but she does so enjoy the hobby of attempting to plant people-seeds in her flowerbed. So every week she goes to the store and buys seeds, then comes home and plants them all, and then liberally waters them with a herbicide to prevent them from growing. One day, after planting a seed, she applies an insufficient quantity of herbicide to kill it and this one takes root and starts growing. Now does she bear any responsibility to this people-plant for having planted it? I would assert that she does. In the case of an ordinary plant, we would still allow you to change your mind and uproot the plant, because plants never have the same rights that humans do even when fully grown. But in the case of a human that has been planted, the fact that you never really wanted to spend the next 9 months feeding and watering it is insufficient justification for now deciding to slaughter it.

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sordavie

Well, I guess in 1971 she couldn't exactly foresee what would constitute the vast majority of abortions in 2007. I wouldn't complain about that.

By the way, as I'm reading it again, the Hendy Fonda and boy with chocolates examples can be used as an argument for the permissibility of abortion in nonrape, nonlifethreatening cases. She says, "I am arguing only that having a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another person s body--even if one needs it for life itself. So the right to life will not serve the opponents of abortion in the very simple and clear way in which they seem to have thought it would." This is going to be the first premise of an argument which concludes that abortions are permissible in nonrape, nonlifethreatening, nonreasonable precautions taken cases.

So, I take back what I said earlier. She is arguing for the permissibility of abortion in a vast range of cases. It's not clear where she thinks the line should be drawn as she admits that she's not arguing for the permissibility of abortion in all cases. I think she tones down her argument so as not to appear too radical. But, the foundations for arguments to those other cases are there. These arguments are incomplete and harder to disect. So, your first criticism, I think, is wrong.

I take it the vast majority of abortions today are completed in the first trimester. Thomson's last paragraph states, "At this place, however, it should be remembered that we have only been pretending throughout that the fetus is a human being from the moment of conception. A very early abortion is surely not the killing of a person, and so is not dealt with by anything I have said here." So, you may be right that her arguments don't directly apply to the vast majority of cases completed today. The innovativeness of her argument comes from the conclusion that it's permissible to abort unborn persons in certain cases. I take it the vast majority of abortions today are in cases where we think that the fetus has not developed into a person yet, and so does not have the same rights as that of a person. Thomson's point is that the debate whether abortion is permissible or not isn't about whether the fetus is a person or not.

Your second criticism may be apt, but Thomson wasn't trying to tell us why the vast majority of abortions in 2007 are permissible. That wasn't the point of her article. Rather, it was to show that the debate over whether abortion is permissible or not should not center around whether the fetus is a person, with full rights, or not. So, I think you second criticism is misplaced.

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Kerostasis

But Ms. Thomson isn't here, so I'm not complaining to her about anything she said at all. I'm complaining to you because you are the one who brought up the argument as presumably being applicable to today's situation. Therefore, you may feel free to modify any of the arguments to make them better if you like, but you can't just say "it worked in 1971" as if that excuses it. It may have been perfectly applicable to the state of the debate in 1971, but that doesn't automatically make it applicable to the state of the debate in 2007.

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sordavie

Oh, I just said that it's applicable to the arguments in this thread, because some people seem to think that it's a matter of whether the fetus is a person, with associated right to life, or not. But, this argument shows that that's not what's at stake. I wanted to provide them reasons to think that even if a fetus has a right to life, it doesn't mean that abortions are impermissible. Some people here have been arguing this way. It's applicable to the debate in this thread.

It's a good start to see what developments have been made on this issue by ethicists. I'm sure there are good recent articles too. Ethics is not my area of specialization, so I can't cite these off the top of my head and I don't know what the state of the art arguments are. This is an accessible article for nonphilosophers, and a good place to start.

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Kerostasis

The Abortion debate encompasses several broad areas: Lets see if I can briefly categorize them.

Question 1: Is a fetus a person, with associated rights? If yes, proceed to question 2. If no, end debate.

Question 2: Assuming that the unborn are people and do have some rights, do those rights extend to requiring the mother to spend 9 months caring for them? (assume normal pregnancy without rape) If yes, go to question 3. If no, end debate.

Question 3: Does the answer to question 2 change depending on unfavorable circumstances such as health complications or rape?

Judith Thomson's argument started by bypassing question 1. This doesn't mean it is necessarily won by one side or the other, just that she didn't address it.

Next Thomson went to question 3, and attempted to show that in the case of rape, it is unreasonable to mandate that the mother must care for the child.

Finally, Thomson made a passing attempt at addressing question 2, but I believe she failed to establish anything concrete on the matter. Since the majority of abortions today fall under the purview of question 2 rather than question 3, that leaves Thomson's essay as an incomplete look at the ethics of abortion. As you said, its a good place to start. Now that we've started, where would you like to go next?

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sordavie

Again, ethics is not my area of study, so I'm pretty clueless as to what the current landscape on the debate is like. I do know that it's completely different than what you see as the debate in the popular media. The next thing to look at is probably Ronald Dworkin's 1993 Life's Dominion. Dworkin works primarily in legal philosophy, but I know even less philosophy of law than I do ethics. All I know is that he defends the permissibility of abortion and that people who work in the field find his arguments in that area pretty powerful.

Here's a view of the book by Tom Scanlon, a prominent ethicist for anyone who has access to the NY review of books: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arti...rticle_id=2511

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xTYBALTx

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sordavie

I'm always weary of wiki articles on philosophical views. Many of them are pretty bad representations of the views. Fortunately, in this case these don't look too bad. Unfortunately, the arguments surveyed in the wiki article are fairly dated. Some newer replies to these arguments are cited by not explained.

But, there does seem to be a good amount of evidence here that the typical anti-abortion argument cannot be sound. This is the one that some people here seem to like:

1. It is wrong to kill innocent human beings.
2. The fetus is an innocent human being.
3. Hence it is wrong to kill the fetus.

It's also worth noting that another common argument against abortion, appeal to emotion arguments, are not valid. These are arguments that go like this:

1. If you see an abortion then you will have a very visceral feeling that it should not be allowed.
2. So, abortion should not be allowed.

I don't get why people think this is a good way of arguing. The fact that something looks horrible doesn't entail that it is morally horrible.

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