Quote:
Originally Posted by footfoot
Even if you grant that the fetus is a human being and has rights, I find it important to examine the situation in that context - who has rights and whose rights outweighs the others.
This is a very interesting paper by Judith Thomson that explores this issue:
Here is an excerpt:
If you would like to read the whole paper (it is fairly easy to read and quite short) I found it at THIS link. (If you can't open that search Judith Jarvis Thomson: A defense of abortion on google and you can find some full prints on the web). |
That really is an interesting analogy, and I have two comments.
Firstly, most women are able to proceed with their lives during pregnancy. Granted, they may not feel too hot some of the time, but they do not give up their school, work, or social lives for a majority of the pregnancy, so it is really not comparable to being forced to lie in a hospital bed for 9 months straight. There would have to be severe medical complications for this to be the case, and as I have stated before I condone abortion in response to severe medical complications.
Another flaw in this... I don't classify the baby as alive until 10 weeks gestation. So, I have no problem with a woman taking the morning after pill or having an abortion within the first 10 weeks. So the analogy is not comparable. It is more like, the person is given the choice as to whether or not to "plug" yourself into the violinist's body, and if you say yes and don't change your mind before the surgery to plug you in has gone too far, then you have an obligation to save his life.
It is the same with CPR. No-one is forced to give a non-responsive person CPR, but once they have started, they are legally obligated to continue until an ambulance arrives.