Warren Thomson Abortion Analysis

The common conflict that arises in determining the morality of abortion is between the rights of the mother and the unborn. Warren and Thomson both argue the permissibility of abortion on the grounds of a fetus’ lack of personhood; and women’s rights, respectively. In contrast to Warren, Marquis cleverly avoids the “personhood” trap in his argument against abortion. Unlike Thomson, Marquis does not address women’s rights, but rather understands what is truly at the heart of the issue: a choice between the life and death of the unborn. One of the positive aspects of Marquis’ argument is that it does not get bogged down in women's rights like Thomson, which opens itself to further critique like that of ignoring the rights of the father. Marquis …show more content…
In contrast, Thomson’s argument can be viewed as secondary in that it focuses on the mother’s rights to decide what happens on the primary level. By bringing the conversation to the secondary level one is forced to consider other tangential implications, like the impact of abortion or the lack of one, has on the rights of fathers. Thomson asks the reader to imagine being kidnapped (raped) and finding a violinist plugged into one’s kidneys, which has to remain so for nine months or the violinist will die. According to Thomson, women have no moral obligation to remain attached to the violinist to keep him alive. To do so, would just be out of “mere kindness.” Perhaps not intentional, but by Thomson framing the survival of the unborn as a result of “mere kindness” is dismissive and ignores the seriousness and the heavy weight of an abortion, which Marquis boldly includes in his …show more content…
Marquis shows that abortion is “prima facie wrong,” and that in rare circumstances abortion can be justified when not doing so results in devastating consequences. Marquis writes that the purpose of his argument is to show “that abortion is presumptively very seriously wrong, where the presumption is very strong — as strong as the presumption that killing another adult human being is wrong” (194). Thomson does recognize that abortion is not always permissible. The example he gives is of a woman in her seventh month of pregnancy requesting an abortion to avoid the headache of rescheduling a trip abroad. Because the unborn are vulnerable and do not have a voice, I think it is important to start the conversation from understanding the potential value of the unborn rather than that of the mother. Furthermore, Thomson’s argument completely misses what is at stake by becoming obfuscated with hypotheticals like the one mentioned, making the woman the object of focus instead of the unborn. Warren’s argument around personhood is insufficient and is incompatible with current legislation that gives the unborn legal status. Marquis’ argument is focused and recognizes what is truly important when discussing

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