Give me your best philisophical argument for Pro-Choice?

Question

The biggest problem in the argument over abortion is deciding when life begins. Christians say it's at conception, others say at birth, others pick a point in the middle. Unfortunately that debate is unsolvable.
However there are air tight arguments for abortion in the cases of rape, underage pregnancy, and if the mothers life is in danger. (see Judith Jarvis Thompson's Violinist argument for abortion)

I'm curious if anyone thinks they have an argument that good for abortion in a general case.

This idea of a potential human not having the same rights as an actual human being is on the right track i think, but the problem is christians will still debate you on whether or not the fetus is a potential human being so the argument fails.

I'm looking for an argument where you grant the fetus the rights of a human being, but still allow the abortion.

Answer 1

I think the issue of when life begins is irrelevant.

Let's imagine that the fetus is unambiguously a person. To give a concrete example, let's imagine it is an adult who is connected to the woman's body. If this were to actually happen, our laws would unambiguously say that the woman would have the right to disconnect herself, even if it meant the person would die. Even if it was through some mistake of the woman's that the person came to be connected, she would still have the right to disconnect. Imagine that she had accidentally hit the person with her car, and now they needed to be connected to her body in order to recover. The law may punish her, but it could not force her to stay connected. We cannot legally be forced to donate blood, bone marrow, or any other part of our body to save other human lives. In fact, even the dead have a greater right to bodily privacy than people do to life (think about the outcry if organ donation were made mandatory, despite the fact that people die from lack of organ donors. The person who refuses to have their body used in any of these ways does not have to give any reason. They do not have to be underage or have their life at risk. They just do not want to.

Another reason why the "when life starts" argument is irrelevant is because it is so easily decided. What do you mean by "life"? If you mean an organism with human DNA, it is obvious life starts at conception or shortly afterwards. If you mean a "person" with desires and the ability to feel pain, it is obvious it is not until much later in the pregnancy, or even after birth. A being's DNA, however, is morally irrelevant. Since DNA alone is not morally relevant, and the only reason to think life begins at conception is DNA, there is no moral reason to treat the fetus one way rather than another. It is only when he or she begins to develop the ability to feel pain, or to have desires that they get moral consideration.

Although I have been siding with Thompson so far, I would not say her arguments are airtight. They rely on an assumed view of our rights to bodily privacy. Her argument is powerful because we grant that our body cannot be used to save others' lives against our will. But a person could consistently say that our bodies can be used to save lives even against our will. Few pro-life people actually are this consistent, since it would entail mandatory blood donations, mandatory organ donation upon death, and, likely, a very high rate of taxation (since lives could be saved by giving our money to famine-stricken areas, and presumably if we have no right to bodily privacy when others' lives are at stake, we have even less of a right to our property.)

Thompson herself admits that the strength of her argument rests on common notions of "rights." Since these notions themselves are not airtight, her argument cannot be airtight.

The very reason so little progress is made on the abortion issue is because people focus on the irrelevant aspects, such as when life begins.

Answer 2

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RE:
Give me your best philisophical argument for Pro-Choice?
The biggest problem in the argument over abortion is deciding when life begins. Christians say it's at conception, others say at birth, others pick a point in the middle. Unfortunately that debate is unsolvable.
However there are air tight arguments for abortion in the cases of rape,...

Answer 3

Though they sometimes try to disguise the fact, many people who want to eliminate abortion really do want to give the unborn MORE rights than the mother. The reason for this is simple - they believe that the mother is personally responsible for creating the child so she surrendered any right to object to what that child might do to her at that point.

Framed in this way, there are obvious cases of injustice. A raped mother obviously couldn't consent to anything, nor can one who is underage. But they overlook any number of other - perhaps quite common - similar cases:

What about a woman who is told by her doctor that she cannot get pregnant. Should she be responsible for a child? Or one who has any number of very common mistaken beliefs, such as 'you can't get pregnant on your first time' or 'you can't get pregnant if there's no orgasm'? If society has taken no successful means to correct such ignorance, it is fair for them to impose a punishment because of it? And there's the very common delusion of 'it can't happen to me' (which affects people in almost every domain of life).

A business contract signed under conditions where one party was egregiously mistaken about the terms can be considered completely void. Why is this any different?

If you can get your opponent to grant the unborn even equal rights instead of more, you probably have half your work done. I know of almost nobody who would say that another equal has the right to demand what a fetus gets from mom: food, being carried around everywhere, rearranging internal organs, interfering with lifestyle, and perhaps even causing a loss of workplace benefits and even life itself. If you suggested that someone else had to do all these things and more for you for nine months, they'd laugh in your face and rightly so.

And that's not even addressing any problems or issues that may arise through the entirety of the child's life!

I think the 'potential human being' argument is more productive that you suspect, too:

Consider that more than 25% of all pregnancies spontaneously abort all on their own. And it's almost impossible to measure how many embryoes simply fail to implant in the uterus and just die. In other words, even in the most advanced countries in the world, babies are not a certain outcome from pregnancy.

If it is valid to treat an adult human as a certain outcome of a pregnancy, it is only slightly less valid to treat other possible outcomes as certain, no? How do we distinguish one possible outcome from other as certain? Or should we prosecute men and women who go to fertility clinics for neglect and murder if it's found that the embryoes can't implant in the mother's uterus (someone who never even became pregnant!)?

Answer 4

I'm pro-choice. I have a kind of complicated view on abortion though. Personally, I would not have an abortion, but I'm pro-choice, because I think that every woman deserves the chance to make her own decision about abortion. Just because I personally don't think abortion is the best solution doesn't mean that I should be able to keep decide that it's wrong for every woman. How can I tell someone they're doing something wrong if I don't know their situation? Every woman deserves to choose for herself. I mean, who am I to tell a woman who has been raped that she should have to carry her rapist's baby? Or to tell a woman in any situation that she should have to bear a child?

Answer 5

An embryo or fetus is a POTENTIAL human, and potential is not actual. So, an embryo/fetus has no human rights since rights do not pertain to potential humans. The mother is an ACTUAL human and has the right to do what she wants with what is inside her body.

The living take precedence over the not yet living.

The whole abortion argument hinges on wrongly equating the potential with the actual.

Additional comment: You do not need any additional argument. Religious people can always counter with some sort of mysticism...since they have the benefit of ignoring reality, you'll always lose if you argue with them on their irrational terms.

The bottom line is: To advocate the sacrifice of an actual human to a potential human is horrible. To obliterate the rights of the living in favor of the not-yet-living shows a viciousness beyond words.

This is all that needs to be said.

Answer 6

Basically, any persons choice is dependent on their culture and what they surround them self with. Often referred to as the culture matrix that you see through. I really cannot say what is the better argument because both sides have pros and cons.

If what you are seeking is pro reasons for abortion there are tons of sites and other places to look. I, however, cannot give you an answer that you want.

Answer 7

I'm unsure that anyone can argue for or against something outside of their own situation. All restrictions and controls are assigned by society in order to maintain its own continuity. By making the statement that "I am arguing a point that will control a person's ability to do something." isn't any different than saying that you wish to control society. I'm sure you will argue that you 'are fighting for the rights of the unborn!'. If they are unborn and not citizens of any particular nation, what rights do they have? Don't you know that these 'rights' you have are only there until they are in conflict with what the state wants or needs? There isn't an argument for pro-choice any more than there is an argument for free-rights.

Answer 8

When more people realize that each woman (like each man) can do and will do only whatever she feels is right for HER, then the majority will be at peace with this abortion thing - no one can deny that a fetus is the earliest stage of development of a human physical being, but less and less people are denying that every person (in this case, every woman) was a fetus once too and is a human being with a natural capability to decide for herself whether she is going to add to this world or not.

Answer 9

It is impossible to grant the fetus full human rights and make a pro-choice argument to abort it.

Answer 10

In my view of the topic, it is irrelevant when life 'begins'. What it comes down to is very simple if a person looks at the situation without all the emotional rhetoric that usually accompanies the subject.

I believe that there are only 3 situations in which abortion should be legal.

1. Incest - The risks to the baby are huge and even if the child is able to be carried full-term, the complications are tremendous in terms of medical, mental and emotional health.

2. Rape - A woman has the right to NOT be pregnant. Being violated in this manner, a woman should have the right to terminate pregnancy. You cannot rationalize that 'God' intended for life to begin this way especially after the doctrines of the Bible itself condemn such things as rape, regardless of what any religious thinkers might say.

3. (Severe/Life Threatening) Medical Complication - This one is fairly obvious and I won't go into much detail here.

For any person to argue that abortion is absolutely wrong is ludicrous, however I do think that there should be amendments made to the current law as I have stated above.