Ethics

With these, before making the jump from individual moralities to a strict and overarching legal judgment, we must weigh their effects and the consequences to our society. Two issues like this are the questions of the legality and morality of abortion and the death penalty.
             When looking at abortion, I must say that my own moral assertion falls within the realm of what is commonly called "pro-life." I believe it is impossible to distinguish when any given person attains his or her own humanity; in other words, the time when we can stop thinking of them as an "it" or thing, and call them an actual person. For my own sake I say that it is better to assume a person becomes one at the moment of conception, rather than risk the consequences of killing an innocent human being. However, there are many people who feel that we cannot look at it in such a way, because the growing fetus lives inside a woman, is attached to her for nine months, and is dependent on her for nourishment. The woman must deal with all the complications that come with the pregnancy, and, as "pro-choice" people would argue, she must also consider the world that she will bring this child into. One of the arguments for the pro-choice camp which we read in class, and the one I disagree the most strongly with, was that of Judith Thompson.
             In her essay, Thompson relates nearly all of the things which I previously stated as typical arguments of someone who is pro-choice. She tries to make the most of these by using metaphors to describe just what it is like for a woman to become pregnant, and then show how such situations would be considered completely absurd in any scenario other than a pregnancy. However, I feel that there are far too many holes that can be punched in these metaphors, and that she never quite finds a truly good way to support her argument.
             One metaphor which she refers to quite often is that of the violinist.