Keywords
Abortion, ethics
Abstract
In the fall of 1971, Philosophy & Public Affairs published an essay by feminist moral philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson that would have the entire nation talking. Her piece soon became one of the most widely cited and reprinted essays in the Western world, and one of the most influential essays on the issue of abortion. In her essay, “A Defense of Abortion,” Thomson undertook the seemingly impossible task of explaining why, in her view, it is morally permissible to abort a human fetus even if the fetus is granted the status of personhood. The essay has received both support and recognition from many pro-choice ethicists, clearly seen just by virtue of the article’s overwhelming popularity. Yet prominent Australian-American ethicist and moral philosopher Peter Singer finds the argument to be deeply and irredeemably flawed. Some may be puzzled to know that the same scholar that believes that both infanticide and euthanasia are obvious necessities also believes that the most prominent abortion argument in history is an extremely weak one.
DOI
10.15385/jce.2013.12.2.3
Recommended Citation
John, Tyler M.
(2013)
"The Singer and the Violinist: When Pro-Abortion Ethicists Are Out of Tune,"
CedarEthics: A Journal of Critical Thinking in Bioethics: Vol. 12:
No.
2, Article 3.
DOI: 10.15385/jce.2013.12.2.3
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/cedarethics/vol12/iss2/3
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disclaimer
DigitalCommons@Cedarville provides a publication platform for fully open access journals, which means that all articles are available on the Internet to all users immediately upon publication. However, the opinions and sentiments expressed by the authors of articles published in our journals do not necessarily indicate the endorsement or reflect the views of DigitalCommons@Cedarville, the Centennial Library, or Cedarville University and its employees. The authors are solely responsible for the content of their work. Please address questions to dc@cedarville.edu.