Hello friends, today we will tell you about Judith Jarvis Thomson, a philosopher who defended abortion. This is a part of life which is the most dangerous time of a girl's entire life. A child is killed before he comes into the world. This is totally wrong and this should not be done.
Philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson, known as one of the most influential supporters of abortion rights, died at the age of 91. The essay she wrote in 1971, “Defending Abortion,” which began to highlight the topic of abortion in the mainstream, still remains a reference in debates of philosophical ethics and public discourse, given that it makes a strong defence of the permissibility of abortion even in cases where the fetus is given the moral status of a person. Her work spanned the entire humanities spectrum in the period from the late 1900s.
Early Life and Career
Judith Jarvis was born on October 4, 1929, in New York City. She completed her high school education at Hunter College High School, an all-girls public school designed to serve children with high abilities, where she was identified as an intelligent student at an early age. Judith was admitted to Barnard College for her undergraduate studies, and thereafter she did postgraduate studies at New York University and the University of Cambridge.
Scully had her first teaching job at Barnard, a college, before transferring to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she spent her entire professional life. She was one of the few women who became famous in a field that was controlled by men at a time when the philosophical department at the university was completely controlled by men, just like many other fronts of intellectual life in those days.
"Defending Abortion" and the Violinist Thought Experiment
Thomson's major philosophical contributions came out in her famous article "Defending Abortion," which was published in 1971 in the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs. As a result, abortion was a very controversial issue, followed in the following years by the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. Her article went beyond legal controversy and took a new approach, namely moral reflection.
His article began with a thought experiment that has been the basis for making his name a legend: the violinist metaphor. For this reason, he asked his readers to imagine a case where someone wakes up in the morning and realizes that they are actually surgically attached to a prominent violinist who is asleep.
The violinist, who suffers from a fatal kidney disease, has been attached to the reader's body without his consent and desperately needs his kidney for the reader to survive. Thomson argued that even if saving the person's life by a surgical procedure is considered laudable and thus morally correct, it is not a mandatory moral duty.
This example refutes the idea that abortion is fundamentally bad because the child is a human being. Thomson demonstrated that even when one grants the fetus equal moral status, one can still support preventing capital punishment by abortion based on the woman's decision to cede control of her body to someone else and to refuse anyone else the use of her body.Changing the abortion debate
Thomson's theory has had a great influence on the moral debate surrounding abortion. It was widely the case that the discussion was largely centered on whether or not a fetus is a person. Opponents of abortion often opposed it based on the claim that life begins immediately upon conception, therefore, abortion is regarded as the unjust killing of life.
Thomson's work brought a turning point in the abortion debate in that he argued that the morality of abortion does not depend on whether or not a fetus is a person, but on the relationship between the right to bodily integrity and moral obligation.
Thomson should be credited for a more interesting and controversial debate, which raised again the topic of the rights to one's own body that are taken into question by abortion. He did not advocate the provision of abortion at all, but he argued that in some cases it may be morally acceptable, even if it is a difficult situation. She was aware of the fact that abortion can sometimes be selfish or callous, but she assured that it is not always a violation of morality and duty.
However, her analysis also influenced legal reasoning. For example, in the 1973 *Roe v. Wade* decision, the US Supreme Court did not fully adopt Thomson's reasoning, but her essay contributed to the intellectual climate that made this possible, since the subject was again evaluated from different angles, by which the coincidental theme of belonging to someone else emerged in each of these individuals. Contributions to other areas of philosophy
Although "Defending Abortion" is her most famous work, Judith Jarvis Thomson's philosophy writings reflect a wide range of topics other than abortion. The strongest points of her moral philosophy are her fundamental views on various matters such as the difference between killing and letting die, the morality of self-defense, and the famous "trolley problem".
Judith Jarvis Thomson was a philosopher who had a great influence on the field of ethics. She described an ethical dilemma also known as the “trolley problem”. This led to the following question: should the trolley that is pushing something into the path of one person away from five people be pulled or should it be left where it is and kill all five? In the year 1985 Thomson singled out the trolley problem in her paper “The Trolley Problem” while discussing moral judgment and responsibility.
Her insights in this matter are still present in modern ethics discussions such as autonomous moral cars and the moral sources of AI.
Thomson’s name is associated with the development of extra-legal theories of “rights” and “morality”, mainly the first, ground-breaking and provocative, which has led to the existence of a basis for a more detailed assessment of individual rights within the moral context. In her 1990 book, *The Realm of Rights*, Thomson examined rights in detail in terms of their function in our society.
Legacy and Influence
Judith Jarvis Thomson owes philosophy a debt so great that it almost defies description. Through her writings on abortion and ethics, she challenged prevailing standards and broadened the reach of ethical discussion, thus having a historic impact on both academic philosophy and public discourse.
There was a time when women existed in the most marginalized corners of philosophy. The very few who gained entry into the world of philosophy needed the support of other female individuals who were able to gain enrollment, one of whom was Thomson who made this possible for generations of young women to come.
Quite a difficult task, but what makes this common everyday conversation possible with people from different levels of Kripke's own ontology is not just what happens in those possible situations other than the proposition being proposed, it changes the whole conversation and makes it better because it puts it on display. Two-dimensionalism is what Kripke wants to put forward. Thomson's work has not gone out of our philosophy classrooms. Her name still resonates as questions of moral rights, individual autonomy, and reproductive justice are being discussed around the world.
Judith Jarvis Thomson passed away on November 20, 2020, but her work is still very important and her intellectual legacy still lives on. Her argument for abortion rights, which is based on the premise that individuals have a right to their own privacy and that no one can forcibly impose their will on our bodies, is still a relevant topic in contemporary discussions on reproductive rights. While people continue to grapple with these issues, Thomson's work reminds them of the power of clear, theoretical thinking that is important in both public policy and the formation of personal beliefs.
In addition to her philosophical accomplishments, Thomson was known as a dedicated teacher and mentor who inspired countless students during her long career at MIT. She was also awarded numerous honors, including election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and receiving the Quinn Prize from the American Philosophical Association for her service to the profession. Her contributions to philosophy will continue to shape the field for generations to come.
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