Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

[deleted] wrote (edited )

4

toller wrote

yeah, this isn't a new position at all. /u/willow, I'd recommend doing more reading into the arguments on both sides. your "third option" is very similar to A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thomson in 1971, which is a series of thought experiments to show that the fetus's right to life does not trump the bodily autonomy rights of the mother.

0

willow OP wrote

i'm not sure if it's me or liberals who are supposed to have a shallow understanding, but i've heard a lot of liberals argue that "a foetus is not a person" or something along those lines, and a quick look at Wikipedia suggests that this is argument is used to advocate for abortion.

perhaps i'm reading the wrong liberals, but i haven't heard this argument from that direction before - for example i feel like most liberals would say that killing a newborn child is morally wrong (and indeed this is illegal in all liberal countries i'm aware of), so to defend abortion there has to be a distinction between a child and a foetus - otherwise how could they defend one but not the other?

but in any case my aim was less to have a go at liberals and more to explore an application of individualism, so perhaps i should have avoided mentioning them at all.

0