Thursday, October 7, 2021

Do people have the right to die essay

Do people have the right to die essay

do people have the right to die essay

Mar 11,  · I have an ask of everyone reading this right now: I would like to ask you some questions about working as a facilitator, teacher or healer who holds space for people. I am interested in what you have to say because I am wanting to create something for humankind that is truly valuable and can help people hold space effectively People's problems are similar enough that nearly all the code you write this way will be reusable, and whatever isn't will be a small price to start out certain that you've reached the bottom of the well. One way to ensure you do a good job solving other people's problems is to make them your own Apr 10,  · Argumentative Essay Topic Ideas for College. Part 1:What is an Argumentative Essay? An argument essay is an essay that seeks to persuade an audience to see the writer’s blogger.com, an argumentative essay requires the student to investigate a topic, collect evidence, and evaluate evidence in order to clearly establish a point of view on the topic chosen



Celebrities Who Have Talked About Their Abortions | blogger.com



Judith Jarvis Thomson: A Defense of Abortion. Reprinted in "Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics," 5 th ed. Ronald Munson Belmont; Wadsworth pp Most opposition to abortion relies on the premise that the fetus is a human being, a person, from the moment of conception.


The premise is argued for, but, as I think, not well. Take, for example, the most common argument. We are asked to notice that the development of a human being from conception through birth into childhood is continuous; then it is said that to draw a line, to choose a point in this development and say "before this point the thing is not a person, after this point it is a person" is to do people have the right to die essay an arbitrary choice, do people have the right to die essay, a choice for which in the nature of things no good reason can be given.


It is concluded that the fetus is. or anyway that we had better say it is, a person from the moment of conception. But this conclusion does not follow. Similar things might be said about the development of an acorn into an oak trees, and it does not follow that acorns are oak trees, or that we had better say they are. Arguments of this form are sometimes called "slippery slope arguments"--the phrase is perhaps self-explanatory--and it is dismaying that opponents of abortion rely on them so heavily and uncritically.


I am inclined to agree, however, that the prospects for "drawing a line" in the development of the fetus look dim. I am inclined to think also that we shall probably have to agree that the fetus has already become a human person well before birth.


Indeed, it comes as a surprise when one first learns how early in its life it begins to acquire human characteristics. By the tenth week, for example, it already has a face, arms and less, fingers and toes; it has internal organs, and brain activity is detectable. On the other hand, I think that the premise is false, that the fetus is not a person from the moment of conception. A newly fertilized ovum, a newly implanted do people have the right to die essay of cells, is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree.


But I shall not discuss any of this. For it seems to me to be of great interest to ask what happens if, for the sake of argument, we allow the premise. How, precisely, are we supposed to get from there to the conclusion that abortion is morally impermissible? Opponents of abortion commonly spend most of their time establishing that the fetus is a person, and hardly anytime explaining the step from there to the impermissibility of abortion.


Perhaps they think the step too simple and obvious to require much comment. Or perhaps instead they are simply being economical in argument. Many of those who defend abortion rely on the premise that the fetus is not a person, do people have the right to die essay, but only a bit of tissue that will become a person at birth; and why pay out more arguments than you have to? Whatever the explanation, I suggest that the step they take is neither easy nor obvious, that it calls for closer examination than it is commonly given, and that when we do give it this closer examination we shall feel inclined to reject it.


I propose, then, that we grant that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. How does the argument go from here? Something like this, I take it. Every person has a right to life. So the fetus has a right to life. No doubt the mother has a right to decide what shall happen in and to her body; everyone would grant that.


But surely a person's right to life is stronger and more stringent than the mother's right to decide what happens in and to her body, and so outweighs it. So the fetus may not be killed; an abortion may not be performed. It sounds plausible. But now let me ask you to imagine this. You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist.


A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help, do people have the right to die essay. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known.


But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him.


But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you. No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. I agree. but now you've got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this.


All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body.


So you cannot ever be unplugged from him. In this case, of course, you were kidnapped, you didn't volunteer for the operation that plugged the violinist into your kidneys. Can those who oppose abortion on the ground I mentioned make an exception for a pregnancy due to rape?


They can say that persons have a right to life only if they didn't come into existence because of rape; or they can say that all persons have a right to life, but that some have less of a right to life than others, in particular, that those who came into existence because of rape have less. But these statements have a rather unpleasant sound. Surely the question of whether you have a right to life at all, or how much of it you have, shouldn't turn on the question of whether or not you are a product of a rape.


And in fact the people who oppose abortion on the ground I mentioned do not make this distinction, and hence do not make an exception in case of rape. Nor do they make an exception for a case in which the mother has to spend do people have the right to die essay nine months of her pregnancy in bed. They would agree that would be a great pity, and hard on the mother; but all the same, all persons have a right to life, the fetus is a person, and so on. I suspect, in fact, that they would not make an exception for a case in which, miraculously enough, the pregnancy went on for nine years, do people have the right to die essay, or even the rest of the mother's life.


Some won't even make an exception for a case in which continuation of the pregnancy is likely to shorten the mother's life, they regard abortion as impermissible even to save the mother's life. Such cases are nowadays very rare, and many opponents of abortion do not accept this extreme view, do people have the right to die essay. All the same, it is a good place to begin: a number of points of interest come out in respect to it. Let us call the view that abortion is impermissible even to save the mother's life "the extreme view.


Suppose a woman has become pregnant, and now learns that she has a cardiac condition such that she will die if she carries the baby to term.


What may be done for her? The fetus, being to life, do people have the right to die essay, but as the mother is a person too, so has she a right to life. Presumably they have an equal right to life. How is it supposed to come out that an abortion may not be performed? If mother and child have an equal right to life, shouldn't we perhaps flip a coin?


Or should we add to the mother's right to life her right to decide what happens in and to her body, which do people have the right to die essay seems to be ready to grant--the sum of her rights now outweighing the fetus's right to life?


The most familiar argument here is the following. We are told that performing the abortion would he directly killings the child, whereas doing nothing would not be killing the mother, but only letting her die. Moreover, in killing the child, one would be killing an innocent person, for do people have the right to die essay child has committed no crime, and is not aiming at his mother's death.


And then there are a variety of ways in which this might be continued. Or, 2 as directly killing an innocent person is murder, and murder is always and absolutely impermissible, an abortion may not be performed. Or, 3 as one's duty to refrain from directly killing an innocent person is more stringent than one's duty to keep a person from dying, an abortion may not be performed. Or, 4 if one's only options are directly killing an innocent person or letting a person die, one must prefer letting the person die, and thus an abortion may not be performed.


Some people seem to have thought that these are not further premises which must be added if the conclusion is to be reached, but that they follow from the very fact that an innocent person has a right to life. But this seems to me to be a mistake, and perhaps the simplest way to show this is to bring out that while we must certainly grant that innocent persons have a right to life, the theses in 1 through 4 are all false.


Take 2for example. If directly killing an innocent person is murder, and thus is impermissible, then the mother's directly killing the innocent person inside her is murder, and thus is impermissible.


But it cannot seriously be thought to be murder if the mother performs an abortion on herself to save her life. It cannot seriously be said that she must refrain, that she must sit passively by and wait for her death.


Let us look again at the case of you and the violinist There you are, in bed with the violinist, and the director of the hospital says to you, "It's all most distressing, and I deeply sympathize, but you see this is putting an additional strain on your kidneys, and you'll be dead within the month.


But you have to stay where you are all the same. because unplugging you would be directly killing an innocent violinist, and that's murder, and that's impermissible. The main focus of attention in writings on abortion has been on what a third party may or may not do in answer to a request from a woman for an abortion. This is in a way understandable. Things being as they are, there isn't much a woman can safely do to abort herself.


So the question asked is what a third party may do, and what the mother may do, if it is mentioned at all, if deduced, almost as an afterthought, from what it is concluded that third parties may do. But it seems to me that to treat the matter in this way is to refuse to grant to the mother that very status of person which is so firmly insisted on for the fetus.


For we cannot simply read off what a person may do from what a third party may do.




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do people have the right to die essay

People's problems are similar enough that nearly all the code you write this way will be reusable, and whatever isn't will be a small price to start out certain that you've reached the bottom of the well. One way to ensure you do a good job solving other people's problems is to make them your own Judith Jarvis Thomson: A Defense of Abortion. From Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall ). (Reprinted in "Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics," 5 th ed., ed. Ronald Munson (Belmont; Wadsworth ). pp ). Most opposition to abortion relies on the premise that the fetus is a human being, a person, from the moment of conception But in retrospect it was exactly the right thing to do, because it taught us how it would feel to merchants to use our software. Sometimes the feedback loop was near instantaneous: in the middle of building some merchant's site I'd find I needed a feature we didn't have, so I'd spend a couple hours implementing it and then resume building the site

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