Paper4

Abortion is often a tricky issue. Both sides adamantly argue against the other, one side defending all people’s right to life; while the other sides violently defends all people’s right to choice. It is a touch call for anybody to say either side is one hundred percent right or one hundred present wrong, however it is often much easier to find holes in each side’s arguments. Sometimes the holes are so wide you could drive a truck through them, and it is at these times that we need to look back and reconsider how some people decide to make their cases for or against abortion.
In the case of the Judith Thomson I believe she leaves her argument wide open; too wide open that even some believers of abortion would be able to find problems agreeing with how she makes some of her points. And when trying to present a case for or against something, it is most times not the best idea to leave your case so wide open that even people on your side might have a hard time following the leaps and humps in logic that you make.
Thomson’s problem is that she makes ludicrous and twisting jumps into fantastic ideas to try to back up her argument. She is trying and attempting to make a claim and appeal to people’s morality, however one cannot successful do that by appealing to their fantasy and imagination! It would be like using a Disney movie to try to make a moral argument about real life, one is merely a representation of another and the subtle similarities can not be carried too far.
However, as she progresses her argument she does exactly that, and uses the idea of out of this world probabilities and unreal situations to try to make her claim. If she wasn’t arguing a moral situation this might have worked out for her, but you simply cannot use fantasy and imagination to try to make a point about human morality! It simply does not work that way, and by doing so she leaves her argument so wide open, that I feel even the strongest supporter of abortion would be sitting there scratching their heads wondering what in the world she was talking about.
When you try to make an argument, you should first off make sure you aren’t starting off on the wrong foot by alienating the people who already agree with you! And that is exactly how I feel after reading this article. The improbable experiments she uses to try to justify abortion are by no means thought provoking, and simply leave the reader why she tried to make such loose connections and wide leaps in a vain attempt to make her point.
It seems that Thomson almost goes out of her way to try to make her point, and that she swerves around and never really focuses in on it, and within in that too lays her problems with her argument. She seems to miss the mark with all of her fantastical analogies, and instead presents an argument that is likely too leave all readers wondering why she didn’t use real life problems instead to try to justify her argument.
Overall, it is a good piece of writing, however I feel it is way off mark and totally misses the point she was trying to make. I feel it does not use real life as it should, and makes a vain attempt to link a serious argument topic; abortion; to the fantasy world, and in doing so she alienates the opinions of anybody who reads the piece; weather or not they were originally for or against abortion.