Talk:A Defense of Abortion

message: I am no expert on this area of ethics, but it seems clear to me that the current section marked simply "The Violinist" should actually only refer to cases of involuntary conception, i.e., rape. Voluntary conception is covered later, in the section labeled "Pregnancy resulting from voluntary intercourse", but this section is simply labeled "The Violinist", and nothing outside of the thought experiment, including the introductory paragraph, makes it clear that this particular argument is for the particular case of an involuntary pregnancy. This is a glaring oversight, if not deliberate misrepresentation, and should be addressed. Section headings are important.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.92.191.173 (talk) 09:52, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Make sure not to confuse involuntary intercourse with involuntary conception. If I have sex voluntarily and get pregnant, the voluntariness of the sex does not imply that the conception/pregnancy was voluntary. Similarly, if I voluntarily get into a car and get into a car accident, the voluntariness of getting into the car does not imply that getting into the accident was voluntary. Thanksforhelping (talk) 22:07, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Consent 

message: This section is in need of citations.  Much of what is said has absolutely no sources.  For example, who makes these objections?  There are statements asserted as fact such as the obligation comment before mine - is it a fact that you have an obligation to the violinist?  Is it a fact that it is immoral to separate conjoined twins, is it a fact that our intuitions on unrealistic examples are irrelevant?  If so, .  
Many of these objections, though decent objections, appear to be original research, and not criticism presented by other philosophers.  I do not know how to put up the little box stating that the entire section is OR and needs citations or else I'd do it myself :( 63.139.220.200 (talk) 22:17, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe these arguments are cited. The little numbers in brackets are in page hyperlinks to the notes section. For example "the conjoined twins objection" is supported by footnote #[16]. Perhaps these sections need to be reworded to make it clearer that these are just examples or arguments, not necessarily factual statements. Because the fatal separation of conjoined twins is immoral, so is abortion could instead be prefaced with Himma and Parks argue that...-Andrew c [talk] 23:20, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Those footnotes weren't there when I made the objection.  It seems someone has gone through and cited.  However I don't think these are proper citations - the actual title of the work and real info is in the references section rather than detailed in the notes section.63.139.220.200 (talk) 14:31, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: See WP:CITESHORT. I think some of the footnotes are missing page numbers, but other than that, it seems like generally speaking the citations are following a specific style, they are consistent in their format. They could use a little clean up, but they are pretty darn good when compared to a lot of other articles. Feel free to work on addressing your concerns yourself if you are feeling bold enough. Wikipedia works best when editors see problems and work to address them. Community collaboration and effort are great!-Andrew c [talk] 15:46, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Some of the responses to objectiions still have no reference whatsoever, and appear to be OR.  E.g. the third response to the Responsibility Objection is totally unsourced.  -User:theStorminMormon 17:41, 8 February 2010
I've never edited a WikiPedia page before, and I'm not going to invest the time right now to learn how to do it.  However, I am currently working with this material and wish to add a citation for the Responsibility Objection.  I don't think there's a clear origin of the objection since it was taken up by many people in response to Thomson's 'A Defense of Abortion'.  Nonetheless, the Responsibility Objection" was coined by Harry S. Silverstein in 'On A Woman's "Responsibility" for the Fetus', published in Social Theory and Practice (1987:Spring), 13(1), p.103-119.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.249.102.77 (talk) 00:13, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism Section 

message: Stating that Tacit consent cannot be inferred where contraception was used is similar to saying that Intoxication Manslaughter shouldn't be a crime because "I didn't think that I was THAT drunk." Use of contraception minimizes risk, but never completely removes it. Just as a person who "only had a few beers" may think that they are sober enough to drive, but in reality is still risking undesirable results. (Vehicular Homocide)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Whiterussian1974 (talk • contribs) 09:47, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Is there a published version of this objection in the literature? –Tom Morris (talk) 15:15, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tacit consent objection 

message: The structure of the Criticism section and the following table needs to be redone. The article at one point mentions that a table of common objections is found below, and this sentence is immediately followed by a list of LESS common objections. I think that the table ought to follow immediately after the statement about the common objections--either remove the statement, put it at the end, or, the best way in my opinion, simply append the less common objections to the end of the currently existing table and take them out of the criticism section.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.255.195.165 (talk) 02:00, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Formatting of the Criticism sections

message: The section seems quite one-sided, heavily biased in favour of Thomson and her defenders.  It basically consists of a broad argument against Thomson's analogy, followed by several objections to the criticism (without including arguments that Thomson's critics have responded with).  Furthermore, many of these objections seem to constitute original research as they are not cited but should be.  Some are highly tendentious as well.  For example:
* "If a thug stole both kidneys from a man and sold them the thug would have caused the man to be in need of a kidney. He would be responsible for that need in a very simple and clear cut manner. There is no need to imply or infer his intentions. If we caught the perpetrator and convicted him we would imprison him but we would not take a kidney from him against his will to sustain the victim's life. Even violent criminals retain their inalienable rights and bodily autonomy is one of these rights."
* "Even if we accept that killing the fetus is wrong we are still left with the stand-off between the fetus' right not to be killed and the mothers right to her body. The mother should come first in the same way the person hooked up to the violinist can leave."
* "There is no reason to believe that the underlying motives are different in the two cases ... the desires to protect ones bodily integrity and escape the foreign invader. There is no evidence on record to indicate that women would object to a safe extraction method that did not kill the fetus were one to become available and thus no justification for the assumption of maternal malice that is the foundation of the objection." (a simple tour of the Guttmacher Institute's website will reveal that most women have abortions for socioeconomic reasons, not to avoid the physical burdens of pregnancy and childbirth). 
Wikipedia articles, including this one, are not supposed to be a platform for defenders of legal abortion to publish their ideas.  I think this section ought to be changed significantly (at very least removing uncited material), or simply removed.  One criticism section is sufficient in my opinion. 174.2.68.142 (talk) 18:17, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It's been improved somewhat since I made my previous comment.  I also agree that the sources that actually are referenced are useful and high-quality.  It's still, however, full of uncited original research. 174.2.68.142 (talk) 23:48, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  OR: Table of criticisms and responses 

message: Both Thomson's article and Boonin's book are titled 'A Defense of Abortion,' so I can understand how there could be some confusion. In the Table of criticisms and responses, each criticism is accompanied by Thomson's view AND Boonin's AND uncited OR. The OR is addressed above. I can't see why anyone would put Boonin's views about the criticisms here unless it was just an error based on the title. Mind you, I'm  not saying that they shouldn't be included in wikipedia. They just don't belong here. They probably should be in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_aspects_of_the_abortion_debate#The_bodily_rights_argument
OckRaz talk 12:40, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table: Is the article is about Thomson's article or Boonin's book? 

message: OK, I hope I did this right.  I have taken the footnotes to sources for the common objections (the "tacit consent objection", the "responsibility objection", the "stranger-vs-offspring objection" and the "killing vs letting-die objection"), which were previously only posted in the "table of criticisms and responses" section, and placed them in the body of the text (the "criticism" section) which mentions them before the table.  I also kept the footnotes in the table using the reference name function.  As I say, I hope I did it right; the footnote numbers seem to correspond.  Goblinshark17 (talk) 07:22, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Footnotes to "common objections"

message: I see nothing wrong with including the principle objections briefly at the end, but there was a table and additional paragraphs of objections - which are still by no means a complete catalog of the objections that have been raised. Plus, for every objection, there was one or more response, the lion's share of which came from a book with the same title but a different author (Boonin) defending Thomson's article. There's really no reason to stop there. There are responses to those responses. There are books which take aim at Boonin, and on, and on. An encyclopedia entry about Thomson's article should give a basic overview of what is said in the article and should probably include mention of one or two of the most significant objections just so that a novice reader won't get the mistaken impression that the article in question put an end to the debate.
Thomson opened a new front in the ethical conflict (beyond just, a. the right not to be killed is more substantial than controlling one's body, and b. there either is or isn't a prenatal right to life) by avoiding the usual area of conflict (the 'b' from above) calling into question something that had more or less been taken for granted (the 'a' from above) in academic journals, but she did that over 40 years ago. Three generations of scholars have argued over it since. Trying to capture all that in an entry about the original article makes no more sense than trying to capture all the debate Peter Singer has sparked in last 40 years and placing it in the article on his book 'Animal Liberation.'
As I said before, that material is fine for the article about the philosophical debate over abortion (particularly the bodily rights section - here) but inasmuch as it's gone well beyond the scope of this wikipedia article, I've removed it from this page. If I have time, maybe I'll reformat it and put it there myself.OckRaz talk 21:29, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fixed Problem of Numerous Objections and Responses (that are not in the journal article that this wikipedia entry is about or even from that article's author) 

message: I'm curious of what to do with the lede statement  when it comes to:
* Should it be attributed to who said it and where they said it?
* Should it be kept in the lead?
* How should it read?
For the first question, it was written by William Parent in the editor's introduction of Judith Thomson's Rights, Restitution, and Risk, but attribution might – possibly unjustifiably – imply that Parent is not qualified to describe ADoA like that (and vice-versa for the lack of attribution).
For the second, I can't find anything in the body about Parent's description of ADoA, which might raise the question of WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY, but I'm also not sure to what extent is WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY used for removal of lede statements.
For the third, I'm not sure whether the lede statement should include the word , since Parent in their introduction says bluntly that ADoA is the most widely-reprinted essay and doesn't use the word "perhaps". I'm also not sure whether the lede statement should include . LightNightLights (talk) 17:20, 10 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regarding the "most widely reprinted essay" lede statement 

message: I find that the section about the violinist is not clear that is a comparison to consent. I think that there should be a sentence clarifying the point of the violinist argument at the beginning of the paragraph to clarify~~~~ Schooluser33 (talk) 02:52, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  The violinist