Jane english and the Analogy of the Hypnotized Attackers :: essays research papers

For our next paper I plan on questioning abortion as a social issue. I want to do this inthe embodiment of a critical paper This seems to be avery sticky subject and is one of the topics wehad in our class that was very interesting to mewith a bundle of room for interpretation as to whenit is or is not o.k. to abort the fetus if itshould ever be done at all. The argument I plan todiscuss is Jane Englishs analogy of thehypnotized attackers which was not one of ourreadings, but one I came across in some research Idid for this upcoming paper. This analogy has todo with a mad scientist who abducts people,hypnotizes them and has them attack innocentpasserbys. A major part of the analogy isrealizing that these people who argon attackinginnocents argon themselves innocent and would not becommitting the acts of violence that they areguilty of if they were not hypnotized and wereable to act on their own volition. They are actingon the will of the mad scientist. He is the onlybad person in this whole scenario. The innocenthypnotized attackers are representative of thefetus and the helpless attackee is representativeof the woman or women who are victims of theunwanted pregnancy. The analogy is to determinethe measure of force that can that can be used bythe attacker to protect onesself from theundesired attack of an undesirable pregnancydepending on what kind of damage the pregnancy maycause. I think that this analogy does a sizable jobin deciding how to select with the burden ofpregnancy during more than just the moment ofattack. Her narrative can grasp or deal with alot of possible situations. Jane English argues that if a fetus is aperson, abortion is still justifiable in manycases and if a fetus is not a person, killing itis still wrong in many cases (pg. 4). When Ifirst read this , or heard, this passage I feltthat it was fairly wishy- washy. I felt that herargument really did not contribute a stand, but how canyou when you are not truly pro- choice orpro-life . She seems to be saying that there mustbe a good reason to end a life and not just forthe sheer convenience of it. I completely agree.Also, with this argument came the concept ofpersonhood. This concept seems to be what liberalsandconservatives are trying to define because it canbe stated at that exact moment when a fetusbecomes a person and therefore when abortion