RELG 2650 (FINAL)Exam Questions
With Complete Solutions
Roe v. Wade (1973)
-accords a woman certain reproductive legal rights
-Abortion cannot be made illegal in any state
-women have a right to decide for themselves in the first trimester, state laws restricting
this overturned
-based on protection of personal privacy
Justice White's dissent
-Constitutional basis for privacy/extension here is highly ambiguous
-With no precedent, matter should be decided by the states through the democratic and
legislative process
-Even in the first trimester should this decision truly be absolute and for any reason
whatsoever?
personhood
The term points to a set of capacities — usually including consciousness and self-
awareness, ability to feel pain, at least some minimal capacity for relationship with
others, and perhaps some capacity for self-motivated activity
right of life
Who has the right to life? Mother? Child? Both? Which one more?
right of body
the right to your own body, you own your own body and can do whatever you want with
it
Thomson's violinist moral analogy
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. 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 now is 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
right of self-defense
Thomson's argument that women have the right to protect themselves and their own
lives/health when that is threatened by an unborn child
pro-life feminism
Wolf-Devine argues for a "pro-life feminism" by claiming that it is "more faithful to the
best and deepest insights of feminism" and that it also claims a distinguished pedigree,
citing the great feminist pioneers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. All
of these first wave feminists strongly opposed abortion due to both concerns for the
unborn child and its effects on the women that they viewed as being driven to it by their
powerless position and by male sexual selfishness.
social effects of abortion
-Claims that abortion is being used to keep down the numbers of the poor, especially
people of color
-Black women are almost five times as likely as white women to undergo abortion and
abortion clinics are regularly situated in black and Hispanic communities. Elite women
who say "I would never have an abortion, but it should be available for desperately poor
women who can't afford to care for another child" are guilty of a kind of moral blindness.
Poor women feel pain and have morally sensitive consciences as much as elite women
do, and poor people depend more on their children to support them in their old age.
Often they very much want to keep the child but have no support network to help them
and are therefore especially likely to be troubled with feelings of grief and remorse in the
aftermath of the abortion.
species membership
,There is, within the womb, a living, immature member of the species Homo sapiens,
with the unique genetic endowment he or she has from the father and mother, in the
dynamic, internally directed process of a smooth, continuous development that will
culminate in a newborn and ultimately an adult
personhood gradualism
The claim that personhood is acquired gradually during the course of the pregnancy
conscientious refusal/objection
The responsibility to refuse to carry out directives that are illegal and/or unethical,
physicians can refuse to perform an abortion due to personal belief
fetal viability view
abortions should be banned after fetal viability (~24 weeks)
animation/quickening
-When the movement of the fetus could first be felt by the pregnant woman
-16-20 weeks
-Threshold in common law of when it would be legally impermissible to abort
traditional formed/unformed embryos distinction
Aristotle and Aquinas believed that the fetus didn't have a soul until it was "formed" (40-
80 days)
Jewish "breath of life"
an individual human being comes into existence only at birth
fellow fetuses
Before God we have no claims or achievements of which to boast, and we can stand
with confidence before God only because the whole of our life has been taken up into
the death and resurrection of Jesus. We have, therefore, good theological reason to
affirm the continuity of life from its earliest beginnings to its last breath
life-at-conception view
the individual, and we can think of the rest of life as working out and developing what
has been established in conception. Indeed, the concerns shared by many today about
"genetic engineering," especially about possible alterations in the germ cells that are
passed onto future generations, suggest how closely our sense of individual identity is
, tied to genotype. After fertilization it is hard to find any other equally decisive break in
the process of development.
pre-motherhood pro-choice view
-if women's experience of early pregnancy can be seen as separate from a mothering
consciousness, then abortions during that period are morally allowable
-Gray similarly argues that there is no maternal obligation early in gestation, based on
her phenomenological approach to early pregnancy as borderless bodily intimacy
-For Beattie, early pregnancy can be seen as a pre-mothering subjectivity, because a
woman conceives biologically but only later comes to "consciousness of who she is."
Because of this disjunction between the biological processes of pregnancy and the self-
consciousness of motherhood, "the developmental process allows a period of grace . ..
when the woman's freedom to decide whether or not to accept the responsibility of
motherhood takes precedence over any hypothetical conjecture about the moral status
of the embryo." Beattie suggests that there is a narrow, approximately eight-week
period of time in early pregnancy when abortion should be permissible even by the
Catholic Church. During this window, most women realize they are pregnant but have
little to no "maternal consciousness" toward the fetus that itself has not developed a
"visibly and recognizably human" shape. This viewpoint of women's subjectivity and
fetal development gives women an emotionally easier and ethically acceptable time
frame for terminating a pregnancy. A justifiable abortion is one that occurs before the
woman is either aware of the pregnancy or consciously accepts herself as being a
mother to a developing child
gestating motherhood pro-choice view
-pregnancy should be seen as a unique stage of a mothering relationship—gestational
mothering
-terminating a pregnancy should be seen as a mothering, rather than a pre- or non- or
anti-mothering decision; and abortion should be seen not only as a decision not to
mother gestationally but also that there be no "future child" to whom one would have
maternal obligations
-Instead of justifying abortion in its early stages because a subjective maternal
relationship has not yet sufficiently developed, I argue that a pregnant woman has a
With Complete Solutions
Roe v. Wade (1973)
-accords a woman certain reproductive legal rights
-Abortion cannot be made illegal in any state
-women have a right to decide for themselves in the first trimester, state laws restricting
this overturned
-based on protection of personal privacy
Justice White's dissent
-Constitutional basis for privacy/extension here is highly ambiguous
-With no precedent, matter should be decided by the states through the democratic and
legislative process
-Even in the first trimester should this decision truly be absolute and for any reason
whatsoever?
personhood
The term points to a set of capacities — usually including consciousness and self-
awareness, ability to feel pain, at least some minimal capacity for relationship with
others, and perhaps some capacity for self-motivated activity
right of life
Who has the right to life? Mother? Child? Both? Which one more?
right of body
the right to your own body, you own your own body and can do whatever you want with
it
Thomson's violinist moral analogy
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. 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 now is 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
right of self-defense
Thomson's argument that women have the right to protect themselves and their own
lives/health when that is threatened by an unborn child
pro-life feminism
Wolf-Devine argues for a "pro-life feminism" by claiming that it is "more faithful to the
best and deepest insights of feminism" and that it also claims a distinguished pedigree,
citing the great feminist pioneers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. All
of these first wave feminists strongly opposed abortion due to both concerns for the
unborn child and its effects on the women that they viewed as being driven to it by their
powerless position and by male sexual selfishness.
social effects of abortion
-Claims that abortion is being used to keep down the numbers of the poor, especially
people of color
-Black women are almost five times as likely as white women to undergo abortion and
abortion clinics are regularly situated in black and Hispanic communities. Elite women
who say "I would never have an abortion, but it should be available for desperately poor
women who can't afford to care for another child" are guilty of a kind of moral blindness.
Poor women feel pain and have morally sensitive consciences as much as elite women
do, and poor people depend more on their children to support them in their old age.
Often they very much want to keep the child but have no support network to help them
and are therefore especially likely to be troubled with feelings of grief and remorse in the
aftermath of the abortion.
species membership
,There is, within the womb, a living, immature member of the species Homo sapiens,
with the unique genetic endowment he or she has from the father and mother, in the
dynamic, internally directed process of a smooth, continuous development that will
culminate in a newborn and ultimately an adult
personhood gradualism
The claim that personhood is acquired gradually during the course of the pregnancy
conscientious refusal/objection
The responsibility to refuse to carry out directives that are illegal and/or unethical,
physicians can refuse to perform an abortion due to personal belief
fetal viability view
abortions should be banned after fetal viability (~24 weeks)
animation/quickening
-When the movement of the fetus could first be felt by the pregnant woman
-16-20 weeks
-Threshold in common law of when it would be legally impermissible to abort
traditional formed/unformed embryos distinction
Aristotle and Aquinas believed that the fetus didn't have a soul until it was "formed" (40-
80 days)
Jewish "breath of life"
an individual human being comes into existence only at birth
fellow fetuses
Before God we have no claims or achievements of which to boast, and we can stand
with confidence before God only because the whole of our life has been taken up into
the death and resurrection of Jesus. We have, therefore, good theological reason to
affirm the continuity of life from its earliest beginnings to its last breath
life-at-conception view
the individual, and we can think of the rest of life as working out and developing what
has been established in conception. Indeed, the concerns shared by many today about
"genetic engineering," especially about possible alterations in the germ cells that are
passed onto future generations, suggest how closely our sense of individual identity is
, tied to genotype. After fertilization it is hard to find any other equally decisive break in
the process of development.
pre-motherhood pro-choice view
-if women's experience of early pregnancy can be seen as separate from a mothering
consciousness, then abortions during that period are morally allowable
-Gray similarly argues that there is no maternal obligation early in gestation, based on
her phenomenological approach to early pregnancy as borderless bodily intimacy
-For Beattie, early pregnancy can be seen as a pre-mothering subjectivity, because a
woman conceives biologically but only later comes to "consciousness of who she is."
Because of this disjunction between the biological processes of pregnancy and the self-
consciousness of motherhood, "the developmental process allows a period of grace . ..
when the woman's freedom to decide whether or not to accept the responsibility of
motherhood takes precedence over any hypothetical conjecture about the moral status
of the embryo." Beattie suggests that there is a narrow, approximately eight-week
period of time in early pregnancy when abortion should be permissible even by the
Catholic Church. During this window, most women realize they are pregnant but have
little to no "maternal consciousness" toward the fetus that itself has not developed a
"visibly and recognizably human" shape. This viewpoint of women's subjectivity and
fetal development gives women an emotionally easier and ethically acceptable time
frame for terminating a pregnancy. A justifiable abortion is one that occurs before the
woman is either aware of the pregnancy or consciously accepts herself as being a
mother to a developing child
gestating motherhood pro-choice view
-pregnancy should be seen as a unique stage of a mothering relationship—gestational
mothering
-terminating a pregnancy should be seen as a mothering, rather than a pre- or non- or
anti-mothering decision; and abortion should be seen not only as a decision not to
mother gestationally but also that there be no "future child" to whom one would have
maternal obligations
-Instead of justifying abortion in its early stages because a subjective maternal
relationship has not yet sufficiently developed, I argue that a pregnant woman has a
