RELG 2650 Final Henry Fall 2024 Questions
With Complete Solutions
Roe v. Wade (1973) Correct Answers -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 Correct Answers -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 Correct Answers 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 Correct Answers Who has the right to life? Mother? Child? Both? Which one more?
right of body Correct Answers the right to your own body, you
own your own body and can do whatever you want with it Thomson's violinist moral analogy Correct Answers 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 Correct Answers 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 Correct Answers 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 Correct Answers -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 Correct Answers 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 Correct Answers The claim that personhood is acquired gradually during the course of the pregnancy
conscientious refusal/objection Correct Answers 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 Correct Answers abortions should be banned after fetal viability (~24 weeks)
animation/quickening Correct Answers -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 Correct Answers Aristotle and Aquinas believed that the fetus didn't have a soul until it was "formed" (40-80 days)
Jewish "breath of life" Correct Answers an individual human being comes into existence only at birth
fellow fetuses Correct Answers 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 Correct Answers 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
With Complete Solutions
Roe v. Wade (1973) Correct Answers -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 Correct Answers -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 Correct Answers 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 Correct Answers Who has the right to life? Mother? Child? Both? Which one more?
right of body Correct Answers the right to your own body, you
own your own body and can do whatever you want with it Thomson's violinist moral analogy Correct Answers 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 Correct Answers 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 Correct Answers 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 Correct Answers -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 Correct Answers 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 Correct Answers The claim that personhood is acquired gradually during the course of the pregnancy
conscientious refusal/objection Correct Answers 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 Correct Answers abortions should be banned after fetal viability (~24 weeks)
animation/quickening Correct Answers -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 Correct Answers Aristotle and Aquinas believed that the fetus didn't have a soul until it was "formed" (40-80 days)
Jewish "breath of life" Correct Answers an individual human being comes into existence only at birth
fellow fetuses Correct Answers 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 Correct Answers 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
