A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thomson

The next issue is, in Thomson’s opinion, the most important question in the abortion debate; that is, what exactly does a right to life bring about? The premise that “everyone has a right to life, so the unborn person has a right to life” suggests that the right to life is “unproblematic,” or straight-forward. We know that isn’t true. Thomson gives an analogy involving Henry Fonda. You are sick and dying and the touch of Henry Fonda’s hand will heal you. Even if his touch with save your life, you have no right to be “given the touch of Henry Fonda’s cool hand.” A stricter view sees the right to life as more of a right to not be killed by anybody. Here too troubles arise. In the case of the violinist, if we are to “refrain from killing the violinist,” then we must basically allow him to kill you. This contradicts the stricter view. The conclusion Thomson draws from this analogy is “that having a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another person’s body—even if one needs it for life itself.” This argument again proves the basic argument wrong. The right to life isn’t as clear of an argument as I’m sure opponents of abortion would like it to be or believe it is.

In the article "A Defense of Abortion" Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that abortion is morally permissible even if the fetus is considered a person. In this paper I will give a fairly detailed description of Thomson main arguments for abortion. In particular I will take a close look at her famous "violinist" argument. Following will be objections to the argumentative story focused on the reasoning that one person's right to life outweighs another person's right to autonomy. Then appropriate responses to these objections. Concluding the paper I will argue that Thomson's "violinist" argument supporting the idea of a mother's right to autonomy outweighing a fetus' right to life does not make abortion permissible.

Second, the author uses her “expanding child” example. “Trapped in a tiny house with a growing child and you are up against a wall, and in a few minutes, you will be crushed, on the other hand the child won’t be crushed. The only thing that will save her life is to kill the child. Is abortion permissible to save the pregnant woman’s life? Because the mother being compared to that of the house, this brings up the idea that the mother should be able to do as she pleases with her body, and that her body carries more significance than the fetus’ right to life. This brings in the argument of a third-party intervention, such as a doctor. If a doctor did not agree to perform an abortion, to save this mother, then the mother would be denied her rights, and the right to decide what is done with her body. If a woman doesn’t have a right to their body, then you should not be unplugged, thus, save the violinists life. This reasoning is concluded with two smart statements, “It seems to me that to treat the matter in this very way (refuse abortion for the mother’s health) is to refuse to grant the very status of person which is so firmly insisted on for the fetus by anti-abortion advocates. (243) and “a fetus who existence is due to rape” has no right to use their mother’s bodies, and aborting them is not depriving them of anything they had a

In Judith A. Thomson’s article, ‘A defense of abortion’ Thomson defends her view that in some cases abortion is morally permissible. She takes this stance even with the premise that fetuses upon the moment of conception are in fact regarded as persons. However one criticism of her argument would be that there is a biological relationship between mother and fetus however there is no biological relationship between you and the violinist. Having this biological relationship therefore entails special responsibility upon the mother however there is no responsibility in the case of the violinist. Thomson argues against those who are opposed to abortion with her violinist thought experiment.

In her article, “The Defense of Abortion”, Judith Jarvis Thomson states an analogy involving a violinist. She first states that you are allowed to unplug yourself in the violinist scenario, second abortion after rape is analogous to the violinist scenario, therefore, you should be allowed to unplug yourself and be allowed to abort after rape (Chwang, Abortion slide 12). In this paper, I will argue that abortion is morally acceptable even if the fetus is considered a person. This paper will criticize premise two from the traditional argument against abortion string that killing innocent persons is wrong (Chwang, Abortion slide 9). Following the violinist analogy will be an objection to this analogy and my respons to them. One of the

In Thomson’s defence of abortion she argues that abortion is permissible when a mother’s life is not at risk. Working on her interpretation of the secular conservative argument, she first assumes that the premise of a foetus being a person is true, then moves onto the second premise, that a person has the right to life. Analysing what the right to life means, she first looks at the idea that the right to life is the right to have the bare minimum a person needs in order to survive. She quickly rebuts this by providing the Henry Fonda analogy and the violinist analogy. Both of these show that just because a person needs something to survive, like Henry Fonda’s cool hand or another person’s kidneys, a person doesn’t have the right to take it. With this in mind she modifies the argument so that the right to life is the right not to be killed. This she rebuffs with the violin analogy, noting that by pulling the plugs you would in effect be killing the violinist. While the violinist didn’t have the right to your kidneys, it could be argued that he does have the right for you not to intervene. However these are your kidneys, and you should not be forced to allow him continued use. Having ascertained that the right to life is not the right to the bare minimum needed to survive, nor the right not to be killed, she concludes that the right to life is the right not to be killed unjustly, or the

In the “Violinist Analogy,” Thomson argues that in cases of rape and other ways in which a woman might become pregnant without making the decision to have sex, it is not immoral to have an abortion. She makes this argument through the analogy that you are hooked up to a “famous unconscious violinist” and if you unplug yourself you are causing the death of that violinist. This point works very well in the argument that it seems as though abortion is allowable in cases of rape.

Now on a different note, Thomson's main argument is set out to undermine the anti-abortionist argument. The anti-abortionist argument states: Every person has a right to life, the fetus is a person and hence has a right to life. The mother has the right to control her own body, but the fetuses' right to life is stronger than her right to control her body. Therefore, abortion is wrong. How Thomson goes about this is through analogies, and her main argument is through her violinist argument. Thomson asks you imagine that you find yourself hooked up to a famous unconscious violinist. If he can't use your kidneys for nine months, he'll die.

In “A Defense of Abortion” by Judith Jarvis Thompson, Thompson works to argue that even if a human fetus is considered a person, abortion is still often morally permissible. This paper will work to explain Thompson’s positions on the different accounts of the right to life, and to provide an evaluation of them and explain why they are not plausible, specifically regarding three of the analogies on-which she based her entire argument: the violinist, the coat, and the case of Kitty Genovese, as well as to explore a logical counterargument and explain why it’s stance is impermissible.

In Mary Anne Warren’s “The Abortion Issue,” children are not persons in the empirical sense. Warren believes that prior to a certain point in a pregnancy, the child does not have “the capacity to understand” the ramifications of what an abortion would be, therefore the abortion does not infringe upon the rights of the unborn fetus. She states that: “…in the ways that matter from a moral point of view, human fetuses are very unlike human persons, particularly in their early months of development”(152). In essence, personhood as defined by Warren can only come after the first trimester. Before that time, the fetus does not have the sentience that would make it a person. Warren’s main criteria for

In “A Defense of Abortion” by Judith Jarvis Thomson, her key implication is that if a fetus is a person with a right to life, then abortion would still be morally permissible in cases of rape or contraceptive failure. She mentions that all of the arguments she makes are implying the fetus being a person from the moment of conception. If the fetus is not a person from the moment of conception, but only a “fertilized ovum or a clump of cells,” then abortion is okay. First, she brings up the slippery slope argument about when to determine the fetus as being a person or not. It’s tough to say exactly when a fetus becomes a person thus the opposite side says “a fetus is a person from the moment of conception.” Thomson compares this to an acorn turning into an oak tree. Nobody would necessarily say that the acorn is an oak tree as soon as it’s planted in the ground, therefore she believes a fetus in not a person at the moment of conception. Although she does agree that the fetus becomes a person throughout a point

In “A Defense of Abortion,” Judith Jarvis Thomson argues in defense of the moral permissibility of abortion in several, but not all circumstances. First off, Thomson uses the expanding house example to refute the extremist view on abortion, which states that abortion is morally impermissible even in situations where the mother’s life is in danger. Thomson states that a mother has the right to kill an expanding child that will crush her to death in her house. Thus, Thomson derives the ownership thesis in which she claims that if a human is entitled to ownership of anything in life, it is his or her own body. Similarly, Thomson believes the mother owns the house and therefore has the right to terminate the child’s life.

Overall, Thomson’s argument is weak when using the violinist scenario, because Thomson tries to persuade the reader to focus on a relationship with no emotional attachment and then compares it to a relationship with significant emotional attachment. The two are entirely different so the outcome can also be entirely different. For example, Colorado.edu states that “within 8 weeks after their [women] abortions, 55% expressed guilt, 44% complained of nervous disorders, 36% had experienced sleep disturbances, 31% had regrets about their decision, and 11% had been prescribed psychotropic medicine by their family doctor.” (The Cost of Abortion. (n.d.) ) I do not believe these same results would occur if a kidnapped victim were to unplug herself from a stranger.

In discussions of abortion, a controversial issue has been whether abortion is morally permissible. According to anti-abortionists, abortion is the killing of an innocent fetus and is therefore not morally permissible. According to Judith Jarvis Thomson, however, abortion is not morally wrong in most cases and she attacks the anti-abortionist argument. Therefore, they disagree on whether abortion is morally permissible or not. In this paper, I will outline the anti-abortionists argument in numbered premise-conclusion form and show which premise Thomson attacks. After that, I will summarize her thought experiments and defend Thomson’s argument against two possible objections from the anti-abortionists.

What takes precedence; an unborn fetus’ life or its mother’s right to her body? Anti-abortionist argue that the life of an unborn fetus has priority, and thus abortion is morally impermissible as it violates the fetus’ right to life. In her article “A Defense of Abortion”, Judith Thomson argues that abortion is morally permissible under the certain conditions where the rights of the fetus fail to surpass a mother’s right of choice. For the sake of her argument, Thomson allows the assumption that a fetus is a person, and instead attacks the premise that the fetus’ right to life is stronger than that of a mother’s body integrity. The main argument that Thomson makes is that right to life, defined by some as the right to “be given the bare minimum a man needs for continued life”, is not an absolute right (Thomson 55). This means that the right to life is not unconditionally above all other rights, such as the right of bodily integrity. For Thomson, this allows a mother to make the morally permissible decision to have an abortion for limited reasons: in the case of rape, pregnancy threatens the life of the mother, and the mother took measures to prevent the contraception. Thomson undertakes a Deontological when making her argument, which I will dispute using a Utilitarian approach. While I agree with Thomson that the fetus’ right to life does not allow the use of the mother’s body in cases of rape and threat to life, I will argue against the premise that an abortion is morally