The Trolley Problem, by Judith Jarvis Thomson

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

Judith Thomson makes many different arguments regarding the morality of abortion. One of her many arguments is that a woman should have a right to defend her own life, and therefore the extreme view of abortion is inherently false (268). To make her argument, Thomson does addresses two things. One, she addresses the opposition by confronting their core argument (that a fetus is a person and has a right to life), and although she may not agree, assumes that it is correct (266). Two, she addresses an analogous situation to pregnancy, the case of the violinist, on which she introduces her argument. By addressing the opposition, and discussing an analogous situation, Thomson comes to the conclusion that although a fetus may be a person and have a right to life, a mother has a right to self-defense, and therefore the extreme view of abortion (in which abortions are not permitted in any circumstances) is false (268).

Thomson’s argument, “A Defense on Abortion,” is a piece written to point out the issues in many arguments made against abortion. She points out specific issues in arguments made, for example, about life beginning at conception and if that truly matters as an argument against abortion. Thomson uses multiple analogies when making her points against the arguments made against abortion. These analogies are used to show that the arguments made do not really make sense in saying it is immoral to have an abortion. These analogies do not work in all cases, and sometimes they only work in very atypical cases, but still make a strong argument. There are also objections made to Thomson’s argument, which she then replies to, which makes her argument even stronger. Her replies to these arguments are very strong, saying biology does not always equate responsibility, and that reasonable precaution is an important factor in the morality of abortion. There are some major issues in her responses to these objections.

Philippa Foot justifies in her essay that there is a distinction between doing and allowing that makes one impermissible and the other not, respectively. This distinction is explained through terms of agency and types of rights. With any event, the person that bring about the harm is considered to be the agent and if the harm interferes with another person’s right to life then the action of the agent is impermissible. In identifying the harm encountered by a person, we need to be able to determine how an agent is related to the harm; whether by initiating new sequence or letting the existing sequence run its course. Essentially as a response to Thomson’s argument on abortion, Foot uses her explanation of doing and allowing to justify that abortion is impermissible since the agent of the event is initiating the fatal sequence.

To begin with, let’s take a look at the consequences of the first Trolley Case. Consequentialism states that each and every consequence (people, animals, and situations affected) must be considered, so the moral thing to do would be to pull the lever, directing the train toward Man A. Pulling the lever results in saving five lives, which outweighs one life. If each person involved is cared for by ten people, then fifty less people will be negatively affected by their death, versus the ten that would be negatively affected by death of Man A. I agree with the decision to pull the lever in Case 1, because the action simply redirects harm to the benefit of a larger number of people. It was a decision for two parties that whose lives were threatened, and four net lives have been saved, versus negative four.

In Thomson’s Trolley Problem the bystander must not flip the switch due to the difference between doing and allowing. As the bystander is not the driver, the decision he must make is either allow five to die or kill one. The death of the five workmen cannot be blamed on the bystander since if the bystander was not there, there would be no one to flip the switch the five workmen would die and the one workman would remain unharmed. However, if the bystander was to flip the switch he would have greater responsibility for the death of the one worker because if the bystander wasn’t there the worker would have survived.

For example, let’s suppose there was a scenario where you are at a swimming pool, there is a child swimming, parents leave for a few minutes, there is no one else around, child is drowning and if you don’t do anything, if you can’t find the parents what would you do? Most people say in that case “It is not just you would have an option to save the child but you are positively, morally obligated to save the child.” This might seem like it causes a problem for my view about the trolley problem because it seems analogous like you are the only person who could save the people’s lives but my response is that this is not a good analogy. In case of a drowning child, there is nobody else that has to die in order for you to save the child it is just a choice between one person dead or not. But in this case, it is a choice between five people being dead or one person being dead and you actively have to do something to kill them.

He makes two different arguments which are based on what “if’s”. The two main points were what if a child were about to get hit by a moving train and you had the opportunity to move a switch to change the direction of the train in order to prevent the child from getting wounded or killed. But they would have to sacrifice their car which would be hit by the train since it was at the range of the railroad. As Peter mentioned that most would rather save the car

Thomson continues to dissect her scenarios that promote her support of abortion. She ends this essay after explaining that although she supports abortion rights, she does not think that all cases are suitable for abortion.

If one decides to do nothing, one is not in charge of killing a single person. If one flips the switch, one interferes with fate, saves five humans, but still kills one. If one choses to do nothing, one will do zero of the killing because no physical action is taken to change the course of others’ destinies. It may seem rather harsh on my part to do nothing in the trolley problem, but for me there is no distinction between flipping a switch, pushing a fat man, or killing a patient to save other people. Taking any action in any of those situations would result in the same manner, one person dieing, and five people surviving.

The magistrate’s dilemma could in fact be compared to “The trolley problem”. In the trolley problem, which is a hypothetical issue, states that if you were beside a lever on a train track and a speeding trolley passes you going toward five workers

The Trolley Problem, proposed by Philippa Foot, is presented in this way, “You’re the conductor of a trolley. The brakes fail and if you do not flip the switch to make an oncoming turn, you will kill five people trapped on the tracks ahead. However, if you do flip the switch, you’ll kill one person trapped on the other set of tracks. What do you do?” (Rowe). According to utilitarianism theories, the right action would be to divert the trolley away from the five people and to the one person. However, other ethical systems, like Kantianism, may disagree with and reject this solution. The “right” and “wrong” answers are determined by perspective; one “right” answer according to one theory can be the complete wrong answer to another theory.

The point in this specific case is to show how in the first case “standard” we as humans will automatically redirect the trolley to save five people but if we have to put someone in front of the trolley our morals take control and we let the five people die. This is because as Liao says we do not intend for the man on the track to be hit in standard but in push we are intending for the innocent by standard to be hit over the five other people so because of this it is not permissible for us to push him into the trolley's way. There are multiple different variables in which can and will affect someone's chose. The way in which the cases are presented to the subjects can have an influence on what they choose. For instance if they are presented in a different order or if you are lecturing one group about how you should always save five if it means killing one but the control group you say nothing to then the first group is obviously going to lean towards saying yes to push because the thought of saving five has been buried into there

The effect of the defendant’s action must be to produce a state of fear of immediate unlawful violence. The fear that is produced must however be reasonable immediate as in Thomas where threats by pickets to miners on a bus were not assault because the threat was not immediate due to the separation between the two sides and thus had no means to carry out the threat. Individual liability will now be examined