Thomson's Arguments Against Abortion

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.

She uses examples involving self-defense like being trapped in a house with a child who is growing very rapidly (Chwang, Abortion slide 10). For instance, if a girl was pregnant and later found out her baby had fetal congenital birth defects that are incompatible with life and will result in death shortly after the baby was born or severely affect the quality of life for her child. Instead of carrying this baby to full term and delivering the baby that would result in the child’s death or poor life outcome; her best option would most likely be abortion. To give her child the best outcome, even if it meant terminating the pregnancy and killing the fetus. You could say that this outcome would be better than having a child who is in pain and suffers continuously. This child would not have any quality of life other than being in pain and being transferred in and out of hospitals all their lives. Thomson uses a similar example with a woman that has a cardiac condition, resulting in her death if she carries her baby to term (Thomson, 50).

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.

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 the article, “A Defense of Abortion” by Thomson, the author states the two points that contradict the most the right of a fetus and the right of a mother. The authors main stance, is there are abortions that are morally permissible and impermissible under certain circumstances. Thomson, makes the assumption that a fetus is a person so she can prove abortion is permissible in some situations. The author states, under three cases abortion is permissible and she further elaborates on the premise with analogies she presents. The first case is rape. She proposes an analogy, that you have been kidnapped and wake up in the hospital and they plugged you in with a violinist because it needs a kidney for nine months and if you decide to unplug it,

In this argument it has been established then, that a fetus is a person from the moment of conception. Thompson now introduces her “violinist analogy.” This is a key term in her argument. In this analogy she asks the reader to imagine you wake one morning and find yourself in bed with an unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and you alone have the right blood type to save him. You have been kidnapped in the middle of the night, and the violinist’s circulatory system is now plugged into yours. The director of the Hospital is now telling you “Sorry, the Society of Music Lovers did this to you – we would never have permitted it if we had known.” To get unplugged from the violinist will kill him, but in nine months he will be totally recovered from his ailment and you can be safely unplugged from one another. Thompson then asks, “Is it a moral responsibility for the kidnapped person to agree to this situation?” This situation she has concocted is comparable to that of a woman being raped. Pro – lifers say every person has a right to life and that right to life is stronger than the mothers right to decide what happens in her body. Thompson then goes on to say that instead of being plugged to the violinist’s body for nine months – its changed to your whole life. According to the pro –life

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.

Thompson counters this by saying that the right to life does not give yourself the right to use someone else unwillingly as a means to stay alive, however I would argue that a more appropriate way to illustrate why Thompson is incorrect here would be to adjust the coat analogy. Say Smith has a bed with a warm blanket in which he is laying. The world has entered an icy era and will remain deadly cold for 9 months without the help of his blanket. Suddenly one-night Smith wakes up with Jones in the bed, Jones needing to do so to stay alive. Is it morally acceptable for Smith to kick Jones out of his bed since he is the rightful owner? I would argue that it is not, as I suspect Thompson would argue, outside his minimal obligation, as your minimal obligation is to be a minimally decent Samaritan. This brings me to the final argument I would make, which is that the example of Kitty Genovese is a terrible one to prove that citizens are only required to be minimally decent. Instead I think that the case of Kitty Genovese acts as a showing of how if any of them had followed through with what is morally expected, a life could have been easily

In disagreement many people say that one person's right to life always outweighs another person's right to autonomy. However Thomson's argument makes a very interesting unwanted pregnancies resulting in permissible abortions. To counteract her claims I'm going to use a hypothetical situation as she did. Let's say a mother gives birth to a set of conjoined twins. The twins grow up having a somewhat troublesome life considering the fact that neither one has the opportunity to achieve autonomy. Once they get older, lets say age 18, twin A obtains the information that twin B's survival depends on the use of twin A's vital organ's. However twin A would survive if twin B was too be separated from him thus granting twin A his right to autonomy. It seems that it is obvious that it not permissible for twin A to kill twin B. The following argument shows a more concrete view of the situation. It is morally impermissible for twin A to kill twin B if he has the right to life and the right to twin A's body. Twin B does have a right to life. Twin B prima facie has

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

Thompson starts by expressing " a baby is a man and that executing a man is, basically, murder, and along these lines ethically off-base." Thompson utilizes numerous analogies that can be contrasted with

Judith Jarvis Thomson proposes her argument in her article, A Defense of Abortion. There, she explains to her readers during what circumstances is abortion justifiable. Thomson uses the argument by analogy strategy to explain to her readers her argument. She tries to reach her conclusion by comparing it to similar cases. The point she is trying to make is to tell her readers that abortion is morally permissible only in some cases, like when the mother has been a victim of rape, when contraception has failed or when the pregnancy is of danger to the mother. She explains to her readers that abortion is justifiable only in some cases, not all. Thomson uses the case of a violinist to show her readers that abortion is morally permissible when a woman has been victim of rape. She also uses the people seeds story as an analogy to explain that abortion is morally acceptable when contraception has failed. Thomson also mentions the right to life in her article. She uses the right to life to explain to us that it is morally justifiable for the mother to abort the fetus when the fetus is endangering the mother’s life. In order to help her readers understand the notion of right to life she is trying to propose to us, she does so by using the Henry Fonda example. In my point of view, I find most of Thomson’s analogies irrelevant to the argument she is trying to make. I will explain to my readers why I find Thomson’s analogies irrelevant.

The woman was bound, gagged, and raped. It was more than likely a tragic even that scarred her for life. Rather than helping her heal, hospitals refused to abort the fetus resulting from the rape. The child would have to be in her stomach for nine months, altering the woman’s body and lifestyle for a child that she did not even want. She would be out of work to give birth and recover, which would affect her income. Having a child she hated was unfair because it would always be a reminder of what happened. Just knowing that she had a child in the world that she gave birth to and did not want would be detrimental. In the case of the violinist, it is not her moral obligation to stay connected to the violinist to keep him alive and alter her life as it is not her moral obligation to carry the child to term and give birth to a child she did not assume responsibility for.

An objection to this famous violinist chase would be the difference between a person and a fetus. The famous violinist is a person and a human being. He has lived his life while the fetus life has only been in the body for maybe a few weeks if the woman were to perform the abortion before the a certain number of weeks into the pregnancy. He has been able to experience memories and events while a fetus as only has been able to experience the womb bond the mother and the fetus has. Another objection that does not makes sense is that the fetus is physically attached while the famous violinist was attached artificially. For an abortion, you go through a process to take out the fetus while if you were just attached outside the body like a catheter,

To begin with, Thomson uses a thought experiment about a hypothetical famous violinist, to further her argument that abortion is morally permissible. In this thought experiment, you are kidnapped and unconsciously plugged to a famous violinist so that your kidney can remove toxins from the violinist’s kidney and ultimately save his life. Thomson argues that you are not required to stay plugged to the famous violinist even if unplugging yourself from the violinist would result in his death. Thomson argues that while everyone has the right to life, no one has the right to dictate what happens to another person 's body.