A Defense of Abortion: A Critique

In her essay titled "A Defense of Abortion," Judith Jarvis Thomson grants abortion opponents' argument that a fetus is a person from the moment of conception. She then supposes that abortion opponents' arrive at the conclusion that abortion is morally wrong because the fetus's right to life supercedes the mother's desire to decide what happens with her body (1971, p. 241). To test this premise - that the right to life supercedes the right to control one's body - Thomson offers the example of the dying violinist. A person wakes one day to find themselves hooked up to a dying violinist. The violinist's kidneys are failing and, without the 'donor's' express consent, the Society of Music Lovers has plugged the violhnist's kidneys into the donor's kidneys. The donor must remain hooked up to the violinist for at least nine months to save the violinist's life (Thomson, 1971, p. 241).

Thomson notes immediately that one problem with her dying violinist case is that the donor was hooked up without his or her consent. But she also notes that many abortion opponents oppose abortion even in cases of rape. Thus, she contends that her example does not fail due to the lack of the donor's consent. But is there a difference between becoming pregnant due to a rape and becoming pregnant by artificial insemination while in a coma? The latter situation seems closer to Thomson's example than a rape. Specifically, the donor in the violinist case is more like a w

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and Jones and the coat. Jones has found a coat to keep from freezing, but Smith, who owns the coat, also needs it to keep from freezing. Thomson argues that Smith clearly has a superior right to claim how the coat will be used, and that third parties (meaning doctors and medical professionals) should recognize this superior right (1971, pp. 243-244). Thomson then dismisses the argument that the woman does not have the rifht to control her body because her body is "on loan" to her. But what about the argument that a woman does not have the right to perform an abortion because woman's bodies are made specifically to bear children - to nurture fetuses - and to perform an abortion would be to violate this fundamental, natural law? This argument seems more in line with abortion opponents' contention that abortions are impermissible because they violate nature, while Thomson's argument of Smith and Jones and the coat seems more of a legal argument - over property rights - that does not really seem to respond to the abortion opponents. Thomson argues that the right to life "consists not in the right not to be killed, but rather in the right not to be killed unjustly" (1971, p. 245). Thus, she considers whether abortion could be an unjus

Category: Science - A