The debate over whether abortion is permissible continues to be an ongoing controversy long after the United States Supreme Court’s seven-two ruling on Roe v. Wade in 1973. The Justice’s ruled that abortions are a “fundamental right.” According to American moral philosopher, Judith Thomson’s ‘A Defense of Abortion,’ those opposed to abortion base their argument on the premise that the fetus is a living being from the moment of conception. On the contrary, those who defend abortion base their argument on the premise that the fetus is not a person, but tissue that will develop into a person at birth. In ‘A Defense Against Abortion,’ Thomson raises three controversial thought experiments aimed at defending the right to abortion.
Firstly, Thomson pitches the violinist thought experiment grounded on the idea that every person has a right to life, while defending the acceptability of abortion:
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. [To unplug you would be to kill him.] (Thomson, 49)
Thomson agrees that in this scenario you do not have a moral obligation to stay connected to the violinist even though disconnecting may result in the death of the violinist. Limiting the right to life, which does not include the use of another person’s body. Therefore, by unplugging the violinist you are not denying his right to life, but denying him the right to use your body. Thomson goes on to add, “if you do allow him to use them, it is a kindness on your part, and not something you owe him.”
Relating to the violinist thought experiment, Thomson says abortion does not violate the fetuses right to life, but denies the fetus the use of the pregnant woman’s body- to which it has no explicit right. Thus, aborting a fetus is not denying it’s right to life, but deny its right to your body, which inherently results in the death of the fetus.
Secondly, Thomson condemns determining a woman’s right to abortion based on the willingness of a third-party (doctor). In many cases a woman’s right to abortion may come down to the willingness of a doctor, if the doctor is unwilling the woman is denied the right to abortion. In Thomson’s expanding child thought experiment she expels this idea:
Suppose you find yourself trapped in a tiny house with a growing child. I mean in a very tiny house, and a rapidly growing child —you are already up against the wall of the house and in a few minutes you’ll be crushed to death. The child on the other hand won’t be crushed to death; if nothing is done to stop him from growing he’ll be hurt, but in the end he’ll simply burst open the house and walk out a free man. (Thomson, 52)
In this analogy, Thomson argues that a third party would not be at the liberty to determine who survives, whether it be the person being crushed or the child. The person being crushed has the right to act in self-defense to save themselves from being crushed by this growing child. To relate this to pregnancy, the mother is the house and the fetus would be the growing child. In this case, the child is threatening the mother’s life and only she has the right to decide to act in self-defense. The mother acting in self-defense would be her choosing to abort the fetus than risk her life going through with the pregnancy.
Thirdly, Thomson present the people-seeds thought experiment to critique pregnancy as a result of voluntary intercourse:
“[…] people-seeds drift about in the air like pollen, and if you open your windows, one may drift in and take root in your carpets or upholstery. You don’t want children, so you fix up your windows with fine mesh screens, the very best you can buy. As can happen, however, and on very, very rare occasions does happen, one of the screens is defective; and a seed drifts in and takes root. (Thomson, 59)
In this thought experiment, Thomson addresses contraception. The woman does not want a people-seed to take root in her house so she goes through measures (putting up mesh screen) to prevent that. Thomson raises the question, had one people-seed rooted itself this woman’s carpet, would she be denied the right to rid her house of the “intruder” because she took a risk by opening the window? She concludes, there are times where the fetus has a right to the mother’s body, but most times it does not.
Philosopher and advocate for pro-life, Francis Beckwith responds to Thomson’s argument with the idea that a generative act is a generative act even if the effects of the act are unintended. In response to the people-seeds thought experiment, Beckwith says sex is unlike the act of opening your window, sex is a generative activity. Beckwith argues that as human beings we have a certain responsibilities and obligations to take care of those within our community.
The right to life is the right to not be killed unjustly. Thomson argues for abortion on the bases that women own the rights to their bodies. Thomson believes abortion is morally permissible sometimes. Specifically, in cases where abortion is needed to save the mother, where pregnancy is the outcome of rape, and in cases where contraception failed.