Question

Question 2: In general, how would you describe the Thomson’s views about the permissibility of abortion? In particular, what does the “Violinist” example show according to Judith Jarvis Thompson? And what is shown by the example of “people seeds” who might float in your window and take root?

Answer 1

• Thomson takes a moderate view on abortion, arguing that is permissible in some cases but impermissible in others. She begins by, surprisingly, granting the pro-life view that personhood begins at conception.
• Most pro-lifers think that once you grant that point, the matter is settled. But Thomson tries to show that it is not, that the right to life just means you have the right to not be unjustly killed.
• She relies heavily on analogies,one of them being the violinist example.
• Imagine you are asleep, and while you are asleep you are hooked up to a famous violinist who can only be kept alive (for whatever reason) if he is hooked up to you. Obviously you did not consent to the violinist using your body, but disconnecting yourself from him would lead to his death.
• Thomson points out that, in this case, while it would be really really nice of you to remain hooked up to the violinist, no one would demand that you remain hooked up. In other words, it would be morally permissible to disconnect yourself from him.
• Thomson is banking that most of us would agree on this, and uses this example to show that abortion,even if the unborn has a right to life would be morally permissible in cases where the person did not consent to the unborn using their body to live (say, rape).
• Thomson views the right to life as something conferred by other human beings: the unborn have no right to life because the pregnant woman has not invited that life in, so to speak.
• Human beings do not have a right to life simply by virtue of being humans, in Thomson’s eyes; they must in addition be wanted. The right to life that Thomson accords the unborn presupposes someone else’s power. In the case of the mother, it is the power she exercises when she approves the unborn’s continued existence.
• The unborn and their right to life, for her, are passive to her power. This is chilling. Rather, the right to life of unborn human beings is not dependent on someone elses’ power or permission or approval.
• It is anchored in their humanity. Just as something is loved because it is good, and not good because it is loved, a right exists prior to its being recognized and is not dependent on recognition.
• For example, a woman is worthwhile not because a man approves her or pays attention to her; when a man responds to her it is because she is good. Being precedes approval; goodness precedes love.
• In order to rationalize the death of the unborn, she seems compelled to rationalize the death of the person. It is as if she is saying that we need the death of the authentic person in order to justify the death of the unborn.
• Arguing by analogy, Thomson’s claim is that the moral principle governing the ‘People-Seed’-case carries over to the case of pregnancy resulting from contraceptive failure. So just as the right to control what happens to one’s property trumps the people-seed’s right to life in the former, so too does the right to control what happen’s to one’s body trump the foetus’ right to life (assuming it has one) in the latter.
• "People seeds" are the thought experiment employed to consider pregnancies resulting from consensual sex. Here we are asked to imagine living in a world where people seeds fly around; if they get into your house they nest in carpets and upholstery.
• Because you know of these people seeds you have protective screens in front of your windows. In the heat you sometimes open these windows and very rarely people seeds find holes in the screens and end up in your house.
• Thomson would assume that people would not consider themselves to be under any obligation to allow these people seeds use of their house for nine months or years (though it would be terribly nice of you to welcome them).
• So, by analogy, Thomson would hold that pregnancies resulting from consensual sexual acts (opening windows in the heat) with faulty contraceptives (holes in the screens) can also be legitimately terminated.