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A Defense of Abortion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"A Defense of Abortion" is a moral philosophy paper by Judith Jarvis Thomson first published in 1971.
Granting for the sake of argument that the fetus has a right to life, Thomson uses thought experiments to argue
for the moral permissibility of induced abortion. Her argument has many critics on both sides of the abortion
debate,[1] yet continues to receive defense.[2] Thomson's imaginative examples and controversial conclusions
have made "A Defense of Abortion" perhaps "the most widely reprinted essay in all of contemporary
philosophy".[3]

Contents
1 Overview of the essay
1.1 The Violinist
1.2 Third-party participation the expanding child
1.3 Pregnancy resulting from voluntary intercourse people-seeds
2 Criticism
3 Table of criticisms and responses
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links

Overview of the essay

The Violinist
In "A Defense of Abortion", Thomson grants for the sake of argument that the fetus has a right to life, but
defends the permissibility of abortion by appeal to a thought experiment:
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. [If he
is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and
can safely be unplugged from you.[4]
Thomson takes it that you may now permissibly unplug yourself from the violinist even though this will cause his
death: the right to life, Thomson says, does not entail the right to use another person's body, and so by
unplugging the violinist you do not violate his right to life but merely deprive him of somethingthe use of your
bodyto which he has no right. "[I]f you do allow him to go on using your kidneys, this is a kindness on your
part, and not something he can claim from you as his due."[5]

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For the same reason, Thomson says, abortion does not violate the fetus's right to life but merely deprives the
fetus of somethingthe use of the pregnant woman's bodyto which it has no right. Thus, it is not that by
terminating her pregnancy a woman violates her moral obligations, but rather that a woman who carries the fetus
to term is a 'Good Samaritan' who goes beyond her obligations,[6] thus declaring the statement to "love thy
neighbour like theyself" not to be a moral obligation.

Third-party participation the expanding child

Thomson criticizes the common method of deducing a womans right to abort from the permissibility of a third
party committing the abortion. In almost all instances, a womans right to abortion may hinge on the doctors
willingness to perform it. If the doctor refuses, then the woman is denied her right. To base the womans right on
the accordance or refusal of a doctor, she says, is to ignore the mothers full personhood, and subsequently, her
rights to her body. Thomson presents the hypothetical example of the expanding child:
Suppose you find yourself trapped in a tiny house with a growing child. I mean a very tiny house, and a
rapidly growing childyou are already up against the wall of the house and in a few minutes youll be
crushed to death. The child on the other hand wont be crushed to death; if nothing is done to stop him
from growing hell be hurt, but in the end hell simply burst open the house and walk out a free man.[7]
Thomson concedes that a third party indeed cannot make the choice to kill either the person being crushed or
the child. However, this does not mean that the person being crushed cannot act in self-defense and attack the
child to save his or her own life. To liken this to pregnancy, the mother can be thought to be the house, the fetus
the growing-child. In such a case, the mothers life is being threatened, and the fetus is the one who threatens it.
Because for no reason should the mothers life be threatened, and also for no reason is the fetus threatening it,
both are innocent, and thus no third party can intervene. But, Thomson says, the person threatened can
intervene, by which justification a mother can rightfully abort.[8]
Continuing, Thomson returns to the expanding child example and points out:
For what we have to keep in mind is that the mother and the unborn child are not like two tenants in a
small house, which has, by unfortunate mistake, been rented to both: the mother owns the house. The fact
that she does adds to the offensiveness of deducing that the mother can do nothing from the supposition
that third parties can do nothing. But it does more than this: it casts a bright light on the supposition that
third parties can do nothing.[9]
If we say that no one may help the mother obtain an abortion, we fail to acknowledge the mothers right over
her body (or property). Thomson says that we are not personally obligated to help the mother but this does not
rule out the possibility that someone else may act. As Thomson reminds, the house belongs to the mother;
similarly, the body which holds a fetus also belongs to the mother.[10]

Pregnancy resulting from voluntary intercourse people-seeds

To illustrate an example of pregnancy due to voluntary intercourse, Thomson presents the people-seeds
situation:
Again, suppose it were like this: 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 dont 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.[11]
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Here, the people-seeds flying through the window represent conception, despite the mesh screen, which
functions as contraception. The woman does not want a people-seed to root itself in her house, and so she even
takes the measure to protect herself with the best mesh screens. However, in the event that one finds its way in,
unwelcome as it may be, does the simple fact that the woman knowingly risked such an occurrence when
opening her window deny her the ability to rid her house of the intruder? Thomson notes that some may argue
the affirmative to this question, claiming that ...after all you could have lived out your life with bare floors and
furniture, or with sealed windows and doors.[11] But by this logic, she says, any woman could avoid pregnancy
due to rape by simply having a hysterectomy an extreme procedure simply to safeguard against such a
possibility. Thomson concludes that although there may be times when the fetus does have a right to the mother's
body, certainly in most cases the fetus does not have a right to the mother's body. This analogy raises the issue
of whether all abortions are unjust killing.[11]

Criticism
Critics of Thomson's argument (see the table below) generally grant the permissibility of unplugging the violinist,
but seek to block the inference that abortion is permissible by arguing that there are morally relevant differences
between the violinist scenario and typical cases of abortion. One notable exception being that of Peter Singer
who claims that, despite our intuitions, a utilitarian calculus would imply that one is morally obliged to stay
connected to the violinist.[12]
The most common objection is that Thomson's argument can justify abortion only in cases of rape. In the
violinist scenario, you were kidnapped: you did nothing to cause the violinist to be plugged in, just as a woman
who is pregnant due to rape did nothing to cause her pregnancy. But in typical cases of abortion, the pregnant
woman had intercourse voluntarily, and thus has either tacitly consented to allow the fetus to use her body (the
tacit consent objection), or else has a duty to sustain the fetus because the woman herself caused the fetus to
stand in need of her body (the responsibility objection). Other common objections turn on the claim that the
fetus is the pregnant woman's child whereas the violinist is a stranger (the stranger versus offspring
objection), or that abortion kills the fetus whereas unplugging the violinist merely lets him die (the killing versus
letting die objection).
Defenders of Thomson's argument[13] reply that the alleged disanalogies between the violinist scenario and
typical cases of abortion do not hold, either because the factors that critics appeal to are not genuinely morally
relevant, or because those factors are morally relevant but do not apply to abortion in the way that critics have
claimed. A summary of common objections and responses is given below.
Less common objections to Thomson's argument (and the pro-choice responses) include:
the naturalartificial objection:[14] pregnancy is a natural process that is biologically normal to the
human species. The joined condition of the violinist and donor, in contrast, represents an extreme and
unusual form of "life support" that can only proceed in the presence of surgical intervention. This
difference is morally relevant and therefore the two situations should not be used to model each other.
The pro-choice response would be to cite the naturalistic fallacy.
the conjoined twins objection:[15] the relationship between conjoined twins represents a more complete
analogy to pregnancy than the relationship between the violinist and the kidney donor. Because the fatal
separation of conjoined twins is immoral, so is abortion. The pro-choice response would be to state that
conjoined twins have equal claims to their shared organs, since they were conceived at the same time, in
contrast to the fetus/prenatal offspring, who was conceived after his/her/its mother and whose claim to her
body is thus inferior to that of the woman.[16]
the different burdens objection:[17] supporting the violinist is a much greater burden than normal
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pregnancy, and so unplugging the violinist is morally permissible whereas aborting the fetus is not;
the artificiality objection:[18] our intuitions on bizarre thought experiments of the sort used by Thomson
are unreliable and provide no warrant for the conclusions they are intended to support. The pro-choice
response would be that this is a thought experiment and thus it is not meant to be realistic.
the duty to sustain the violinist objection:[19] despite the common intuition, one does have an obligation
to support the violinist, and likewise the fetus.
Of course, critics of Thomson's analogy have replies to these responses,[14] and so the debate goes back and
forth.

Table of criticisms and responses

Objection

Summary

Responses

Tacit consent The pregnant

woman voluntarily
objection[20]
engaged in sexual
intercourse
foreseeing that a
fetus may result,
and so has tacitly
consented to the
fetus using her
body; no such
consent occurs with
the violinist (or
pregnancy due to
rape).

Tacit consent cannot be inferred where contraception was

used.[21] However, even contraception is not 100% effective and
it sometimes fails, and most people are aware of this fact before
having sex.
Engaging in a voluntary action while foreseeing a certain result
does not entail that one has tacitly consented to that result.[22]
Even if the woman has tacitly consented to the fetus making
demands on her body, it does not follow that she has consented
to sustain it for the entire nine months of pregnancy.[23]
In the US there is the legal concept of an inalienable right. A
person can not legally surrender one of these rights. For example,
Surrogacy contracts that prohibit the surrogate mother from
aborting are illegal. No court would enforce that clause of the
contract and you would have no legal remedy if she then chose to
do so because she is not permitted by law to surrender her bodily
autonomy to anyone. Just as she cannot surrender her autonomy
to you, she cannot surrender it to the fetus due to inalienability.
However, not everyone agrees with the current legal definition of
inalienable rights, and using the current law or legal precedent to
back up your position are examples of logical fallacies called
argumentum ad populum, argument from tradition, argument from
authority, and argument from common practice.

Responsibility The pregnant

woman voluntarily
objection[24]
engaged in sexual
intercourse with the
result that the fetus
stands in need of
the use of her body.
The woman is thus
responsible for the
fetus's need to use

The woman is responsible for the fetus existing, but as she could
not have caused the fetus to exist without being dependent on
her, she is in a relevant sense not responsible for the fetus's need
to use her body.[25] However, the woman was still responsible
for creating a situation with a dependent person, even if she
was not responsible for making the fetus dependent upon her
body to survive.
Thomson raises this objection herself and concludes it is not
convincing. First, she offers an argument that lends support to the

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Stranger
versus
offspring
objection[27]

A Defense of Abortion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

her body and so the

fetus has a right to
use her body. No
such responsibility
occurs with the
violinist (or
pregnancy due to
rape).

view that abortion is justified at least in the case of rape. Second,

she points out that one cannot drive a wedge between rape and
other cases simply by appealing to the fact that in other cases the
woman is responsible for there being a fetus that needs
assistance, since the woman is also to some extent responsible in
cases of rape (e.g., she could get a hysterectomy or "never
leav[e] home without a (reliable!) army"). Therefore she
concludes that abortion is morally permissible in at least some
cases where intercourse is voluntary.[26] However,
hysterectomies could threaten a woman's life, and almost all
women cannot afford reliable armies. Also, while the woman
might have been responsible for being in the wrong place at the
wrong time, it was the rapist who had the final say in whether or
not a woman became pregnant (similar as to how people who
commit shooting sprees, rather than the people who legally sold
them the guns, have the final say in whether or not they commit
the shooting spree).
If a thug stole both kidneys from a man and sold them the thug
would have caused the man to be in need of a kidney. He would
be responsible for that need in a very simple and clear cut
manner. There is no need to imply or infer his intentions. If we
caught the perpetrator and convicted him we would imprison him
but we would not take a kidney from him against his will to
sustain the victim's life. Even violent criminals retain their
inalienable rights and bodily autonomy is one of these rights.
However, not everyone agrees that absolute bodily autonomy is
an inalienable right.

Parents have special

obligations towards
their offspring (as
shown, for example,
by laws requiring
child support
payments and by
the fact that child
abandonment is
morally wrong). The
fetus is the pregnant
woman's offspring,
and so she has a
special obligation to
sustain it; the
violinist is a stranger
and so you have no
such obligation.

Special obligations do not arise from mere biological relatedness;

they can only be assumed, either explicitly or implicitly.[28] For
example, by taking the baby home from the hospital one implicitly
agrees to care for it.
Even special parental obligations do not require parents to
undergo organ donation or other direct use of their body (such as
pregnancy) for the sake of their offspring.[29]
From the fact that it is morally permissible for a society to enact
child support laws, it does not follow that there is any obligation
(to the child) to pay child support independently of such laws.[30]
The wrongness of child abandonment may suggest we have some
positive duties towards others; but it would not follow that those
duties are strong enough to require sustaining the fetus.[31]
In order to argue that one obligation can be inferred from another
obligation the inferred obligation must be equal or lesser to the
accepted obligation. Thus you could infer a financial obligation
from a bodily obligation because a financial obligation is trivial in
comparison to the violation of bodily autonomy but you cannot go
the other way as that would be trading up. However, one could

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argue that a financial obligation is a much greater burden since

being forced to pay child support for 18 years or more (in
addition to all of those years of labor which are necessary in
order to earn this money) is a much greater overall burden than
being forced to endure a pregnancy for several months.

Killing versus There is a morally

letting die
relevant difference
between killing and
objection[27]
letting die. Abortion
typically kills the
fetus and thus is
impermissible, but
unplugging the
violinist merely lets
him die and so is
permissible.

The objection would not apply to 'merely extractive' methods of

abortion (such as hysterotomy) where the fetus is extracted intact
and then allowed to die rather than killed.[32]
Those who oppose abortion do not hold that merely extractive
abortions are less objectionable than other methods of abortion;
so they cannot consistently raise the killing versus letting die
objection.[33]
Killing is not in and of itself worse than letting die, or is not
sufficiently worse to undermine the violinist analogy.[34]
Even if killing is substantially worse than letting die, it is justified in
the case of abortion because letting die would require a merely
extractive abortion, which under current technology involves
substantial risk to the pregnant woman.[35]
The objection does not invalidate the violinist argument because
the violinist argument is not "letting die". Pulling the plug on
someone is killing them because you are an active participant, not
a passive observer to the actions of someone else. This is similar
as to how throwing someone who cannot swim off of a boat is
actively killing him/her, despite the fact that this person would die
from his/her pre-existing inability to swim. The killing in both
cases, however, is justifiable as a defense of your own bodily
autonomy.
Even if we accept that killing the fetus is wrong we are still left
with the stand-off between the fetus' right not to be killed and the
mothers right to her body. The mother should come first in the
same way the person hooked up to the violinist can leave.

Intending
versus
foreseeing

Intentionally causing death is not in itself worse than causing death

as an unintended side effect, or is not sufficiently worse to
undermine the violinist analogy.[34]
If the intending versus foreseeing distinction is morally relevant,
this is presumably because intending harm usually involves a
failure of respect towards the victim that foreseeing harm usually
does not. But intentionally causing the fetus's death through
abortion (in order to avoid the dangers to the woman of a merely
extractive abortion) seems no worse from the point of view of
respect than causing the fetus's death as an unintended side effect;
so the distinction does not undermine the analogy between the
violinist scenario and abortion.[37]

objection[36]

There is a morally
relevant difference
between intending
harm and causing
harm as a foreseen
but unintended side
effect. In most
cases, abortion
intentionally causes
the fetus's death and
so is impermissible;
whereas unplugging
the violinist causes

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death as an
unintended side
effect and so is
permissible.

There is no reason to believe that the underlying motives are

different in the two cases ... the desires to protect ones bodily
integrity and escape the foreign invader. There is no evidence on
record to indicate that women would object to a safe extraction
method that did not kill the fetus were one to become available
and thus no justification for the assumption of maternal malice that
is the foundation of the objection.
Assume that the kidnap victim in the violinist argument is the
second best violinist in the world and wishes the violinist were
dead so that she could ascend to the top of her profession. Her
primary intent in unplugging the violinist is now to kill him. If this
objection held water the change of heart would deprive her of the
right to separate herself from the violinist. But it does not. Her
right to pull the plug derives from her ownership of her own body,
not from the purity of her intentions.

See also
Abortion debate
Abortion

Notes
1. ^ e.g., Schwarz 1990, Beckwith 1993 and Lee 1996 on the pro-life side; Tooley 1972, Warren 1973, Steinbock
1992 and McMahan 2002 on the pro-choice side
2. ^ Kamm 1992; Boonin 2003: ch 4
3. ^ Parent 1986: vii
4. ^ Thomson 1971: 4849.
5. ^ Thomson 1971: 55
6. ^ Thomson 1971: 63; Boonin 2003: 133134
7. ^ Thomson 1971: 52
8. ^ Thomson 1971: 5253
9. ^ Thomson 1971: 53
10. ^ Thomson 1971: 54
11. ^ a b c Thomson 1971: 59
12. ^ Singer 2011:134
13. ^ Boonin 2003: 133281
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.

19.
20.
21.
22.
23.

^ a b Parks 2006
^ Himma 1999, Parks 2006
^ Boonin 2003: 245246
^ Schwarz 1990
^ Wiland 2000: 467. "The story of the unconscious violinist, some argue, is a complete fiction. There is no
Society of Music Lovers, there are no famous violinists in need of kidney transplants, and there are no
kidnappers forcing others to donate their bodies for the good of another."
^ Hershenov 2001, Smith and Brogaard 2001
^ e.g. Warren 1973; Steinbock 1992
^ Thomson 1971: 5759
^ Boonin 2003: 154164
^ Boonin 2003: 164167

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24. ^ e.g. Beckwith 1993; McMahan 2002

25. ^ Boonin 2003: 167188
26. ^ Thomson 1971: 5559
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.

^ a b e.g. Schwarz 1990; Beckwith 1993; McMahan 2002

^ Thomson 1971: 6465; Boonin 2003: 228234
^ Boonin 2003: 249254
^ Boonin 2003: 247249
^ Boonin 2003: 233 n 60
^ McMahan 2002: 3834; Boonin 2003: 193
^ Boonin 2003: 189 n 41, noting however that this is an ad hominem reply

34.
35.
36.
37.

^ a b Thomson 1971: 156159

^ Boonin 2003: 199211
^ e.g. Finnis 1973; Schwarz 1990; Lee 1996; Lee and George 2005
^ Boonin 2003: 222227

References
Beckwith, F. 1993. Politically Correct Death. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, ch 7.
Boonin, D. 2003. A Defense of Abortion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ch 4.
Finnis, J.. "The Rights and Wrongs of Abortion". Philosophy and Public Affairs 2:2 (Winter 1973):
117145.
Hershenov, D. "Abortions and Distortions". Social Theory and Practice 27:1 (January 2001): 129148.
Kamm, F. 1992. Creation and Abortion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lee, P. 1996. Abortion and Unborn Human Life. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America
Press, ch 4.
Lee, P and R George. "The Wrong of Abortion". In A Cohen and C Wellman, eds. 2005.
Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell: 1326, at 2021.
McMahan, J. 2002. The Ethics of Killing. New York: Oxford University Press.
Parent, W. 1986. "Editor's introduction". In J Thomson. Rights, Restitution, and Risk. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press: viix.
Parks, B. D. "The Natural-Artificial Distinction and Conjoined Twins: A Response To Judith Thomson's
Argument for Abortion Rights". National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 6:4 (Winter 2006): 671680
Schwarz, S. 1990. The Moral Question of Abortion. Chicago: Loyola University Press, ch 8.
Singer, P. 2011. Practical Ethics. New York, Cambridge University Press, ch 6.
Smith, B. and Brogaard, B. 2001. "Living High and Letting Die". Philosophy 76 (3):435-442 (2001)
Steinbock, B. 1992. Life Before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos and Fetuses.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, at 78.
Thomson, J. "A Defense of Abortion". Philosophy and Public Affairs 1:1 (Autumn 1971): 4766.
Thomson, J. "Rights and Deaths". Philosophy and Public Affairs 2:2 (Winter 1973): 146159.
Tooley, M. "Abortion and Infanticide". Philosophy and Public Affairs 2:1 (Autumn 1972): 3765, at
5253.
Warren, M. "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion". Monist 57:1 (1973): 4361.
Wiland, E. "Unconscious violinists and the use of analogies in moral argument". Journal of Medical
Ethics 26 (2000): 466468.

External links
A Defense of Abortion (http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm), full text
Francis Beckwith's website
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(https://bearspace.baylor.edu/Francis_Beckwith/www/FrancisBeckwith.com/Academic_Articles_in_Law
_%26_Ethics.html), contains PDFs of a number of his critiques
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=A_Defense_of_Abortion&oldid=595558731"
Categories: Philosophy essays Non-fiction literature about abortion 1971 essays
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