A Right to Life or a Right to Self?

Thompson asserts that in a situation where two people are involved, one whose life is threatened and one who threatens it, the threatened person has a right to take the life of the other to save their own (aka self-defense). This applies even when both people are innocent such as in the abortion case being argued or the dying violinist/giant growing baby scenarios laid out by Thompson. This is in attempt to counter the “extreme view” that abortion is never okay even to save the mother’s life because indirectly letting the mother die is better than directly murdering the innocent fetus (speaking of which, I am impressed that Thompson entertains the oppositions premise that life starts at contraception and still argues for the right to abortion). Ultimately, I agree with Thompson’s view on the “right to life”. In every case laid out it comes down to the fact that someone may not use another person against their will, even if it will save a life. This applies mostly to the situation wherein the mother does not want the baby for any legitimate reason (it will kill the mother or put a huge tax on her health/life). I find this idea a little jarring at first because I largely agreed  with the Utilitarian point of view and it seems strange to sacrifice a life for the sake of the quality of another, but really this view fits in with the Kantian schema. Thompson thinks that there are constraints against maximizing the good, in this case, it is not okay to keep the mother from aborting the child because she has a right to choose how her body is used even in the case of using it to save someone else’s life (like the violinist case). However, the constraint seems to go quite far and I’m not sure I agree with that. Thompson says that if pregnancy only lasted an hour and had no negative effects on the mother, the mother does not need to go full term because while it would be a kindness to do so she has no obligation to allow another person to use her body. Supposedly this is callous, greedy behavior but not unjust or “wrong” behavior. I disagree that the constraint against using somebody is so large that it applies even to this case. Just as in the problem of drawing a line where a fetus becomes a person, I think that just because it is difficult to draw a line where a person can or cannot be used to help another does not mean that there is no line to be drawn.