Response to J.J. Thompson

Judith Jarvis Thomspon's defense of why abortion is not always immoral is the most convincing argument I have read for that position. She does not tackle the seemingly impossible task of determining whether or not a fetus is "human," but rather concedes that it is. Instead, she provides a series of examples, the violinist examples, of how one would not be morally obligated to keep another person alive and compares that to the situation of a pregnant mother. Although I find her arguments appealing for several reasons I have two primary concerns:  1) I think it is arguable that the "hooked up to a violinist"/"people-seeds" examples are dis-analogous to the mother-child relationship.

1) I wonder: would the answer be the same in the examples if she hooked heself up to the violinist, he became dependent, and then she wanted to take him off? Or maybe not even chose (as that would imply the woman chose to get pregnant) but rather willingly admitted herself to the hospital knowing that there was a good chance she would get hooked up to the violinist? Or would it be the same if she "created" the violinst and then wanted to take him off? The case of Henry Fonda's soft hands being needed to save a life, for example, is potentially dis-analogous, in the sense that, yes, Henry Fonda is not obligated to wipe his hand on my brow but that perhaps my mother would be. Furthermore, I believe in the people seeds case the relationship between being stuffy, opening a (protected) window, and people seeds floating in, is different from the relationship between having protected sex and getting pregnant. The latter deed is more directly related to its consequence, if anything, biologicllay speaking, its consequence is the intended purpose rather than a completely random side effect. I do not have a fully formulated argument for how the mother-child relationship (or sex and getting pregnant versus opening a window and seeds floating in example) may be different but if it some how is, which instinctively we often hold that it is, then the examples of what a person is not obliged to do for another person may not hold up.

Ultimately, her people seeds example is the only one that really attempts to argue for abortions that I find potentially questionable. I agree that in cases of rape and to avoid death abortion is permissible and therefor the examples before I am more than willing to concede. Although I think its possible for the people seeds example to be dis-analogous, even if is not, it still only make permissible abortions where the woman took all necessary precautions to prevent pregnancy, and that is extremely hard to prove.