-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Judith Jarvis Thomson, professor emeritus at MIT, provides some interesting thought experiments in her article entitled In Defense of Abortion. Thomson acknowledges the problem of determining the particular moment during gestation when a fetus becomes a human being, so she starts by granting that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. From there, the argument usually goes that, since every person has a right to life, a fetus has a right to life. The fetus’s right to life supersedes the mother’s right to decide what happens in and to her body.
Thomson asks you to consider that you’ve awoken to find you’re in a hospital bed with an unconscious violinist of supreme repute. The violinist is suffering from a fatal kidney disease and the Society of Music Lovers has determined that you are the only blood match that can save him. Members of the Society kidnapped you last night and have surgically integrated the violinist’s renal and circulatory systems with yours. Your kidneys are now removing the toxins from the violinist’s blood, keeping him alive. To remove the connection between you and the violinist would mean certain death for the latter. The doctors assure you that after nine months the violinist will have recovered from his disease and the two of you can be disconnected. Should you be legally obligated to save the violinist’s life? Are you morally obligated?
While you were kidnapped and didn’t volunteer for the operation, a victim of rape, legitimate, also didn’t volunteer for her pregnancy.
Thomson also notes the problematic nature of what it means to have a right to life. Thomson writes that “in some views having a right to life include having a right to be given at least the bare minimum one needs for continued life.” Under this view if one is dying from a sickness that only the cool touch of Henry Fonda’s hand can cure, your right to life can not force Fonda to touch your fevered brow. In the violinist experiment, the violinist has no right to the use on your kidneys unless you give him that right.
One might argue that the violinist is a stranger while the fetus is an offspring containing half the DNA of the mother. If the violinist were a brother or sister, would the brother or sister’s right to life impose an obligation against the rights of the mother? While it would be an act of kindness for a person to provide life-giving assistance to a brother or sister, should there be a legal obligation that compels that kindness against a person’s desires? Or is each person’s body secure against another’s intrusion.
The right to life could be viewed as the right not to be killed by anybody. Under this view, the violinist has the right not to be unplugged from you. However, the violinist does not have the right to compel you to allow him the use of your kidneys. You may allow the use of your kidneys out of kindness but it is not something you should be compelled to do.
Thomson considers the case of voluntary intercourse that leads to a pregnancy and the partial responsibility of the fetus inside the mother. It could be argued that the fetus is dependent on the mother and this responsibility gives the fetus rights against the mother, rights not possessed by an ailing violinist. However, this argument would not apply to those pregnancies that occurred as a result of rape.
Thomson uses the concept of people-seeds to make another point. People-seeds float around the air until one makes it into your home where it can take root in your carpeting or upholstery. You don’t want children so you place a fine mesh over your open windows to keep the people-seeds out. However, sometimes screens have defects and a people-seed manages to find its way into your home and takes root in your living room. Does the developing people-plant have the right to the use of your home? Thomson says no. Likewise, if a women makes an effort to prevent conception, even knowing that contraception is not foolproof, Thomson argues that her responsibility doesn’t extend to allowing the fetus to have the right to use her body.
H/T: Massimo Pigliucci.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/richard_dawkins/2010/02/the_great_tim_tebow_fallacy.html
P.S. for those who are interested, I had a vasectomy 28 years ago, after my wife and I had our two children…………
Thomson’s work has been around for quite some time and is a part of every worthwhile medical ethics textbook/class in law or healthcare. It is always interesting to me how many people have entered this discussion without actually reading the main article or attempting to respond to it.
There are several counter-argument to Thomson that have been published over the years, but non that puts the discussion to rest.
I would like to see further discussion of the consequences of the so-called personhood laws. I believe that with full implementation of personhood-from-conception laws, women would face a very real criminalization of their pregnancies, in the same way that mothers of actual living children can be held accountable now. If you do something that might harm your child, you could be imprisoned, fined or otherwise held accountable. And unless every miscarriage becomes a possible homicide, with a coroner’s ruling on the death of the fetus-person, then you have left another gaping hole in the law that every woman who still wants an abortion with drive through.
“I also find it interesting that those in this dialogue who want to end the discourse all seem to have the same position.”
Given that the vast majority of those in this dialog hold the same position, and only a tiny fraction want to end the discourse, I don’t think it’s particularly interesting at all.
I think it is necessary to print the last paragraph of Thompson’s article just to pull the issue into perspective:
“At this place, however, it should be remembered that we have only been pretending throughout that the fetus is a human being from the moment of conception. A very early abortion is surely not the killing of a person, and so is not dealt with by anything I have said here.”
What the incessant howling (and legislative action) of the anti-abortion, anti-contraception extremists threatens to do is void a right already recognised, on the books and decided at the highest court level. The entire person-hood premise is a repudiation of medical knowledge and false. The Hyde Amendment is bad enough, spitting in the face of the high court specifically and women in general as it does. To attempt to carry it farther with person-hood legislation which bars all abortions (and most contraception) or restraints on exceptions after “viability” is nothing short of a repudiation of not only the law but women’s autonomy; Row v. Wade is a person-hood law for women.
In a democracy, laws, even those judicially created are subject to public debate and modification. Roe v. Wade is the current precedent. That doesn’t make eternal. Calling those who have a contrary perspective extemeists is a poor diversion in a discussion and demonstrated an intolerant attitude.
Zarathustra has it exactly right.
and what I see missing with the violinist analogy and here, is the fact that, as with the violinist the women’s life may be at stake. The musician and a zygote/fetus are parasites, they feed off the host. In neither case should the host have to cede life (or health, emotional or physical, or her rights in order for the parasite to go on).
Durham Girl, to me, has it right, I may decide for myself abortion is wrong but I will not decide it for someone else, as per Roe v Wade.
Calling the developing human baby a parasite demeans human life at any developmental level and is an unfortunate attempt to self comfort by doing so.
I also find it interesting that those in this dialogue who want to end the discourse all seem to have the same position. Where is the respect, or at minimum tolerance, for dialogue and alternative perspective?
Zara, I think your primal scream needs a few more exclamations. I guess you just arbitrarily suspended the First Amendment. That gives you a lot of credibility.
I read the Thomson article years ago. I’ve always felt she makes a good argument in cases of rape. But, find it unconvincing beyond that. As everyone knows that sometimes screens have defects, if someone doesn’t want to take a chance of creating a human life, then the solution is simple–keep your window closed.
Everyone…. STFU!!! It’s no one’s business but the woman who is pregnant!!!
Why are so many pro-lifers arm chair chicken hawks. The philosophy of “pro war” to settle problems seem to me, contradicts many pro-lifer arguments.
I am pro knowledge, pro education, pro growth of reason and rational understanding of others. Starting with the premise “sex is bad” except in marriage, denies evolution and the hard wiring of human genes.
Marriage and a healthy family is one of the greater accomplishments
of human society. It is NOT the only one, or choice. Healthy sex occurs etherally, always has, always will. Unhealthy attitudes toward sex share the same parameters.
Knowledge of birth control, responsibility, and consequences, will create an atmosphere of fertile (or unfertile) ground, to make abortion ” Safe Legal and Rare” as Bill Clinton stated.
The pro-lifers are cutting off their nose to spite their face. Accepting Clintons philosophy, 20 ? years ago when he made it, IMHO 1.000s of abortions would have been prevented. This is an option which has been denied over and over by the pro-lifers.
Christopher Hitchens had the argument that mattered; empowerment of women to make choices about their reproductive cycle is the key factor in lower rates of abortion and (more importantly) lower levels of poverty.
End of argument – the data exists. See the Dutch experience on abortion compared to the funadmentalist USofA.
A little known microbe is responsible for human birth:
(…Machines or Organisms?). It invaded mammals less than 65 mya without seeking permission to supply a needed material for women that was essential to giving birth.
If life begins at conceptions (zygote) but cannot survive without the RNA/DNA of the virus, who is the real parent anyway?
The pictures in utero are stunning, nick, and I think they contributed to my experience of suddenly “getting” that the zygote, embryo, fetus in there WAS me and not some little blob of “tissue”. Thanks.
durham girl, I think you’re like many women in recent years and I surmise it stems, in part, to the technology that allows incedible video of embryos.
This is interesting stuff. But what stuck me is that where you come out on this subject seems to depend, to some degree, on what analogy you choose.
Analogies are not precise. If they were there would be a one to one correspondence and we would call them something different.
Consider the analogy of the lifeboat. As I understand it, no one has an obligation to welcome a person in the water into the lifeboat, especially if adding another person may endanger the lifeboat and those already in it. But throwing someone out of the life boat presents a very different question.
Are there reasonable similarities between a woman’s body and the fertilized egg, and the lifeboat and a person in the water. Well, maybe. If you allow the analogy, then it would seem that the woman may have no obligation to allow the fertilized egg to implant. But what if the fertilized egg establishes itself in the uterus. Does that change anything? If you follow the analogy, it would seem to me that after implantation presents a very different situation.
Of course, some try to avoid all this by arguing that the fertilized egg is not a person. Al Franken on his Air America radio program used to remark that it is not even an embryo. His point was that in the early stages the term is blastocyst.
I don’t think such arcane details help us understand the question. The fact is that a fertilized egg and succeeding cell divisions are processing, or perhaps unfolding, DNA in a way that is different from the way other cells in your body are processing DNA. The cells in your liver or the cells from a snippet of tissue from your big toe will never naturally and spontaneously develop into a real human being. But baring some tragedy, the fertilized egg will develop into a real, undeniable human being. Does that mean that we have to grant the fertilized cell all the rights and privileges of a person? Well, maybe not. But it seems to me that the fertilized egg is a unique entity with special meaning in regard to human development that cannot be so easily dismissed.
I don’t presume to know the answer to these serious questions. My point is that how one comes out seems to depend critically on the analogy with which we start.
My life began at my conception. And my mother’s body provided air, water, nutrition, and warmth to sustain me and help me grow until I could live outside of the womb. It’s simply a microcosm of our larger world. I live in the world and depend completely on it to supply me with nutrition, air, water, and warmth in order to live. If deprived of those things as an adult, I would die just as I would have died in utero without those same things.
So for me, life absolutely begins at conception. I also support Roe v Wade as others have the right to decide what to do for themselves. I do not want to see it overturned.
I think the pro-choice people have to walk around half blind to pretend that life doesn’t begin at conception. I know – I was one of them for 30 years until I opened both my eyes and acknowledged that the tiny, invisible zygote that formed at the moment of conception was………. me.
Its part of nature for mothers to reject their offspring before or after birth for whatever reason whether it be people or other animals.
Joseph — please cite your source for the “miniscule percentage”.
Then please tell us what you, personally, are doing to insure that every woman facing an unplanned pregnancy has access to prenatal care and health care support for her newborn.
The percentage of pregnancies that result from rape and failed contraception are minuscule. The extremely large number of lives that are lost to abortion, even beyond just the first two weeks of pregnancy is staggering, even when compared to the disastrous death tolls of wars.