Phil 108, March 13, 2008 Thomson on Abortion Thomson’s approach: Question: Is abortion permissible? A common thought: If the fetus is a person, then abortion is impermissible. So, to settle whether abortion is permissible, we need to settle whether the fetus is a person. This thought seems to be based on… A common assumption: One person’s right to life outweighs another’s right to decide what happens with her own body. So, if the fetus is a person, then the fetus’s right to life outweighs the mother’s right to decide what happens with her own body. So, if the fetus is a person, then abortion is impermissible. Some also believe that: If the fetus is a person, then it is wrong to abort the fetus even to save the mother’s life. The common assumption does not seem sufficient for this belief. Why should the fetus’s right to life outweigh the mother’s right to life? Perhaps this belief is based on the Doctrine of Double Effect, or the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing. Thomson argues against all of this. Suppose the fetus is a person, she asks. Is abortion still impermissible even when it is necessary to save the mother’s life? Is abortion still impermissible even when it is not necessary to save the mothers life? The examples: 1. Growing Child: The child is growing inside your house and will crush you unless you kill it. • Parallel to cases in which the mother’s life is at stake. • Seems permissible to kill the child. (?) • Why? (i) You have a right to self-defense that makes it permissible to kill the child. (?) (ii) You have a right to decide how your property is used that makes it permissible to kill the child (?). 2. Violinist: You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an 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. The director of the hospital now tells you, “Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you—we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it’s only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.” • Parallel to cases in which the mother’s life is not at stake. • Seems permissible to unplug the violinist, which will lead to his death. • Why? You have a right to decide how your body is used that makes it permissible to remove yourself from the violinist, even though this will lead to his death. Are these cases parallel to abortion? 1. Responsibility for the situation:The situations do not result from any voluntary acts of yours. But unwanted pregnancies often result from the mother’s voluntary acts. Violinist shows only that abortion is permissible when the pregnancy did not result from the mother’s voluntary acts, as in rape. • First, showing this is significant, since opponents of abortion often do not make an exception for rape. • Second, if opponents of abortion did make an exception for rape, they would have to say that when a fetus is the product of rape, it does not have a right to life, which is absurd. After all, grown children who were products of rape certainly have a right to life. Question: Why can’t the opponent of abortion instead say that when, but only when, the pregnancy results from the mother’s voluntary acts, her right to self-defense, or her right to decide what happens with her own body, is sufficiently altered so that abortion is impermissible? The idea would be not that rape removes the fetus’s right to life, but instead that voluntary sex, and so responsibility for the situation, alters the mother’s rights of self-defense, or control over her body, at least with respect to the fetus. (If you throw the fat man at your enemy, and he boomerangs back at you, are you permitted to kill him in self-defense? If you poisoned the violinist and so ruined his kidneys, are you permitted to refuse to let him use yours?) Partial reply: Are these rights sufficiently altered, if the act is voluntary, but adequate precautions are taken? If not, then abortion is permissible even if the pregnancy resulted from voluntary acts, so long as adequate precautions (e.g., birth control) were taken. People-seeds: 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 don’t want children, so you fix up your windows with fine mesh screens, the very best you can buy. As can happen, however,… one of the screens is defective; and a seed drifts in and takes root. • Intuitively, it seems that your rights are not significantly altered. • Moreover, the standard of adequate precaution—that is, the standard such that, if you meet it, you are not responsible for what results—can’t be that there are no further precautions that you could have possibly taken. “For by the same token anyone can avoid a pregnancy due to rape by having a hysterectomy, or anyway by never leaving home without a (reliable!) army.” 2. Maternal responsibility Does the mother have a special responsibility to the fetus because she is its mother? Answer: “Surely we do not have any such ‘special responsibility’ for a person unless we have assumed it, explicitly or implicitly.” Question: Can you think of objections to this answer? 3. Third-party actions: Abortion usually involves the actions of a third-party: namely, the doctor. From the fact that you may kill the growing child, or unplug the violinist, it does not necessarily follow that someone else may do so. Thomson suggests that other things equal, other-defense is not permissible, because the growing child is an innocent threat. “Both are innocent: the one who is threatened is not threatened because of any fault, the one who threatens does not threaten because of any fault. For this reason we may feel that we bystanders cannot intervene.” Question: Doesn’t Thomson say, in her later “Self-Defense,” that other things equal, other-defense against