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. 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 is now 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.’ Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. ‘Tough luck. I agree. but now you’ve got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person’s right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him.’ I imagine you would regard this as outrageous.”
Thomson concludes that (i) it is not true that the violinist has a right to your body, and so, by analogy (ii) it is not true that a fetus that is a product of rape has a right to your body, but (iii) there is no easy way for the anti-abortion argument to be amended to account for this. Saying that those who are products of rape have no right to life or have less of one “has a rather unpleasant sound” (meaning it is discriminatory in a bad way), not to mention it is ad hoc.
The solution, according to Thomson, is not that certain fetuses have less of a right to life or none at all; the solution is that having a right to life simply does not entail having the right to someone else’s body. This means that the argument is invalid; the conclusion (4) does not follow from the premises.
So what does the right to life consist in? One suggestion:
(a) the right to be given at least the bare minimum one needs for continued life
Objection: Sometimes the bare minimum is something you have no right to. (Violinist example).
(b) the right not to be killed
Objection: Sometimes you can be killed by being deprived of something you have no right to. (Also, there is self-defense)
She concludes, “the right to life consists not in the right not to be killed, but rather in the right not to be killed unjustly.” True, but not very informative.
We never have the right to someone else’s body unless that right has been extended to us. (Henry Fonda example)
Thomson’s Thesis: In cases where the right to use the mother’s body has not been extended to the fetus, abortion does not violate the fetuses right to life.
In what cases does the fetus have the right to use the mother’s body?
Rape? Clearly Not.
Sex using birth control? No…
” … 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 don’t 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. Does the person-plant who now develops have a right to the use of your house? Surely not–despite the fact that you voluntarily opened your windows, you knowingly kept carpets and upholstered furniture, and you knew that screens were sometimes defective.”
Implicit Argument:
1) The fetus has the right to use my body only if it is reasonable to hold me responsible for my pregnancy.
2) If I tried to prevent pregnancy through the use of contraception, then it is not reasonable to hold me responsible for my pregnancy.
___________________________________________________
3) Therefore, if I tried to prevent pregnancy through the use of contraception, then the fetus does not have the right to use my body.
Ordinary consensual sex without contraception?
If the room is stuffy, and I therefore open a window to air it, and the burglar climbs in, it would be absurd to say, ‘Ah, now he can stay, she’s given him the right to the use of her house, for she is partially responsible for his presence there, having voluntarily done what enabled him to get in, in full knowledge that there are such things as burglars, and that burglars burgle.
Objection: A fetus is innocent, not a burglar trying to do you harm. But, Thomson would say, this makes no difference: I have the right to eject an innocent person from my home, if that person falls through my window. At this point it may be objected: getting pregnant due to voluntary, unprotected sex is not like having a person stumble into your home or fall through your window. It is more like having someone over because you invited them into your home…
Thomson recognizes that not all moral obligations stem from rights. For example, if a child finds a chocolate bar, then his sister has no right to it, but decency requires that he share it with her anyway. Likewise, in some cases, it would be wrong to abort because it would be “indecent”.
When is it indecent? Thomson doesn’t say, just gives an obvious example: A woman wants to abort at seven months so that she can go to Europe.
But, argues Thomson, making decency a legal requirement in effect requires us to be “Good Samaritans”. Thomson notes that “no one in any country in the world is legally required” to be a Good Samaritan, except in the case of pregnancy. In fact, no one is even required to be a Minimally Decent Samaritan.
Thomson: Abortion is permissible in many cases, but this does not mean we have the right to secure the death of the fetus. “The desire for the child’s death is not one which anybody may gratify, should it turn out to be possible to detach the child alive.” In Thomson’s view, the death of the fetus is a necessary side-effect of abortion, but is not a legitimate goal of abortion. Were it possible to remove a fetus without killing it, then it must not be killed.
Discussion:
Pro-choice lobbies are concerned about laws and policies that may implicitly recognize the fetus as a person (e.g. criminalizing the harming of a fetus by an attacker, or extending federal funds to poor women for prenatal care on the grounds that the funding is for “low-income children”.) Would such laws and policies be cause for concern for Thomson? What about a personhood theory?
Do we share Thomson’s intuition about the case of the violinist?
Is Thomson’s view about rights compatible with Marquis’ theory of the wrongness of killing?
When is it “indecent” for a woman to have an abortion?
Abortion and Implicit Consent
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that a fetus must have the consent of the mother in order to have the right to use her body. Under what conditions does the fetus have the consent of the mother?
Explicit Consent: The mother-to-be declares, “I, ___________, hereby give this fetus the right to use my body for the purpose of growing into a viable infant until I give birth to it. I am fully aware of what this will involve.” In general, giving explicit consent to something means making a public, un-coerced and informed statement in which one recognizes certain rights and responsibilities that would not otherwise exist. This is what we do when we sign a contract. This is not what we do when we decide to have a child. If women give consent to fetuses, it is not explicit consent.
Implicit Consent: If you voluntarily enter a restaurant or a bar, then you are subject to certain “rules of the house”. You might be required to dress in a certain way, refrain from shouting, etc. If you fail to follow these rules, you may be expelled. The fact that you are there of your own free will is interpreted as an agreement on your part that you will obey the house rules. In other words, you have implicitly given your consent to be subject to those rules. Similarly, if you enroll in a class, then you are subject to certain requirements necessary for getting a passing grade (usually detailed in the syllabus). At no point do you say, “I hereby agree to the terms of this syllabus.” You have already given your implicit consent by staying enrolled in the course.
Depending on what nation, state and county you live in, you will be subject to different laws. Citizens do not give explicit consent to obey the laws, but it is arguable that they give implicit consent. For example, suppose Smith lives in a county where pornography is illegal. He could easily move to a different county, but he chooses not to. If Smith is caught displaying pornography, he could be fined. If he complained to the judge, “I never agreed to obey your pornography law”, the judge could retort, “No one forced you to live here, did they?”
The above examples of implicit consent all have two things in common: (i) the consenting person makes a voluntary choice to engage in a certain type of activity, (ii) the activity in question is generally understood to entail certain responsibilities. Because the person involved, like most other people, understands that certain responsibilities come with the activity, there is no need for the individual to explicitly agree to take on the responsibilities—they take them on automatically.
What has this got to do with abortion?
In a typical case of unwanted pregnancy, the pregnant woman
(A) Engaged in an activity (sexual intercourse) that is known to cause pregnancy, and in fact is the usual way in which people get pregnant.
(B) The now pregnant woman knew this at the time.
(C) Either (i) she was not using birth control, and she knew this, or (ii) She was using birth control, but she knew that birth control sometimes fails.
(D) The woman voluntarily chose to have sex.
For Discussion
In a case where all of these conditions are met, has the woman given implicit consent to give birth to a child?
Notice the following: In the uncontroversial examples of implicit consent, it was generally understood that the activity entailed certain responsibilities. But in the case of unwanted pregnancy, there is widespread disagreement about whether unprotected voluntary sex entails being responsible for the life of a fetus. On the other hand, It could be argued that there being a “general understanding” is not necessary for implicit consent…
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