Analysis Of Judith Jarvis Thomson's A Defense Of Abortion

One of the most dominant articles on abortion is Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion.” The article was written in 1971. In her article, Thomson defends the thesis that the impermissibility of abortion does not follow from the premises: that the fetuses are a person and that every person has a right to life. Thomson argues that even if the fetus is considered to be a person, the fetus’s right to life will not always outweigh the mother rights to decide what happens in and to her body. She also argues that even if a woman voluntarily had intercourse it does not mean that the fetus obtains special rights against his mother. Thomson’s article is seen as presenting the best possible defense of abortion, peculiarly with the famous “violinist”

thought experiment.
The Violinist argument seems very powerful, but it fails to be a successful argument for the morality of abortion. Thomson’s famous violinist experiment is as follows:

Therefore, it clearly shows that Judith Jarvis Thomson uses this thought experiment to point out the truth of the premise that the right to life outweighs the right to the body.

Thomson’s argument turns on the analogy between your being plugged into the famous violinist and a woman’s being pregnant. She uses violinist experiment to justify that just because the violinist needs the use of your kidney for his life, does not establish that he has given the right to use your kidney. However, her analogy of unplugging the violinist is not even equivalent to aborting an unborn child. There is a significant difference in both cases: unplugging the violinist and aborting the

fetus.
The very first objection that Clinton makes to Thomson’s argument is that in the violinist analogy Although there are some extreme cases where women being bedridden, this is still not enough to justify the killing of the fetus. As Dr. Nathanson argues,
Secondly, one problem with her argument is that why should we concede that a woman has no more obligation to her own child than she has to a violinist that she doesn't even know? Therefore, the relationship between a mother and child is violated because her analogy shows that a mother has no more moral obligation to her unborn child than she has to strangers. As Clinton states, I agree with Clinton because Thomson’s analogy undermines the very deep natural bond between mother and child since it makes no difference from the artificial bond between the violinist and the person. In addition, John T. Wilcox argues that
Moreover, unplugging is not comparable to abortion.

More accurately, unplugging the violinist is not the direct cause of death because, in Thomson analogy, the violinist is suffering from the kidney ailment which is the cause. On the other hand, in abortion the fetus is not sick, therefore, abortion directly kills a healthy unborn child since the fetus has been taken out from the womb that is his very natural environment that sustains its life. In order to justify abortions, someone might argue that what if the abortion is not done surgically. Instead, a new abortion method that can remove the fetus from the mother’s womb without killing it right away. For instance, Clinton mentions that However, even if we agree that the fetus does not have a right to occupy a woman’s womb, it is still morally wrong that someone may poison the fetus’s very natural environment and let the unborn die in that environment that no longer can support its

life.
The most significant objection that Clinton presents in his This illustrates that you are morally obligated to take responsibility for the child since you knew that there is a chance of producing a baby.
Even abortion in the case of pregnancy due to rape cannot be morally justified. We cannot punish an unborn child just because its existence happens due to rape. In that case, the rapist (the father of the fetus) should be punished not an innocent child. In the case of rape, the rapist has committed an act of aggression against the woman. Therefore, Also, she has no right to abort the fetus knowing that the fetus is not the agent of aggression. Therefore, Thomson analogy in violinist does not work even in the case of rape.
In conclusion, Thomson analogy in the violinist case is not supportive for her thesis that abortion is permissible even if the fetus is a person as well as mother rights to decide what happens in and to her body outweighs the fetus’s right to life. Therefore, her analogy fails to support that abortion is permissible.