Thomson on Rape
Let’s imagine you wake up one morning and have been kidnapped by the Society of Music Lovers and they have attached you to a famous unconscious violinist, who has a fatal kidney sickness. Since you are the only one with a similar blood type, the Society of Music Lovers has plugged the violinist’s circulatory system into your own; your kidneys are cleaning the deadly poison from the famous violinist’s blood. It will take him nine months to recover from this illness, but you must remained plugged into him. However, if you desire, you may safely detach yourself from him, but he will die from his illness. Is it morally permissible to unplug yourself from the violinist?
Judith Thomson argues, it is morally permissible to unplug yourself from a violinist. You are permitted to do so because you did not consent to attach the violinist to your body and he has no right to use your body. The question becomes: how could a violinist (even a famous one) explain the permissibility of aborting a fetus, particularly in cases of rape? There is a
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morally relevant similarity between a fetus conceived as a result of rape and the violinist, posits Thomson. Specifically, you have not offered your body to the violinist, as a mother might not have consented to do anything that leads to carrying a fetus. This violinist case concedes that a fetus is a person and as such has the right to life. However, this right does not entail the right to use someone else’s body. If one agrees it is permissible to kill the violinist (by unplugging him), it must also be permissible to abort in some cases. It can be formulated: In the case of the violinist, it is permissible to kill him. If it is permissible to kill the violinist, it is permissible to abort in some cases of pregnancy. It is permissible to abort in some cases. Otsuka on Self-Defense Picture yourself walking beneath a skyscraper and all of a sudden a Mr. Taft was pushed off the building. He is headed directly for you and is sufficiently weighty enough to kill you once he lands. You have a vaporizer and can use it on this unlucky gentleman, but doing so will kill him. If you do not use it, you will die, yet the portly fellow is cushioned enough to survive the fall. Is it permissible to kill Mr. Taft in order to save your own life? Michael Otsuka argues that killing an innocent threat (IT), such as Mr. Taft, is impermissible. His reasoning comes from his understanding of an innocent bystander (IB) and why it’s impermissible to kill them. He defines a bystander as being a person who does not him/herself endanger your life and who is responsible for whatever does endanger your life. For example, Mr. Johnson is about to shoot you and an uninvolved Mr. Kennedy is blithely passing by you. It would be possible to grab Mr. Kennedy and shield yourself from the bullet and killing him, however this would be impermissible because Mr. Kennedy has done nothing to deserve being killed and is completely unrelated to the threat posed by Mr. Johnson. This, he believes, can be generalized to include all IBs, as there are no relevant moral differences in such cases. Otsuka believes there is no morally relevant difference between these cases of IBs and ITs. One possible difference he addresses is that IT will kill you and IB will not. Nevertheless, this cannot justify killing IT, because if Mr. Johnson is going to kill you and in return you try to kill him (in order to save your own life) by fighting back, Mr. Johnson would not then be justified in killing you. Simply because an individual is attempting to kill someone else, this does not justify their being killed. Another possible difference is that IT is going to violate your rights, but IB is not doing so. However, asks Otsuka, if a rock if falling on you, does it violate your rights? No, it’s a rock and incapable of violating your rights, because it cannot do anything willfully. The person who pushed the rock would be responsible for violating your rights, but not the rock. The same is true for Mr. Taft--he has not done anything willfully to violate your rights, someone pushed him. The inanimate rock and Mr. Taft are similar in every relevant way and neither can violate your rights. Otsuka contends these potential differences are nonexistent, making an IT morally similar to an IB. If you can kill an IT, you should be able to kill IB. Therefore, if it is impermissible to kill IB, then it is impermissible to kill IT. Formally, it might go something like: In the case of an IB, it is impermissible to kill him/her. If it is impermissible to kill an IB, it is impermissible kill an IT. It is impermissible to kill an IT. Otsuka’s Argument and Implications in Cases of Rape If we look at Otsuka’s argument about the falling fat man and apply it to the case of the violinist, it appear that the violinist has not done anything wrong.
He was unconscious when the Society for Music Lovers attached him to you, they are morally responsible, not the violinist. He did not willfully plug his circulatory system into yours--he is merely the victim of circumstance. As a result, the same seems to be true for the fetus conceived through rape. The fetus has not acted wrongly, as it is incapable of willfully participating in the violation of your rights and therefore cannot violate your rights, similar to the falling Mr. Taft (an IT). Neither the Fetus or Mr. Taft are capable of violating your rights, as both are not acting of their own volition. If it is impermissible to kill an IT, then it should be impermissible to kill the fetus. Under Otsuka’s view, aborting in the case of rape appears
impermissible.
To some women, a fetus is a stranger and a personal connection is not evident, even if a biological connection is. Furthermore, pregnancy takes a huge toll on a woman’s body and not all women have the desire to withstand such a situation. Also, the intention of abortion is to not necessarily kill the baby, that’s merely an unfortunate result of the action. Abort means to ‘eject’ or ‘stop’, not kill.
Likewise, Thompson holds that a pregnant woman possesses the right to defend herself against her attacker. No matter if the invader is a rapist attempting to harm her from outside or a foetus that may harm her from the inside. The woman still has a moral liberty to repel her attacker by killing the intruder. Killing a person and abolishing their ‘right to life’ cannot be named as immoral when performed in self-defence. Therefore, an abortion is permissible in the ‘extreme case’ whereby continuing with the pregnancy may result in serious injury or death of the woman. However, it can be argued that although it is permissible to act in self-defence against an invader, the foetus is no such invader and should not be treated like one. Unlike the violinist who was artificially attached to you, the foetus is surviving due to the mother’s biological organs and by the natural processes of reproduction and this yields a special relationship. Therefore, this appears to be a crucial difference between the violinist and the foetus. The natural environment of the violinist is not your body, whereas the natural environment of the foetus is within the mother’s womb. Furthermore, the violinist is trespassing because your body is not their natural environment whereas a foetus cannot
Judith Jarvis Thomson, in "A Defense of Abortion", argues that even if we grant that fetuses have a fundamental right to life, in many cases the rights of the mother override the rights of a fetus. For the sake of argument, Thomson grants the initial contention that the fetus has a right to life at the moment of conception. However, Thomson explains, it is not self-evident that the fetus's right to life will always outweigh the mother's right to determine what goes on in her body. Thomson also contends that just because a woman voluntarily had intercourse, it does not follow that the fetus acquires special rights against the mother. Therefore, abortion is permissible even if the mother knows the risks of having sex. She makes her points with the following illustration. Imagine that you wake up one morning and find that you have been kidnapped, taken to a hospital, and a famous violist has been attached to your circulatory system. You are told that the violinist was ill and you were selected to be the host, in which the violinist will recover in nine months, but will die if disconnected from you before then. Clearly, Thomson argues, you are not morally required to continue being the host. In her essay she answers the question: what is the standard one has to have in order to be granted a right to life? She reflects on two prospects whether the right to life is being given the bare minimum to sustain life or ir the right to life is merely the right not to be killed. Thomson states that if the violinist has more of a right to life then you do, then someone should make you stay hooked up to the violinist with no exceptions. If not, then you should be free to go at a...
In the Judith Jarvis Thomson’s paper, “A Defense of Abortion”, the author argues that even though the fetus has a right to life, there are morally permissible reasons to have an abortion. Of course there are impermissible reasons to have an abortion, but she points out her reasoning why an abortion would be morally permissible. She believes that a woman should have control of her body and what is inside of her body. A person and a fetus’ right to life have a strong role in whether an abortion would be okay. Thomson continuously uses the story of a violinist to get the reader to understand her point of view.
Thomson provides the example of being hooked up for nine months to provide dialysis to an ailing violinist to expose how a fetus’s right to life does not supersede a mother’s right to make medical decisions about her body (48-49). I find that this thought experiment especially helpful in understanding how even though a fetus does have a right to life, because the continuation of their life hinges on the consent of their mother to use her body, it falls to the mother to choose whether or not to allow the fetus to develop to term.
In conclusion, Thompson's criticisms of the Standard anti-abortion argument are false. Premise 1 stays true as life begins at conception because that is the point when the fetus starts to grow. Premise 2 stays alive because murder is both illegal and morally wrong. Why? because you are depriving them of their future and causing harm to the people who love the victim. And lastly, premise 4 remains true because there is a difference between not helping someone live and directly killing them, thereby proving the case of the unconscious violinist as not analogous. All in all, the standard anti-abortion argument remains a sound argument.
In her article Thomson starts off by giving antiabortionists the benefit of the doubt that fetuses are human persons. She adds that all persons have the right to life and that it is wrong to kill any person. Also she states that someone?s right to life is stronger than another person?s autonomy and that the only conflict with a fetuses right to life is a mother?s right to autonomy. Thus the premises make abortion impermissible. Then Thomson precedes to attacks the premise that one?s right to autonomy can be more important to another?s right to life in certain situations. She uses quite an imaginative story to display her point of view. Basically there is a hypothetical situation in which a very famous violinist is dying. Apparently the only way for the violinist to survive is to be ?plugged? into a particular woman, in which he could use her kidneys to continue living. The catch is that the Society of Music Lovers kidnapped this woman in the middle of the night in order to obtain the use of her kidneys. She then woke up and found herself connected to an unconscious violinist. This obviously very closely resembles an unwanted pregnancy. It is assumed that the woman unplugging herself is permissible even though it would kill the violinist. Leading to her point of person?s right to life is not always stronger than another person?s right to have control over their own body. She then reconstructs the initial argument to state that it is morally impermissible to abort a fetus if it has the right to life and has the right to the mother?s body. The fetus has the right to life but only has the right to a ...
Another basic argument she claims is that the mother also has a right to decide what happens in and to her body but the fetus 's right to live outweighs the mother’s right to decide what happens in and to her body. Therefore, Thomson opposes abortion and claims that a fetus may not be killed unjustly and an abortion may not be performed. Whether the unborn person uses of its mother’s body, because the un-born person has a right to live and use its mother’s body, abortion is unjust killing per Thomson.
Thomson’s argument is presented in three components. The first section deals with the now famous violinist thought experiment. This experiment presents a situation in which you wake up one morning and discover you have been kidnapped and hooked up to an ailing violinist so that his body would have the use of your kidneys for the next nine months. The intuitive and instinctive reaction to this situation is that you have no moral duty to remain hooked up to the violinist, and more, that he (or the people who kidnapped you) does not have the right to demand the use of your body for this period. From a deontological point of view, it can be seen that in a conflict between the right of life of the fetus and the right to bodily integrity of the mother, the mother’s rights will trump those of the fetus. Thomson distills this by saying “the right to life consists not in the right not to be killed, but rather in the right not to be killed unjustly”.
The right to life of the fetus is not the same as the pregnant person having to die, so as not to infringe on the right of the fetus. In the case of the violinist, their necessity for your body for life is not the same as their right to the use of your body. Thomson argues that having the right to life is not equal to having the right to use the body of another person. They argue that this is also the case, even if the the pregnant person knowingly participated in the intercourse and knew of the possibility of pregnancy. In this case it would seem that abortion would not be permissible since the pregnancy was not by force.
From a very young age children have been taught by their parents that girls do one thing while guys do another. The reason for this is because our parents have been taught by their parents who were taught by their parents and so on and so fourth. When talking to most people about gender roles, they will start to see a pattern in the way they responses they receive, which will leave them with a good idea about how our society has formed the ideas and roles of sexes. Rape culture in modern day society is real and the biggest factors that contribute to it are we have been taught that boys need to grow up tough, girls need to be careful of some men, and that women need to be able to take care of a man and his needs. This way is poisonous to the
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Abortion may appear ethical or unethical depending on various viewpoints and circumstances. The fetus is considered a person and bringing it to term may be unethical as the act is considered as murder. In some situations, the mother may require to terminate a pregnancy for her bodily autonomy (Johnston, 2003). In such positions, the resolution to terminate a pregnancy may be argued as the most ethical choice. The mother is also considered to having a reasonable level of ethical responsibility to the fetus, because she did not take enough precaution to ensure avoiding conception (Cline, 2014). The mother’s ethical responsibility to the fetus may not be enough to deprive her choice of abortion; it...
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