Judith Thomson Essay

Judith Thomson argues that even if a fetus is a person, abortion is not murder or wrongful killing when conception is a product of rape,when the mother’s life is endangered, or when the mother has taken reasonable precautions to avoid being pregnant. Thomson uses analogical reasoning to show that in these situations, abortion is a woman’s choice and is not murder. In the case of rape, Thomson uses the sick violinist example as an analogy to this situation. Suppose if a person was kidnapped and a sick violinist plugged into your circulatory system and the violinist has to stay connected to you for nine months and if you unplug the violinist, you kill the violinist. In this case, you did not consent to this operation and you were forced by …show more content…
In this case, the person who lays on the hospital bed will die if the sick violinist is not disconnected from the person which will also thereby kill the violinist. Thomson believes that a woman can defend her life against the threat posed by the unborn child even if it involves the death of the fetus. While it was neither the child’s fault that it is threatening her life and neither the mother’s fault that she is in danger, we feel that the person being threatened can intervene but not any bystanders as both parties are innocent so external intervention cannot decide what is right or wrong. This view could be brought to an extreme by only allowing the mother to perform the abortion but Thomson argues that cannot be the case as the mother owns the house that the fetus is in. Another analogy Thomson makes is that person A owns a coat that person B picked up. Both people need the coat to survive but we are not being impartial if we say that we cannot choose who the coat should go to as person A owns the coat. The mother should in the same way be able to decide what happens in her body including if it involves asking a third party to intervene. (8. Thomson, CC