Judith Jarvis Thomson's Argument Analysis

Judith Jarvis Thomson depicts various scenarios in an effort to argue for the permissibility of abortion—in some cases—despite the consequential deprivation of someone else’s equal right to life. As part of her claim that every person has a right to life, she offers a scenario in which a famous violinist’s circulatory system has been plugged into an individual and is physically required to remain plugged in for 9 months. Thomson voices her claim by implying that although the fetus has a right to life as does the violinist, neither has the right to be maintained alive as the mother and the connected individual are not morally obliged to sit passively and remain plugged in. Notably, she defends her argument by recognizing that the scenario possibly …show more content…
A major issue I was confronted with as I was presented with Thomson’s argument is that she says “The fetus, being a person, has a right to life, but as the mother is a person too, so has she a right to life. Presumably they have an equal right to life.” Thomson seems to think that since the right to live for both subjects are equal but the body belongs to the mother, the mother is morally permitted to do as she desires with it and hence, abort the child if necessary. It is here that I sympathize more closely with an idea offered by Don Marquis who argued that the impermissibility of abortion lies in the fact that by killing a child, one is depriving them of the right to live a future life that they else would’ve lived. If we were to sort these two distinct ideas in a way that makes them counterparts to one another, I would argue that the fetus is more justified to their right to life than the mother. Rather than prioritizing one life over another which, as Thomson is so careful to not do herself, I am offering a conclusion contradictory to Thomson’s by incorporating Marquis’ argument. For example, if a mother engages in unprotected sexual activity knowingly of the dire consequences that may arise, I would go as far as to say that she does in fact hold a special moral responsibility to the child. Saying that she is morally permitted to abort a child after neglectful decision-making simply due to the fact that she owns her own body is absurd. In no case does a fetus desire nor request to be born. They come into existence and the mere fact that they do exist gives them their right to live, perhaps in a more so justifiable way than the mother who has now lived a life long enough to reach sexual maturity. In other words, the mother has already lived a life; She has