Thomson And Coercion Analysis

Thomson only argues cases of rape as cases in which there was coercion. To her, coercion means that a woman can unplug from the violinist because his right to life does not mean he can use her body. But why is rape the only coercive action against a pregnant woman that allows her to assert her autonomy by aborting? Perhaps because rape coerced the woman into being pregnant in the first place, but it seems like being coerced into being pregnant and being coerced into staying pregnant are not so different. Thomson addresses this kind of problem when she discusses the possible argument that although the violinist does not have a right that the kidnap victim allow him use of her kidneys in the first place, he does have a right that she allow him …show more content…
But the foetus relies on a woman’s body for its life, and it has no right to that. A law coercing women into sharing their bodies is an unjust coercion and is very different to a law coercing women into letting people have air or letting people not be stabbed. Anti-abortion laws are more like the hospital director coercing the kidnap victim into staying hooked up to save a life than they are like the hospital director asking her not to walk into the next room and unplug a baby from its respirator. The baby does not depends on her so she is not being forced to sacrifice for it by suffering it to live. So laws seem to coerce in an unjustifiable …show more content…
Thomson mainly discusses coercion as significant in that it forces the woman to be pregnant in the first place. I would argue that coercion to stay pregnant is morally equivalent. She also says that pregnancy in cases of a voluntary act of sex undertaken without contraception but with a full knowledge that pregnancy might result cannot be aborted because the mother has a responsibility to to the foetus; she has no responsibility to a product of rape because she did not allow it to happen. I would argue that pregnancy in such irresponsible circumstances is subject to legal and societal coercion that is equivalent to the coercion of rape and therefore any foetus can be aborted. To use something like Thomson’s reasoning, I do think that aborting in cases of simple irresponsibility is more indecent than in other cases, but that does not make it