I. Introduction
This paper deals with Boonin’s development of Thomson’s argument for the permissibility of abortion. Firstly, I lay out the central argument that Thomson is responding to; next, I explain Boonin’s development of Thomson’s idea; lastly, I offer an evaluation of Boonin’s developed analogy. In this evaluation, I demonstrate that there is a serious disanalogy between the (edited) Violinist Case and the abortion cases.
II. The Rights-Based Argument and The Good-Samaritan Argument
1. The Rights-Based Argument
It is best to think of the debate on abortion as a long conversation between two opposing sides. The “pro-” side offers an argument, the “con-” side responds, the “pro-” side offers a defense, and and the “con-” side responds again…. This makes it difficult to know where, exactly, to begin a paper on abortion. One way to do it would be to offer the view that I will be responding to and ignore the back story. I do not wish to do that. The back story is important and relevant.
Boonin piggy-backs on Thomson’s famous argument from her article A Defense of Abortion. Thomson is responding to a possible argument for the impermissibility of abortion. The most reasonable place to begin, then, is with this argument. Boonin provides the argument in Standard Formulation in his book:
The Rights-Based Argument
(1) The fetus is a person.
(2) Every person has a right to life.
(C1) [/:.] The fetus has a right to life.
(3) The woman has a right to control her body.
(4) The right to life outweighs the right to control one’s body.
(5) Abortion kills the fetus.
(C2) /:. Abortion is morally impermissible.
Clearly, we have a logically valid argument before us. Any response must be an attack on its soundness. Premises (2), (3), and (5) are widely accepted, uncontroversial claims. And, moreover, (C1) and (C2) are logically implied. This leaves (1) and (4) for possible criticism.
2. The Good-Samaritan Argument
A natural response would be to deny (1) and establish that the fetus is not, in fact, a person. Thomson, however, sees this move as unnecessary. Even, she claims, when spotting the rights-based person premise (1), the argument fails. Thomson develops her argument by presenting a scenario. Here it is:
The Violinist Case (VC)
You wake up in the morning and find yourself in bed with a famous unconscious violinist. He has a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood. The director of the hospital tells you, “Look, we’re sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you–we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But it’s only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.”
VC provides us with a case in which a person is asked to sacrifice the right to their body to preserve another’s right to life. Since premise (5) suggests that the right to life outweighs the right to control one’s body, it follows that the patient must stay connected to the violinist. Our intuition, however, contradicts this. It seems to tell us that the patient is within her right to unplug herself from the violinist. Here is the line of thought more clearly:
Argument from the Violinist (AV)
(1) If the right to life outweighs the right to control one’s body, then the patient is obligated to remain attached to the violinist.
(2) It is not the case that the patient is obligated to remain attached to the violinist.
(3) /:. It is not the case that the right to life outweighs the right to control one’s body.
Thomson disagrees with this argument. Boonin reiterates her line of thought, “[t]he lesson of the story… is not that it is sometimes permissible for you to violate the violinist’s right to life, but rather that the violinists right to life does not include or entail the right to be provided with the use or the continued use of whatever is needed in order for him to go on living”. The right to life, then, trumps the right to control one’s body; however, the right to life also excludes rights that involve the continued supply of things necessary for one to continue living. Thomson, then, would deny premise (1) from AV. It is not the case that the patient is obligated to remain attached to the violinist if the right to life outweighs the right to control one’s body. It simply is not what the antecedent entails.
A noteworthy thing to mention is that Thomson is not claiming (4) is false. Rather, she is arguing that the conclusion does not follow from the premises. Yet again, Boonin clarifies: “[(6)]: If abortion kills the fetus, then abortion violates the fetus’s right to life…. This is the premise that the good samaritan argument is designed to attack.” Boonin supplies us with a hidden premise, one that brings out the line of thought that Thomson is trying to deny.
Applying Thomson’s analogy to an unwanted pregnancy, one can see that the fetus is something like the patient and the mother is something like the donor in the Violinist Case. Just as it is permissible to unplug one’s self from the violinist, it is also permissible to “unplug” one’s self from the baby. As was said before, this is permissible because the right to life does not include rights that provide the individual with supplies necessary for survival.
III. The Tacit Consent Objection
1. The Objection
A popular objection to Thomson’s argument for the permissibility of abortion is to argue that her argument from analogy fails: Abortion is simply not dealing with the same morally relevant scenario as the case with the violinist. Such an objector points toward a specific disanalogy between the Violinist Case and abortion cases. Namely, in the Violinist Case, the person is kidnapped and forcefully attached to the violinist. They find themselves hooked up to a person and never had the initial choice to help or not help the unhealthy person. The only case of someone being impregnated against their will are cases involving rape. Therefore, the Violinist Case only applies to instances of non-consensual pregnancies. The disanalogy certainly shows intuitive strength.
2. Boonin’s Response
Boonin is not satisfied with the argument from disanalogy. Though he offers a number replies to this objection, the most noteworthy move he makes is to argue that the Violinist Case does not necessitate the donor being kidnapped and forcefully hooked up to the violinist. Instead, the analogy can be edited to expand to cases involving consensual sex. Consider a case where a person, S, decides she would like to give a bone marrow transplant to the violinist. The procedure takes nine months, including a series of painful injections. S arrives at the hospital, ready to begin the long, strenuous procedure. She is hooked up to the violinist (voluntarily), and the first round of marrow treatment is issued. After a few weeks, S realizes that she cannot follow through on her initial decision. The transplanting of the marrow is too painful and intense for her, and she can’t stand the idea that it will only get more painful, coming to a climax at nine months. She decides that she wants to be unhooked from the violinist. Here we have a case of voluntary donation, and the person backs out. This updated analogy still seems to hold for Thomson’s argument, then, and for the same reasons.
IV. A Further Disanalogy
We have before us an expanded, strengthened version of the Violinist Case. However, even with Boonin’s improvements to the case, I am wary of relying too heavily on it, for there lies a further disanalogy. The disanalogy centers on the idea of dependency and the role of dependency in the two cases before us (abortion cases and the Violinist Case). Let us consider two further cases, designed to bring out the nature of dependency.
1. First Case of Dependency (1CD)
Tom and Joe are backpacking. They have a good amount of experience with camping; both did boy scouts throughout childhood, Tom partook in a NOLS course, and Joe is very familiar with the area. Five days into their trip, they decide to take a 20-mile shortcut, through the thick of the forest. During this shortcut, Tom stumbles off of an 18-foot cliff, breaking both legs and falling unconscious.
Joe climbs down and assesses the situation. There is a stream nearby, edible plants are plentiful, and there is a good area to make a survival shelter. He decides there are two options: (1) he can leave Tom to make his way back to society, guaranteeing that Tom would die, or (2) he can stay with Tom, until he makes enough of a recovery to make it back to society, guaranteeing both they will survive.
Intuition tells us Joe should stay with Tom and ensure his survival, rather than leave him, securing his death.
2. Second Case of Dependency (2CD)
Tom, Joe, Sam, Chris, and August are backpacking. They have a good amount of experience with camping. Five days into their trip, they decide to take a 20-mile shortcut, through the thick of the forest. During this shortcut, Tom stumbles off of an 18-foot cliff, breaking both legs and falling unconscious.
The four others climb down and assess the situation. There is a stream nearby, edible plants are plentiful, and there is a good area to make a survival shelter. Joe decides that he has two options: (1) he can leave the three others to help Tom and return to his trip, knowing that the likelihood of his survival will decrease by 5% (if only he leaves), or (2) he can stay with the three others to help Tom recover, and get him to safety.
In this case, it seems permissible for Joe to leave Tom and the others. 1CD and 2CD suggest the following principle:
Principle of Dependency (PD): The fewer number of entities that one depends on for sustained life, the more morally relevant it is for the entities to fulfill the dependency; the higher the number of entities that one depends on for sustained life, the less morally relevant it is for a single entity to fulfill the dependency.
3. Abortion, The Violinist, and the Principle of Dependency
In the case of pregnancy, there is one subject depending on a second subject for life; namely, the fetus depending solely on the mother for life. The Violinist Case is not similar in this way. In fact, there are at least four entities that the violinist relies on:
(1) The medical machinery and technology,
(2) The doctor’s knowledge,
(3) The insurance company that provides funding for the treatment, and
(4) The marrow donor.
The abortion case is analogous to 1CD; the Violinist Case is analogous to 2CD. However, by PD, the Violinist Case is disanalogous to abortion, for it is postulating a scenario involving more entities than abortion cases. Though it may be permissible for the donor to unhook himself, it does not follow that it is permissible for the mother to abort the baby, for (1) the patient is dependent of multiple entities and (2) the baby is only dependent on the mother, while in the womb.
V. Conclusion
It has been argued by disanalogy that the Violinist Case unsuccessfully displays a case similar to pregnancy. By failing to show this, it also fails to show that abortion is permissible. I have neither endorsed the claim that abortion is permissible, nor the claim that abortion is impermissible; I merely assert that Violinist Case is not the right approach to establishing its moral acceptability.
Works Cited
Boonin, David. A Defense of Abortion. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2003. Print.
Thomson, Judith. “A Defense of Abortion”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 1. (Autumn, 1971), pp. 47-66.
Warren, Mary Anne. “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion”. Online. (pg. 2). <http://www.amber-hinds.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/warren-moralandlegalstatusofabortion.pdf>
A Collection of Essays 