An objection to The Violinist Argument
The following argument is an objection to Judith Jarvis Thomson's Violinist Argument. It will assume the reader knows the argument and it will assume the same premises that Thomson assumes to be true.
Thomson's violinist argument is an ostensibly valid one; however, it appeals to various analogical flaws. As an analogical argument, the analogy must be similar enough to a real situation of abortion and there must not be any differences that are morally significant. However, there are plenty.
Firstly, in Thomson's analogy, you did not elect to be kidnapped by the Society of Music Lovers, whereas the vast majority of abortions do not involve some other individual forcefully putting a woman through a situation where her body is needed for the sustenance of another individual. Indeed, Thomson's violinist is more analogous to case of pregnancy as a result of rape, where the pregnancy was forced unto the woman. I shall grant that abortions in cases of rape are justified, however I shall object to the notion that abortions in cases of consensual sex is justified.
Many would argue that this is irrelevant, that no matter what (rape or not) you have the right to unplug yourself from the violinist, even if you consented to being connected to the violinist. However one must realize that upon consenting to sexual intercourse, one is accepting the probability of their actions forming an unviable human being that is, immediately upon its formation, biologically connected to oneself in order to survive.
A more analogous argument would be the following:
Imagine a button above your bed. Pressing this button will grant you an immense sense of pleasure for a limited duration of time. However, pressing this button will bring about a probability (the size of this probability is irrelevant) of:
- Causing the existence of a dying world-class violinist
- teleporting you into a hospital bed next to said violinist, connected to this violinist with a blood transfusion.
I would hope that this analogy would clearly show how pressing said button voluntarily and ending up in that probabilistic situation of a being connected to a dying violinist is not a good idea. In fact, perhaps with this analogy one may come to realize that you do not have the right to disconnect yourself from the violinist, because
- you caused the violinist to be in this unviable condition (by causing their unviable existence)
- you knew beforehand (I shall assume the person is educated about these probabilities) there was some probability of causing the unviable violinist and also you being teleported into a hospital bed connected to this violinist.
A final note would be that, yes, this argument suggest that getting pregnant is inducing upon another person a state of unviability and in some sense, by choosing to have sex, you are choosing to risk some probability of getting someone sick (or more aptly, creating someone that is already sick) and hence you have the responsibility to neutralize this sickness and return said person to a state of viability.