A defense of "a defense of abortion": On the responsibility objection to thomson's argument

Ethics

Volumn 107, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 286-313

  Boonin Vail, David ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ANALYTICAL APPROACH; ARTICLE; BEHAVIOR; ETHICS; FETUS; GENETICS AND REPRODUCTION; HUMAN; HUMAN RIGHTS; INDUCED ABORTION; INFORMED CONSENT; MALPRACTICE; MORALITY; MOTHER FETUS RELATIONSHIP; MOTIVATION; PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH; PHILOSOPHY; PREGNANCY; PREGNANT WOMAN; RAPE; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIOECONOMICS;

ANALYTICAL APPROACH; GENETICS AND REPRODUCTION; PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH;

ABORTION, INDUCED; ETHICS; FETUS; HUMAN RIGHTS; HUMANS; INTENTION; MALPRACTICE; MATERNAL-FETAL RELATIONS; MORAL OBLIGATIONS; MOTIVATION; PHILOSOPHY; PREGNANCY; PREGNANT WOMEN; PRESUMED CONSENT; RAPE; SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY; VALUE OF LIFE;

EID: 0030622214     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/233721     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. Judith Jarvis Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion," Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1971): 47-66, reprinted in Arguing about Abortion, ed. Lewis M. Schwartz (Belmont, Mass.: Wadsworth, 1993), pp. 113-27, p. 114. All references to Thomson are to the pagination in the Schwartz edition.
2. Judith Jarvis Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion," Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1971): 47-66, reprinted in Arguing about Abortion, ed. Lewis M. Schwartz (Belmont, Mass.: Wadsworth, 1993), pp. 113-27, p. 114. All references to Thomson are to the pagination in the Schwartz edition.
3. The objection is ubiquitous in the literature. In addition to the proponents of the objection cited below, see also, e.g., Robert N. Wennberg, Life in the Balance: Exploring the Abortion Controversy (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1985), pp. 160-62; John T. Wilcox, "Nature as Demonic in Thomson's Defense of Abortion," in The Ethics of Abortion: Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice, rev. ed., ed. Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1993), pp. 212-25, pp. 216 ff.; Mary Anne Warren, "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion," in Schwartz, ed., pp. 227-42, p. 232; Paul D. Feinberg, "The Morality of Abortion," in Thou Shall Not Kill: The Christian Case against Abortion, ed. Richard L. Ganz (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978), pp. 127-49, p. 143; Judith A. Boss, The Birth Lottery: Prenatal Diagnosis and Selective Abortion (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1993), p. 102; Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 169-70.
4. The objection is ubiquitous in the literature. In addition to the proponents of the objection cited below, see also, e.g., Robert N. Wennberg, Life in the Balance: Exploring the Abortion Controversy (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1985), pp. 160-62; John T. Wilcox, "Nature as Demonic in Thomson's Defense of Abortion," in The Ethics of Abortion: Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice, rev. ed., ed. Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1993), pp. 212-25, pp. 216 ff.; Mary Anne Warren, "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion," in Schwartz, ed., pp. 227-42, p. 232; Paul D. Feinberg, "The Morality of Abortion," in Thou Shall Not Kill: The Christian Case against Abortion, ed. Richard L. Ganz (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978), pp. 127-49, p. 143; Judith A. Boss, The Birth Lottery: Prenatal Diagnosis and Selective Abortion (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1993), p. 102; Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 169-70.
5. The objection is ubiquitous in the literature. In addition to the proponents of the objection cited below, see also, e.g., Robert N. Wennberg, Life in the Balance: Exploring the Abortion Controversy (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1985), pp. 160-62; John T. Wilcox, "Nature as Demonic in Thomson's Defense of Abortion," in The Ethics of Abortion: Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice, rev. ed., ed. Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1993), pp. 212-25, pp. 216 ff.; Mary Anne Warren, "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion," in Schwartz, ed., pp. 227-42, p. 232; Paul D. Feinberg, "The Morality of Abortion," in Thou Shall Not Kill: The Christian Case against Abortion, ed. Richard L. Ganz (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978), pp. 127-49, p. 143; Judith A. Boss, The Birth Lottery: Prenatal Diagnosis and Selective Abortion (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1993), p. 102; Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 169-70.
6. The objection is ubiquitous in the literature. In addition to the proponents of the objection cited below, see also, e.g., Robert N. Wennberg, Life in the Balance: Exploring the Abortion Controversy (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1985), pp. 160-62; John T. Wilcox, "Nature as Demonic in Thomson's Defense of Abortion," in The Ethics of Abortion: Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice, rev. ed., ed. Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1993), pp. 212-25, pp. 216 ff.; Mary Anne Warren, "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion," in Schwartz, ed., pp. 227-42, p. 232; Paul D. Feinberg, "The Morality of Abortion," in Thou Shall Not Kill: The Christian Case against Abortion, ed. Richard L. Ganz (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978), pp. 127-49, p. 143; Judith A. Boss, The Birth Lottery: Prenatal Diagnosis and Selective Abortion (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1993), p. 102; Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 169-70.
7. The objection is ubiquitous in the literature. In addition to the proponents of the objection cited below, see also, e.g., Robert N. Wennberg, Life in the Balance: Exploring the Abortion Controversy (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1985), pp. 160-62; John T. Wilcox, "Nature as Demonic in Thomson's Defense of Abortion," in The Ethics of Abortion: Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice, rev. ed., ed. Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1993), pp. 212-25, pp. 216 ff.; Mary Anne Warren, "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion," in Schwartz, ed., pp. 227-42, p. 232; Paul D. Feinberg, "The Morality of Abortion," in Thou Shall Not Kill: The Christian Case against Abortion, ed. Richard L. Ganz (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978), pp. 127-49, p. 143; Judith A. Boss, The Birth Lottery: Prenatal Diagnosis and Selective Abortion (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1993), p. 102; Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 169-70.
8. The objection is ubiquitous in the literature. In addition to the proponents of the objection cited below, see also, e.g., Robert N. Wennberg, Life in the Balance: Exploring the Abortion Controversy (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1985), pp. 160-62; John T. Wilcox, "Nature as Demonic in Thomson's Defense of Abortion," in The Ethics of Abortion: Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice, rev. ed., ed. Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1993), pp. 212-25, pp. 216 ff.; Mary Anne Warren, "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion," in Schwartz, ed., pp. 227-42, p. 232; Paul D. Feinberg, "The Morality of Abortion," in Thou Shall Not Kill: The Christian Case against Abortion, ed. Richard L. Ganz (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978), pp. 127-49, p. 143; Judith A. Boss, The Birth Lottery: Prenatal Diagnosis and Selective Abortion (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1993), p. 102; Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 169-70.
9. The example of the particular burden involved comes from L. S. Carrier, "Abortion and the Right to Life," Social Theory and Practice 3 (1975): 381-401, pp. 398-99, though very similar examples can be found in a number of other writers who press this objection.
10. The Responsibility Objection is also at times given an indirect defense by appealing to the claim that if the objection is rejected, then there is no way to account for the presumed legitimacy of those laws which require men to pay child support to defray the costs of raising children conceived as a result of their having engaged in intercourse voluntarily. As one such critic has put it, "If such a minimal life-sustaining sacrifice [i.e., sustaining a pregnancy through to term] cannot be required of the mother before birth, how could even minimal child support be required of the father after birth?" (Keith J. Pavlischek, "Abortion Logic and Paternal Responsibility: One More Look at Judith Thomson's 'A Defense of Abortion,'" Public Affairs Quarterly 7 [1993]: 341-61, p. 348). This strategy merits a more detailed examination than I can give it here, but it should suffice for my present purposes to note that the nature of the burdens involved in the two cases is fundamentally different. The woman is required to suffer a distinctly intimate and physical burden while the man is required only to hand over some money. Of course, it might be pointed out that in order for the man to raise the necessary money he may also have to suffer a significant degree of physical pain and discomfort. As another such critic has pointed out, "If the father is a construction worker, the state will intervene unless some of the calories he expends lifting equipment go to providing food for his children" (Michael Levin, quoted in Francis J. Beckwith, "Arguments from the Bodily Rights: A Critical Analysis," in The Abortion Controversy, ed. Louis P. Pojman and Francis J. Beckwith [Boston: Lones & Bartlett, 1994], pp. 155-75, p. 164). But surely it does not follow from the fact that one can choose to earn one's money doing painful physical labor and then be required to make a financial sacrifice for a given cause that one can also be required to do a comparable amount of painful physical labor on behalf of that cause. If the state determined that it would be in the public interest to build a new highway, e.g., it would hardly follow from the claim that it would be morally permissible for the state to take some of the construction worker's income to help pay for the highway that it would also be morally permissible for the state to force the construction worker to help to build the highway. As a result of this difference in the nature of the burdens involved, an opponent of the Responsibility Objection to Thomson's argument need not be an opponent of child-support laws.
11. The Responsibility Objection is also at times given an indirect defense by appealing to the claim that if the objection is rejected, then there is no way to account for the presumed legitimacy of those laws which require men to pay child support to defray the costs of raising children conceived as a result of their having engaged in intercourse voluntarily. As one such critic has put it, "If such a minimal life-sustaining sacrifice [i.e., sustaining a pregnancy through to term] cannot be required of the mother before birth, how could even minimal child support be required of the father after birth?" (Keith J. Pavlischek, "Abortion Logic and Paternal Responsibility: One More Look at Judith Thomson's 'A Defense of Abortion,'" Public Affairs Quarterly 7 [1993]: 341-61, p. 348). This strategy merits a more detailed examination than I can give it here, but it should suffice for my present purposes to note that the nature of the burdens involved in the two cases is fundamentally different. The woman is required to suffer a distinctly intimate and physical burden while the man is required only to hand over some money. Of course, it might be pointed out that in order for the man to raise the necessary money he may also have to suffer a significant degree of physical pain and discomfort. As another such critic has pointed out, "If the father is a construction worker, the state will intervene unless some of the calories he expends lifting equipment go to providing food for his children" (Michael Levin, quoted in Francis J. Beckwith, "Arguments from the Bodily Rights: A Critical Analysis," in The Abortion Controversy, ed. Louis P. Pojman and Francis J. Beckwith [Boston: Lones & Bartlett, 1994], pp. 155-75, p. 164). But surely it does not follow from the fact that one can choose to earn one's money doing painful physical labor and then be required to make a financial sacrifice for a given cause that one can also be required to do a comparable amount of painful physical labor on behalf of that cause. If the state determined that it would be in the public interest to build a new highway, e.g., it would hardly follow from the claim that it would be morally permissible for the state to take some of the construction worker's income to help pay for the highway that it would also be morally permissible for the state to force the construction worker to help to build the highway. As a result of this difference in the nature of the burdens involved, an opponent of the Responsibility Objection to Thomson's argument need not be an opponent of child-support laws.
12. She is not completely explicit about this, but this is plainly the point of her examples of bars or screens failing to prevent unwanted burglars or people-seeds from getting in through a window (Thomson, p. 121).
13. Bonnie Steinbock, Life before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos and Fetuses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 78.
14. For two possible exceptions to this claim, see n. 10 below.
15. This formulation might seem to beg the question, since if we conclude that the voluntariness of P's doing A counts as evidence of P's having consented to S, then it won't be the case that S involves Q's infringing on some right of P's. Strictly speaking, then, we should say that S is the state of affairs in which Q is doing something that infringes on P's right to X unless P does or has done something to grant Q the right to do this.
16. These requirements are typically acknowledged and defended by those who defend the Tactic Consent Version of the objection. See, e.g., Richard Langer, "Abortion and the Right to Privacy," Journal of Social Philosophy 23 (1992): 23-51.
17. It might objected that very little, if anything, about cases of voluntary intercourse follows from my analysis of the sufficient conditions for consent on the grounds that the analysis itself arises from a relatively trivial example. Relatively little is at stake in the question of who has the right to the use of (what was at least initially) Ted's money, but a great deal is at stake in the question of who has the right to the use of the pregnant woman's body. So one might well think that even if Ted has the right to take the money back from the waiter, it does not follow that the woman has the right to take the use of her body back from the fetus, and that attending to the example of tipping can thus do little to illuminate the moral problem of abortion. I certainly agree that the woman's right to abort the fetus does not follow from Ted's right to reclaim his money. There may be any number of important differences between the two cases. But viewing this as a problem for my analysis misconstrues the purpose of the example. I am not arguging that the woman has a right to abort the fetus because she has not consented to refrain from doing so. Rather, I am responding to an argument which claims that she lacks the right to abort the fetus because she has consented to refrain from doing so. That argument turns on the claim that the voluntariness of the action which produced the state of affairs justifies the attribution of consent, not on the claim that she is obligated to sustain the fetus because its very life is at stake. And the example of Bill and Ted demonstrates that this claim about consent is untenable. It may be worth noting, however, that the importance of the distinction between a and b which I have been arguing for would be revealed even if we focused on less straightforward and more controversial examples of consent. Suppose one believed, e.g., that if you take off your coat and put it in the arms of a homeless person who needs the coat in order to survive the winter, then you have tacitly consented to let him keep the coat for as long as he needs it. It might be thought that in some respects this is more representative of what is at stake in cases of abortion. Still, this would not support the conclusion that if you take your coat off on a windy day because you want to experience the pleasure of a chilling breeze against your bare skin, then you must let the homeless person keep it if, as a foreseeable (but unintended and undesired) consequence of your action, the coat is blown into his arms. Again, there may be good reason to believe that you would be obligated to let the homeless person keep the coat at that point, but the reason cannot plausibly be grounded in the claim that you have consented to let him keep it, and that is the claim I am concerned to address in this section. I have avoided appealing to such cases (you let someone into your house because it is cold outside, etc.) in developing my argument for the importance of the distinction between a and b because it is less clear that people will agree that you have consented to let the person keep the coat (or stay in your house) for as long as he needs to even in the case where you deliberately hand it to him (or let him in; perhaps you only mean to let him use the coat until you are ready to go home or to remain in your home until you are ready to go to bed), and I want to work from a case that puts the tacit consent claim itself in the most favorable possible light.
18. Two exceptions might be urged here. One is the case of a woman who freely chooses to have an embryo implanted in her. This does seem to be a case in which she voluntarily brings about the state of affairs in which there is a fetus making demands on her body, rather than one in which she merely foresees that her action may lead to this state of affairs. It thus seems plausible to think of it as a genuine case in which, if one believes in tacit consent, one will have good grounds for thinking that consent has been given. The other is what might be called the case of intentional conception, one in which the woman deliberately refrained from using contraception because she wanted to become pregnant. She does seem to do more than merely foresee that the subsequent state of affairs may arise, and so it can again seem plausible to suppose that in this case she has consented to it. Each sort of exception seems plausible, but each raises difficulties. In the case of the embryo implant, we would need to be careful about specifying the content of the rights waiver that was consented to; as Sara Worley has pointed out to me, it may seem implausible to suppose that a woman who consents to have multiple embryos implanted in her as a part of infertility treatment should be understood as waiving the right later to remove one in order to improve the prospects of survival for the others. And as Marcia Baron has noted, such a woman might also be understood as tacitly agreeing only to bear at least one child by virtue of such a procedure without having agreed to bear all of them. In the case of the intentional conception, on the other hand, there is a sense in which it does not seem right to say that, strictly speaking, the woman intentionally becomes pregnant. She does what she hopes will lead to pregnancy, but there are many factors beyond her control which may lead one to conclude that the pregnancy should not be understood as a state of affairs that she voluntarily creates. I will leave the question about how to treat both cases open, and thus accept the possibility that my argument against the Tacit Consent Version does not apply in either or both of these cases. Since abortions arising from such cases are relatively rare, however, this is at most a very small concession.
19. Langer, p. 42. Although he does not note this, the same example is used to make the same point by Warren, pp. 232-33.
20. Langer, p. 42. Although he does not note this, the same example is used to make the same point by Warren, pp. 232-33.
21. It might be argued that in a society which legally prohibits abortion except in cases of rape a woman who engages in voluntary intercourse enters precisely such a lottery. Even if we think that such a woman has tacitly consented to carry the fetus to term, however, this would only be because she has tacitly agreed to obey a law, not because she has granted a right to the fetus. And Thomson's argument is addressed to the proponent of the claim that abortion is impermissible because it violates the fetus's right to life.
22. In constructing the analogy in this way, I do not mean to suggest that when a couple has intercourse without contraception this is always the result of a deliberate policy devised exclusively to increase their level of physical pleasure. The story might be modified to say that you thought you had Mace with you but at the last minute could not find it, or that you usually carry Mace but forgot this one time, or that you are deterred from purchasing Mace because you are made to feel shameful when you go to the store to buy it, or that your religious leaders have told you that it is immoral, and so on. I will stick with my version because 1 want to show that even in what amounts to a kind of "worse case" scenario for Thomson's argument, the woman's voluntary action does not give the fetus any more right to the use of her body than it would have in cases involving rape.
23. It might be thought that the concession here that it would be fair to say that you had gotten what you deserve plays into the hands of Thomson's critics. After all, wouldn't it then follow that the pregnant woman has also gotten what she deserves? But all that can plausibly be meant here is that it is fair to make you bear the costs of extricating yourself from the situation, since it is not as if someone else had forced you into the park. And the concession that in those cases in which the woman is (partly) responsible for her pregnancy she should also be (partly) responsible for bearing whatever physical, economic, and psychological costs an abortion may involve seems perfectly reasonable and surely consistent with Thomson's position.
24. I am aware that the following example simplifies in some respects the present policy of the Chinese government; if any of the simplifications affect the argument, we can simply treat this as a fictional version of China.
25. In addition, it is worth noting that not every act is a suitable candidate for counting as evidence of consent to something. If the act is such that refraining from performing it is itself a substantial burden to the agent, then viewing the act as consenting to S amounts to coercing the agent into consenting to S, and expressions of consent which are coerced are generally recognized to be nonbinding. And as Smith points out, a strong case can be made for saying that refraining from voluntary intercourse is a substantial enough burden to undermine the suitability of voluntary intercourse as a sign of consenting to anything (Holly M. Smith, "Intercourse and Moral Responsibility for the Fetus," in Abortion and the Status of the Fetus, ed. William B. Bondeson et al. [Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983], pp. 229-45, pp. 237-38).
26. Similarly, Kamm points out that voluntarily bringing someone into your house does not constitute a tacit agreement to let him stay. She also notes that accepting the view that voluntarily beginning to aid makes discontinuing aid impermissible would deter many people from offering aid in the first place, since once they started voluntarily it would become impermissible for them to discontinue, and they might be genuinely uncertain about whether they would be willing to provide all of the aid needed but willing to try as long as they would be free to stop if they so desired (Frances Myrna Kamm, Creation and Abortion [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992], pp. 23, 108).
27. There may, of course, be other important differences between the bone marrow case and the pregnancy case. The cost in terms of suffering may be different, and refraining from giving more bone marrow might seem to be a case of letting die while refraining from continuing the pregnancy might be a case of killing. One might, then, consistently believe that you don't have to keep giving bone marrow while you do have to keep supporting a fetus. My point here is simply that this will have to be for reasons other than the fact that the support was begun voluntarily, so that the mere fact of voluntary initiation of support does not imply a duty to continue it. But the Tacit Consent Version depends on its being the case that the fact of voluntary initiation itself does imply such a duty.
28. Michael Tooley, Abortion and Infanticide (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), p. 45. The same objection is made by means of similar examples by, e.g., Carrier, pp. 398-99; Francis J. Beckwith, "Personal Bodily Rights, Abortion, and Unplugging the Violinist," International Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1992): 105-18, pp. 111-12, and "Arguments from Bodily Rights," p. 164.
29. Michael Tooley, Abortion and Infanticide (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), p. 45. The same objection is made by means of similar examples by, e.g., Carrier, pp. 398-99; Francis J. Beckwith, "Personal Bodily Rights, Abortion, and Unplugging the Violinist," International Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1992): 105-18, pp. 111-12, and "Arguments from Bodily Rights," p. 164.
30. Michael Tooley, Abortion and Infanticide (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), p. 45. The same objection is made by means of similar examples by, e.g., Carrier, pp. 398-99; Francis J. Beckwith, "Personal Bodily Rights, Abortion, and Unplugging the Violinist," International Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1992): 105-18, pp. 111-12, and "Arguments from Bodily Rights," p. 164.
31. Michael Tooley, Abortion and Infanticide (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), p. 45. The same objection is made by means of similar examples by, e.g., Carrier, pp. 398-99; Francis J. Beckwith, "Personal Bodily Rights, Abortion, and Unplugging the Violinist," International Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1992): 105-18, pp. 111-12, and "Arguments from Bodily Rights," p. 164.
32. Beckwith, "Personal Bodily Rights, Abortion, and Unplugging the Violinist," pp. 111-12, and "Arguments from Bodily Rights," p. 164 (Beckwith makes this claim in the context of defending the father's responsibility to care for the offspring, but it is presumably meant to apply equally to the case of the mother).
33. Beckwith, "Personal Bodily Rights, Abortion, and Unplugging the Violinist," pp. 111-12, and "Arguments from Bodily Rights," p. 164 (Beckwith makes this claim in the context of defending the father's responsibility to care for the offspring, but it is presumably meant to apply equally to the case of the mother).
34. Though even this claim is by no means unproblematic, as the literature on moral luck demonstrates.
35. Harry S. Silverstein, "On a Woman's 'Responsibility' for the Fetus," Social Theory and Practice 13 (1987): 103-19, p. 106.
36. Note that my claim is not that it would be improper to use the term "negligent" to describe the behavior of a woman who has intercourse without using birth control (although something like "irresponsible" might be more apt). My claim is simply that, whatever we call her action, it lacks the feature of characteristically negligent acts such as those cited by Tooley, Beckwith, and others which plausibly justifies attributing a right to assistance to the one who stands in need of assistance as a foreseeable result of the action.
37. This is a condensed and slightly modified version of an example given by Silverstein, "On a Woman's 'Responsibility' for the Fetus," pp. 106-7.
38. In his response to an objection raised by Langer, Silverstein is more clear that this is the central point of his argument. See Richard Langer, "Silverstein and the 'Responsibility Objection,'" Social Theory and Practice 19 (1993): 345-58, pp. 348-49; Harry S. Silverstein, "Reply to Langer," Social Theory and Practice 19 (1993): 359-67, pp. 361 ff.
39. In his response to an objection raised by Langer, Silverstein is more clear that this is the central point of his argument. See Richard Langer, "Silverstein and the 'Responsibility Objection,'" Social Theory and Practice 19 (1993): 345-58, pp. 348-49; Harry S. Silverstein, "Reply to Langer," Social Theory and Practice 19 (1993): 359-67, pp. 361 ff.
40. Of course, one might maintain that even in Malpractice the doctor does not owe the violinist the use of his kidneys (and one could hold this even while believing that the violinist was nonetheless entitled to something as compensation or punitive damages). And it would then follow that Thomson's argument would be secure even if it turned out that the pregnancy case was more like Malpractice than like Imperfect Drug. Since this assessment seems controversial at best, and since I claim that Thomson's argument can be defended without it, I will not rely on it here though I do not mean to be insisting that it is mistaken.
41. One might well be inclined to object at this point that the woman is responsible for helping the fetus precisely because there was no way for her to make it the case that the fetus exists without making it the case that the fetus exists in a state of dependence on her, while there was a way for her to avoid making it the case that the fetus exists in the first place: she could simply have abstained from having intercourse. But this would seem equally to imply that you are responsible for aiding the violinist in Imperfect Drug. There was no way for you to make it the case that the violinist (still) exists without making it the case that he exists in a state of dependence on you, but there was a way for you to avoid making it be the case that he still exists in the first place: you could simply have abstained from giving him the drug.
42. Silverstein himself accepts this emendation, and it also runs parallel to the notion of a "baseline" employed by Kamm, who argues that you are (or may be) obligated only to ensure that the violinist not be made worse off than he would have been had you not been hooked up to him in the first place. See Silverstein, "On a Woman's 'Responsibility' for the Fetus," p. 111; Kamm, e.g., pp. 26, 43, 89-90.
43. Silverstein himself accepts this emendation, and it also runs parallel to the notion of a "baseline" employed by Kamm, who argues that you are (or may be) obligated only to ensure that the violinist not be made worse off than he would have been had you not been hooked up to him in the first place. See Silverstein, "On a Woman's 'Responsibility' for the Fetus," p. 111; Kamm, e.g., pp. 26, 43, 89-90.
44. Michael Davis, "Foetuses, Famous Violinists, and the Right to Continued Aid," Philosophical Quarterly 33 (1983): 259-78, p. 277.
45. Thomas Nagel, "Death," in his Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 1-10, p. 1.
46. This response is pressed persuasively by Kamm, who also argues that the claim is importantly at odds with our attitudes toward women who are prone to miscarriage: we do not think it wrong for them to try to have children even if it takes several attempts, but surely we would think it wrong if we thought this meant making several fetuses worse off than they would have been had they never been conceived. See Kamm, pp. 84-87.
47. One might appeal in part to the idea that being unjustly killed is worse than simply dying in one's sleep, but this claim too is a bit difficult to make sense of and would in any event clearly beg the question at issue, which is whether or not the killing of the fetus is unjust.
48. Langer, "Silverstein and the 'Responsibility Objection,'" pp. 351-52.
49. Ibid., p. 352.
50. Although it is worth noting that even this part of Langer's argument is subject to doubt. After all, it does not follow from the claim that "child abandonment" is immoral that a parent has a duty to provide for his child's needs. That would follow only if one also believed that a parent had a duty not to put this child up for adoption; but most people (especially, perhaps, opponents of abortion) believe that it is perfectly permissible for a parent to have someone else incur the costs of raising his child. So one might simply reply to Langer's question by saying no, he does not have an obligation to care for his son's needs. If he no longer wishes to be a parent, it is permissible for him to put his son up for adoption.
51. Even if the "adoption" is really a kidnapping, as in the case where a woman steals a baby from the hospital and takes it home to raise as her own, we will still presumably believe that her duty to care for the infant is as strong as the duty of any parent to care for her child, and this would again favor account a over account b.
52. None of what is said in this paragraph, of course, implies or presupposes that a woman who declines to bring her newborn home has no duty to care for it at all. Suppose she gives birth in an abandoned field. One might hold the view that there are no positive duties to assist others, in which case one will hold that if she does not wish to raise the child herself she is morally free to walk away and leave the infant to die. But one need not hold this view. One could believe that there are positive duties to assist others at least in cases where the burden is relatively small and the benefit relatively great, and so hold that the woman would at least be obligated to incur the cost of carrying the child to town and providing for it until it could be taken to a hospital. But then she will have this obligation equally even if she comes across a newborn that someone else has abandoned in the field, so this will again fail to support the view that Thomson's argument is undermined by the difference between the voluntariness of intercourse in nonrape cases and the involuntariness of kidnapping in the violinist case. And in addition, it will be unlikely to follow that a woman would be obligated to sustain her pregnancy since the burdens of pregnancy are not so trivial. Of course, one might endorse the existence of a positive duty to assist another who will otherwise die even where the burden to you in doing so is quite substantial, provided that (a) the benefit to the other still significantly outweighs the burden to you and (b) you are the only one who can save the individual. This would justify a duty to continue the pregnancy even granting that the burden is substantially greater than what we are typically required to undergo for the benefit of others. But then it will seem equally to follow that you are obligated to remain plugged into the violinist in Thomson's story, since the benefit to the violinist significantly outweighs the burden to you and you are the only one who can save him. So even this view of positive rights will fail to undermine Thomson's analogy.
53. I am grateful to Alec Walen for bringing this objection to my attention.
54. One might well complain here that the importance of a sexual relationship to living a well-lived life is trivialized by picturing the woman as merely pursuing physical pleasure. The assumption that such pleasure is all that can be involved is surely too narrow, but I want to assume for the sake of the argument that this really is all the woman (and her partner) are seeking, and to question what follows from this.
55. Though it is by no means obvious that this assumption should be accepted. We might well think that this simply reveals a difference in the moral merit of their characters but not a difference in the obligations which arise from their actions.
56. Or two. See my "Death Comes for the Violinist" (unpublished), which responds to the objection that Thomson's analogy is undermined either by the importance of the distinction between killing and letting die or by the importance of the distinction between intending death and foreseeing it, and "A Further Defense of 'A Defense of Abortion'" (unpublished) which responds to a number of additional objections, including those which accept Thomson's analogy but hold either that unplugging yourself from the violinist is not permissible or that arguments from such analogies are unsound.