1. “A Defense of Abortion”
Judith Jarvis Thomson

2. Outline Violinist Experiment Explanation of Experiment (rights, etc)
Right to life vs. right to do what you want with your body (the latter overrides the former)
Significance: even if a fetus is a person – still no obligation to keep the fetus
Having a baby is kindness (superogatory) not obligatory – permissible
Good Samaritan
Objection: Forced vs. Not
Reworking the Thought Experiment
Objection: Biological Relationship

3. THE VIOLINIST THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
“Imagine you wake up one morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now 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 never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.“
Do you have the right to demand that she be unhooked from your body, knowing that it will kill her if she is unhooked?

4. Two conflicting rights at play
the violinist right to life
your right to do what you want with your body
Thomson: you have the right to demand to be unhooked (and most people agree)
So, it looks like you have the right to an abortion – to do what you want with your body (if pregnant)

5. Keeping a Pregnancy is a matter of kindness, superogatory
The violinist does not have the right to use your body, and so by unplugging the violinist you do not violate his right to life but merely deprive him of something—the use of your body—to which he has no right.
"[I]f you do allow him to go on using your kidneys, this is a kindness on your part, and not something he can claim from you as his due.”
Similarly, abortion does not violate the fetus's right to life but merely deprives the fetus of something—the use of the pregnant woman's body—to which it has no right.
Thus, it is not that by terminating her pregnancy a woman violates her moral obligations, but rather that a woman who carries the fetus to term is a ‘Samaritan' who goes beyond her obligations

6. Significance
In discussions about abortion it is usually assumed that if it is shown that the fetus is a person then the discussion is over and the answer is clear: abortion is wrong.
One can support abortion even if conceding that the fetus is a person and has a right to life
the right to decide to her body overrides the fetus’ right to life (even assuming a fetus is a person)

7. The Right to Life
“Having a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another person’s body - even if one needs if for life itself.”
Most Fundamental right: the right not to be killed unjustly
The right to life consists not in the right not to be killed, but rather in the right not to be killed unjustly.
The crucial question: Is abortion unjust killing?
The case of the violinist is used to argue that it is not (because killing the violinist, by unplugging yourself, seems permissible).

8. Disanalogy 1: Force
Does the analogy hold? That is, is the violinist case analogous to cases of pregnancy? Some think not.
Objection: Violinist Thought Experiment only covers cases of rape.
The person is forced by the doctors to be a donor for the violinist, and that is why, you have a right to separate from the violinist
But, in most pregnancies the woman is not forced.
So, the thought experiment works but only to show that abortion is permitted where the pregnancy has been forced on her (e.g. rape cases)
Reply: If one took proper precautions against the pregnancy (i.e. contraception) then can’t we say that the pregnancy was forced onto the mother just as the violinist was forced onto the host?

9. Disanalogy 2: Voluntary Engagement in Sex
Objection: The pregnant woman voluntarily engaged in sexual intercourse foreseeing that a fetus may result, and so has tacitly consented to the fetus using her body; no such consent occurs with the violinist (or pregnancy due to rape).
You are allowed to terminate pregnancy if forced into pregnancy; but not if you chose to behave in way that would result in the pregnancy
What about contraception? IT was just chance pregnant woman voluntarily engaged in sexual intercourse with the result that the fetus stands in need of the use of her body. The woman is thus responsible for the fetus's need to use her body and so the fetus has a right to use her body. No such responsibility occurs with the violinist (or pregnancy due to rape).

10. Rework Jarvis Experiment?
Engaging in a voluntary action while foreseeing a certain result does not entail that one has tacitly consented to that result.
Even if the woman has tacitly consented to the fetus making demands on her body, it does not follow that she has consented to sustain it for the entire nine months of pregnancy
Consider an analogous experiment:
Suppose you sign up to go to war – become a Marine during WWII,
You have heard that the Japanese enslave POWs and put them to use (for 9 months) at a time as organ donors for their Japanese citizens
You are captured (despite the odds), and you are currently a host for a Japanese citizen.
Clearly, you have a right to sever the umbilical cord and escape.
The thought experiment shows that engaging in a voluntary actions while foreseeing a certain result (i.e. not getting caught/not becoming pregnant) does not result in tacitly consenting to the result
So, why think that in the case of pregnancy you have given tacit consent?

11. Disanalogy 3: Potentially Related
Objection: the violinist thought experiment and pregnancy are disanalogous because the violinist is not biologically related to the host, whereas a fetus is biologically related to the mother, and mothers have special relationships to their offspring.
Reply: Thomson bites the bullet here; we really have no special obligations to our biological offspring
Thomson does not think that biological parents of a child have a special responsibility for that child simply in virtue of that biological relationship.
Rather, she thinks that one person, such as a parent, has a “special responsibility” for another, such as a child, only if that person has explicitly or implicitly assumed that responsibility.
A parent or parents would, for instance, implicitly assume special responsibility for a child by taking it home to be raised, rather than giving the child up for adoption. However, there is nothing that prevents them from giving it up for adoption simply in virtue of that biological relation.
There is nothing wrong with a parent giving up a child they did not want

12. Pregnancy and Good Samaritans
A Good Samaritan goes out of the way, at some cost to himself, to help someone who needs his help.
A Minimally Decent Samaritan provides help to someone who needs her help but at minimal risk to herself.
Good Samaritan “would have rushed out to give direct assistance against the murderer.” The Minimally Decent Samaritan would at least have picked up the phone and called the police.
Thomson points out that no one in the U.S. is legally obligated to be either kind of Samaritan except pregnant women who are legally compelled to be Good Samaritans to fetuses they carry.
While she says that this fact does not settle the abortion issue, it does show “that there is a gross injustice in the existing state of the law.”