The overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022 sparked arguments among pro-choice and pro-life advocates. There’s no shortage of loud opinions to be heard — whether from politicians, priests or just about everyone. But, if we set aside personal beliefs and political motivations, we can look toward philosophers as a starting point to find that abortion is completely ethical.
Thomson’s defense of abortion
American philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson argued that abortion is acceptable in her essay, “A Defense of Abortion.” Using persuasive techniques and logic, she draws an argument for abortion as she invites readers to dive into an ethical thought experiment known as “the famous violinist.”
The woman in the thought experiment was drugged and kidnapped by the society of music lovers, and she is now tethered to a world-famous violinist with a fatal kidney disease. A doctor then explains that the subject’s healthy kidney can heal the violinist, but only if both people remain attached to one another for about 40 weeks.
“We’re sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you — we would never have permitted it if we had known,” the doctor explains. “Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person’s right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot be unplugged from him.”
First consider how absurd it would be to link a healthy living person to an unhealthy person for such a duration of time — particularly when realizing the first person wasn’t given a choice in the matter. While the doctor acknowledges that the way this came to be is wrong, he also explains that the second person’s right to live is more important than the first person’s right to comfort.
We need more than a rape exception
Thomson’s experiment is an allusion to children conceived in cases of rape. The standard objection to abortion argues that if someone behaves irresponsibly, like by having unprotected sex, then they are required to deal with the consequences. If we took Thomson’s argument out of the context of her full essay, it’d be fair to say that only in cases where the pregnancy was a direct result of a sexual assault would abortion be permissible.
But a rape exception isn’t enough, because to say a woman must first be violated in order to have control of her own body completely eliminates the vitality of autonomy. Autonomy, according to Immanuel Kant, often regarded as the “father of modern philosophy,” is “therefore the ground of the dignity of human nature and of every rational nature.”
Kant was not speaking directly about abortion, but his ideas have been used in countless explorations of moral obligations regarding pregnancy. Simply put, stating a woman must be violated in order to have control over her own body completely eliminates the vitality of autonomy. As Kant argues, autonomy is not a secondary consideration. It is the entire foundation of the human condition. To minimize our autonomy is to minimize our humanity.
Consider the mother’s wellbeing
Finally, Thomson challenges readers with a second thought experiment. Imagine a mother is an occupant of a tiny house with a rapidly growing child that will ultimately “crush” her. This experiment acts as a metaphor for the physical and mental effects parenting a child can have on the mother. When keeping a child can result in severe psychological damage — or in rare cases like pregnancy-induced sepsis, death — the primary priority must be to consider the welfare of the mother.
Philosopher John Locke influenced Thomas Jefferson to write the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as unalienable rights in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. In cases where granting life to another might eliminate a mother’s fundamental rights, terminating a pregnancy constitutes no ethical violation.