Summary: A Defense Of Abortion By Judith Thomson

For this week, we focused on an article entitled, “A Defense of Abortion,” by Judith Thomson. The article covered the topic of abortion and used an interesting analogy to help put a picture to the views and opinion of abortion that the Author has. Thomson’s analogy painted a picture of someone in good health being bed ridden for nine months because they were selected against their will to help keep a famous violinist alive. The scenario painted by the author says that you (the person bedridden) is the only person that is able to keep this violinist alive, while still being unconscious, but still alive. It the scenario was supposed to put the reader in the shoes of the mother that found herself pregnant and now is tied for 9 months to what basically

Thompson states that it does not start at conception and compares the immediate result of conception to that of an acorn long before it becomes a tree. For the sake of argument, and to avoid many potential rabbit holes, Thompson says that the article assumes that life does in fact begin at conception. In the end the Thompson argues that the woman has a moral right to disconnect herself from the child just like the individual who is connected to the violinist is able to chose to disconnect themselves from the violinist. Thompson follows up by saying, though the mother may disconnect herself she can not kill the baby, just like the individual can not kill the violinist but only disconnect. If the disconnect leads to a death, that is okay, but if they are able to survive after disconnect nothing more is able to be done. That is to say that if the fetus would be able to survive outside of the mother than nothing can be done to it, but if not, the mother should be able to disconnect herself without it being considered murder. Although I think this is a very powerful and well constructed