Thomson's Violinist Analogy for Abortion

The Stranger versus Offspring Objection Con thinks that the moral implications change in the modified version of Thomson's analogy where the violinist turns out to be your biological offspring that you never knew existed. However, even if our feelings of this modified version were to change, that does not show that it would be morally impermissible for you to unplug. Indeed, from the looks of it, even Con himself doesn't claim that you would be violating the violinist's right to life if you decided to unplug in this modified version where he is biologically related to you. At best, he claims that unplugging from someone you are biologically related to is worse than unplugging from someone you have no relation to. That judgment may be true, but it does not show that you would be violating the violinist's right to life if you disconnected yourself from him.In response to the woman in Japan, Con claims that being biologically related is a sufficient condition for responsibility towards someone, but not a necessary one. He then says that the woman becomes a protector of her fetus like Carl, from Up, who, in his house thousands of feet in the air, finds Russell on his front porch. He then says Carl can’t push Russell off his house to his death, claiming that he has no obligation to Russell. I have three responses to this. Firstly, Con is now trying to ground responsibility towards a child without appealing biological relatedness. Instead, he is now claiming that what grounds responsibility towards a child is the fact that the adult is the only one that can protect them. But being a protector of someone has nothing to do with being biologically related to that person. Therefore I don't think this a good response to the case of the woman in Japan. Secondly, Carl pushing Russell off the roof in no way resembles the violinist analogy. In Thomson's story, you are choosing not to go through the serious burden of letting someone use your body for nine months and are discontinuing life support that you don't have an obligation to provide. In the movie Up Russell is not using Carl's body in the way that your body is being used in the violinist case. As such, the example fails to provide a justification for this protectionist view of responsibility towards a child. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, this response by Con leads to absurdities. This is because if we accept this protectionist view of obligations towards others, then that would lead to the conclusion that it would be morally impermissible for you to unplug from the violinist; even if he turned out NOT to be biologically related to you. The reason why is because in Thomson's thought experiment, you are the only one that can protect the violinist from certain death. If we were take my opponent’s view that the woman in Japan becomes a “de facto guardian” of the child, one can just as easily say that she becomes a de facto guardian of the violinist. In order to demonstrate what I've just said, let me quote Con's response to the woman in Japan, but replace the word "child" with "[violinist]". Observe: "Pro’s second response to my argument, regarding the woman in Japan, shows that the biological connection is a sufficient condition to ground parental responsibility, not a necessary one. In the case of the woman in Japan, she becomes a “de facto guardian” of the [violinist]. The [violinist] has a fundamental right to life, and the woman, even though the [violinist] is not hers, now finds herself as the sole protector of the [violinist]. She becomes similar to Carl, from Up, who, in his house thousands of feet in the air, finds Russell on his front porch. He can’t push Russell off his house to his death, claiming that he has no obligation to Russell. He has an obligation to care for Russell because Russell is a [violinist] and Carl is the only one in the vicinity who can care for Russell." So, if we believe that the woman in Japan can't abort her unrelated embryo, then you can't unplug from the unrelated violinist in Thomson's original story. After all, once you were hooked up to the violinist you became his “de facto guardian” and are the only one in the vicinity who can care for him. But surely the opponent of abortion will not hold the view that you would be violating the stranger violinist's right to life if you unplugged from him. Such a view is extremely counterintuitive and implausible. Con claims that I have not provided grounds for what is the basis of a parent's responsibility in the case where your child takes food from your fridge. However, I already answered this question earlier in the debate. I claimed that what grounds a parent's responsibility towards their child is the fact that they have assumed guardianship over them. That's why it's not theft for your own child to take food from your fridge. Con claims that I have not responded adequately to Michael Tooley's scenario, because I haven't said what grounds a woman's obligation not to kill her baby after birth. But again, I already explained why Thomson's argument doesn't justify infanticide. A fetus after viability or an infant at birth cannot be justly killed on her argument, because those would be like cases where the violinist has been healed. Moreover, Thomson's argument does not claim that there are no general positive duties to assist others. It requires only that whatever duty there is to assist, it is not so strong as to require you to remain plugged into the violinist for nine months. [1] So, Thomson's argument does not mean the woman on the deserted island would have no duty to assist her newborn. Thomson did claim that if she was in the hospital and all that was needed to save her life was the touch of Henry Fonda’s hand, he would not be morally obligated to fly out and touch her. But a defender of her argument need not hold to a view of rights as strong as her own. One can believe in moral rights and duties and accept her violinist analogy, without believing that there is no duty to assist others at a small cost to yourself. I conclude that the Stranger versus Offspring Objection is unsuccessful, and that it fails to undermine Thomson's argument.The Weirdness Objection Con claims that I misunderstood the objection by Wilcox. The objection is not from weirdness, but from the fact that the violinist story is basically an impossible situation whereas pregnancy is normal. But again, the fact that the violinist analogy would be a rare situation is irrelevant. As long as the thought experiment or analogy is logically possible, it can serve as a good example to test whether an idea makes sense of not. Thought experiments and analogies are absolutely essential to philosophy and if one can simply dismiss them out of hand just because they are unlikely scenarios, then virtually all thought experiments that have ever been used in philosophy will have to be thrown out. Indeed, philosophy as a whole would probably be rendered meaningless. This is completely unacceptable. Con claims that Wilcox doesn’t make an appeal to nature in support of his objection, but rather appeals to ethical systems. But if an ethical system is to be considered satisfactory it must take into account both real and hypothetical situations. Therefore this doesn't mean that Thomson's analogy cannot be used to test the validity of claims made through a particular moral system. I conclude that the objection made by Wilcox fails to discredit the violinist analogy. The Responsibility Objection At the start of his response to me, Con claims that in no sense can someone argue a woman is responsible for the existence of the unborn child, but not responsible for the child being in the mother’s womb. But I never argued that the woman is not responsible for the fetus being in the womb. Clearly, she is responsible for it being there. What I said was the woman is responsible for the fact that it exists, but she is not responsible for the neediness of the fetus. Con claims that a woman who gets pregnant through consensual sex is like my analogy where you cause the violinist to develop a kidney ailment by poisoning his food. But this is false. The case where the violinist develops a kidney ailment because you poisoned his food is different than a woman conceiving a fetus through consensual sex. The reason why is because in the former case, you poisoning the violinist, you cause him to be worse off than he was before. This is because prior to you poisoning his food, the violinist was healthy. So, because your voluntary act harmed him, you have an obligation to help. Pregnancy through consensual sex is different, though. By conceiving a fetus the woman does not cause it to be worse off than it was before because, prior to her having sex, the fetus did not exist. If the woman made the fetus worse off by conceiving it, then it follows that the non-performance of that act must have left the fetus better off, or at least not worse off. [2] But this is impossible because if the woman had abstained from intercourse, the fetus would have never come into existence. But if the fetus was not made worse off, then the responsibility objection fails. This is because if the woman did not make the fetus worse off, then there is nothing to ground her obligation to assist it. Con objected to this analogy by claiming that you are not actually responsible for the violinist's existence, but rather for his continued existence. However, Con overlooks that I claimed you are responsible for the fact that he NOW exist. Responsible for the fact that someone now exist is similar enough to being responsible for someone's existence that it can't make that much of a difference morally. Again, let's suppose my response to this objection is mistaken. This would still justify abortion in the case of rape. So, even if I have only shown abortion to be permissible in rape cases, I will still have upheld the resolution given the full topic of the debate. Sources in comments