Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion": Some Critical Points

           In her 1971 essay, Judith Jarvis Thomson offers a series of analogies in defense of the permissibility of abortion for women in some cases. The most elaborate and perhaps well developed analogy she relies on involves a violinist for whom Thomson urges the reader to imagine she has been hooked up to, the point of which is that the violinist depends on the reader for his continual survival for the next nine months. The persuasiveness of the analogy hinges on the alleged comparison between this specific case and the general moral criteria relevant for judging the (moral) permissibility of having an abortion. In very short summary, and with the risk of oversimplifying Thomson's argument, Thomson argues that just as the violinist does not have the right against the reader to demand nine months of the reader's time and use of the reader's body, so, too does the fetus lack a right against a woman pregnant with that fetus for the woman not to remove the fetus from her body for the nine months duration in which the fetus depends on the woman for its survival. Here, I will mostly concede for the sake of argument that Thomson's analogy is successful -- that is, I will concede it except for one particular weak point which I believe needs much further argument.
           To her credit, Thomson seems to recognize the weak point I have in mind. But I think she seems to underestimate the extent to which it threatens her argument. And this point in question is that one might challenge the effectiveness of Thomson's violinist analogy on the basis that what is important here is not merely the fact that the fetus is a person, but that it is a person for whom the woman contemplating abortion has a special kind of responsibility for issuing from the fact that she is its mother. (Here, following Thomson's own "for the sake of argument" concession, I will just assume that human personhood begins at conception and that therefore the fetus in question is a person.)
           In response to this potential query, Thomson argues that parents do not have a "special responsibility" for a person of the sort required in the question of abortion, unless they have assumed it. Here, in her own words,

"... if a set of parents do not try to prevent pregnancy, do not obtain an abortion, and then at the time of birth of the child do not put it up for adoption, but rather take it home with them, then they have assumed responsibility for it, they have given it rights, and they cannot now withdraw support from it at the cost of its life because they now find it difficult to go on providing for it (Thomson, 395)."

Presumably, Thomson means to suggest that the parents give to the child certain rights which the child did not have prior to this decision. But what rights does she mean here? For surely the child will have a general right to life, even if this right is not inviolable or unconditional. And surely the parents have some special responsibility to the child just in virtue of their biological tie to it? But this is precisely the point Thomson denies. For

"[if] they have taken all reasonable precautions against having a child, they do not simply by virtue of their biological relationship to the child who comes into existence have a special responsibility for it. They may wish to assume responsibility for it, or they may not wish to (Thomson, 395)." 

Here, one might ask, does Thomson mean to say that the parents have no rights they owe to the child just in virtue of their biological tie, or does she mean the more modest claim that "the parents have no rights they owe to the child by virtue of which they would have the duty to preserve the child's life regardless of personal cost or risk"?
          Presumably, she would mean only the former; for the latter appears pretty clearly ad hoc, as does any slightly weakened version of the latter -- such as "the parents have no rights they owe to the child by virtue of which they would have the duty to preserve the child's life regardless of significant personal cost or risk." I say it is ad hoc because there is no reason that Thomson has given as to why parents should lack just these specific responsibilities for their (biological) children, i.e., why just these specific responsibilities are to be excluded, while having other rights they owe to them in virtue of this relationship.
         But it is not because the parents have a biological relationship to the child (qua biological relationship) that, according to Thomson, they don't have any duties to the child. Rather, it is because the parents do not otherwise have a choice over whether they enter into such a rights-giving relationship. And, so Thomson argues, they do not have such duties to the child unless they willingly decide to enter into a relationship with the child, some consequences of which are that the parents now have a duty to try to preserve the child's life.
         Whether this last principle is a good one, however, depends on the further assumption that one has any duties to another only if one voluntarily enters into a "rights-giving" relationship with another. That is, one has duties for another only if one agrees to take on the responsibilities that would imply these sorts of rights to another. (For either this criteria for someone's owing rights to another applies to all cases which involve one party owing the other rights or it does not. If it does, we have the principle in question. If it does not, what reason is there for excluding some cases in which one party owes the other rights while including others?) But this principle is obviously quite implausible. For example, it is clearly false that someone has a right against me not to harm him only if I freely enter into it. For surely this individual has this right against me whether I consent to it or acknowledge it or not. But, then, it is false that one has duties to another only if one voluntarily enters into a rights-giving relationship with this other person.
         And if 'parents have no rights they owe to their child just in virtue of their biological tie to that child' is true only if 'one has duties to another only if one voluntarily enters into a rights-giving relationship with this other person' is true, one must conclude that the former principle if false. Moreover, if the moderate principles we have examined are unacceptable because they are ad hoc, Thomson must either propose some other moderate principle that is not ad hoc (which I do not believe looks very promising) or concede that the parents owe specific rights to their children just in virtue of their biological tie to them. And if there is no moderate principle that Thomson can muster, she must concede that such a right from parents to children extends to either (at best) the duty to try to protect their biological children from harm even at significant personal risk or sacrifice or (at worst) the duty to try to protect their biological children from harm regardless of the personal risk or sacrifice involved. 

*The citation is from Judith Jarvis Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion," in Today's Moral Issues: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Daniel Bonevac. (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1999).