Analysis: A Defense Of Abortion By Judith Jarvis Thomson

Judith Jarvis Thomson describes a fetus as being as much of a moral person as anyone, but he or she is not in fact entitled to using the mother’s precious resources. The idea of bodily autonomy is heavily stressed in her paper, “A Defense of Abortion”. Most of those who are against abortion tend to use the point that a fetus is a person as their major leg to stand on. Thomson argues that they fail to discuss what is impermissible about abortion. She provides strong reasoning for why abortion should be allowed and still makes the distinction that some cases should not permit it. “While I do argue that abortion is not impermissible, I do not argue that it is always permissible.(345).” Again and again the notion that there exists a right to life for all people is continually brought up throughout her rationale. Thoman’s arguments are centered around the example of a violinist. She tells us to imagine we were to be connected to a world famous violinist suffering from kidney failure via a machine that is keeping this musician alive. Your health is not affected, but it is required that you stay attached to the violinist for a …show more content…
This case would be where the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother. Those who do not even condone abortion in this case feel that aborting the baby would be murdering an innocent child. This brings up the interesting point of the alternative of just letting the mother die, which is seen as better. Thomson, however, thinks that a woman has a right to protect her body from a threat, even if this means killing her unborn child. She goes on to use a house analogy, where the mother's body is a house, rented to mother and child but owned solely by the mother. “A woman surely can defend her life against the threat to it posed by the unborn child, even if doing so involves its death(339).” In other words she can evict the child if she pleases to do