Friday, November 10, 2006

Thomson on abortion

Evan, after you mentioned J.J. Thomson's classic 1971 essay on abortion -- rather prosaically titled "A Defense of Abortion" -- I pulled a copy of a legal-philosophy anthology off my shelf, to refresh my memory of it.

She raises the self-defense issue this way:

Suppose you find yourself in a tiny house with a growing child. I mean a very tiny house, and a rapidly growing child -- you are already up against the wall of the house and in a few minutes you'll be crushed to death. The child, on the other hand, won't be crushed to death ...

The discussion involving waking up and finding you've been kidnapped and attached to a dying, renowned violinist who needs your organs (kidnapped by the Society of Music Lovers, no less!), arises in a context slightly different from self-defense. Thomson says that while it would be nice if you agreed to stay bedridden for nine months, or longer, so the virtuoso might live, you are under no obligation to do so. For her, bringing an unwanted fetus to term is like being a Good Samaritan.

Whatever you think of the essay's conclusions, it's clearly brilliant as rhetoric: Once you read about those thought experiments, you can't get them out of your head. (The whole essay assumes that a fetus has the full rights of a human, and Thomson memorably ends by saying: "A very early abortion is surely not the killing of a person, and so is not dealt with by anything I have said here.")

In my anthology, Thomson is paired with a reply by the legal philosopher John Finnis, which is formidable and contains some memorable lines, too. I'd quote one involving Henry Fonda, and how aspects of his personality were evident in his genes "at the moment of his conception" -- but it requires too much context.

Posted by Christopher Shea at 09:36 AM

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