Arguing Against Abortion

How the Violinist Argument is fundamentally flawed

I personally do not enjoy political discussions; after all, they mainly consist of empty rhetoric with neither side listening to the other.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the abortion battle that is escalating quite rapidly.

I have an article on this topic entitled “Philosophically Pro-Life” being considered for publication at another outlet.  In it, I showed the utilitarianism that is the foundation for pro-abortion philosophies.  I also argued that the terms pro-life and pro-choice need to be thrown out as overly ambiguous, in the interest of clarity.  After all, a pro-choice person in the area of abortion is often supportive of human life in other circumstances, and a pro-life person may be in support of the death penalty.  The label “pro-death” should be avoided as well, as that is unfeeling and may repel your conversation partner before any progress can be made.  I made the case for defining yourself in terms of the conversation as it is actually happening, thus calling the different sides “pro-abortion” and “anti-abortion”.  That keeps the discussion centered on the topic without giving much room to branch off into capital punishment, animal rights, etc. unless a sincere effort is made to escape the boundaries.  If you want to discuss the death penalty, then you divide the conversation participants with the pro and anti-death penalty labels.

In this article, I will examine Judith Jarvis Thompson’s pro-abortion Violinist Argument, analyze it, and show how it fails as an analogy.  It begins with a world-famous violinist needing someone to be attached to, in hope of helping him survive a serious illness.  “So the music lovers, in their zeal to save the violinist, find some random woman who happens to be the only person in the world with the right blood type. As she sleeps in bed, they hook her up to the violinist. The woman wakes up to find herself strapped down to the bed and attached as a form of life support to a complete stranger, essentially a human parasite, lying next to her. Unless she severs the tubes, she can’t move or go anywhere indefinitely, forced to have her energy siphoned off by the parasite. Most people’s (correct) reaction is that the woman has the right to free herself of the violinist, even though she knows that this will result in his death.” {1}

The flaws in the analogy ought to be readily discernible.  First, Thompson expects us to believe in the myth of “unplanned pregnancies”.  While an unexpected pregnancy can happen, it seems wrong to speak of an unplanned pregnancy, as the woman is engaging in an act that is intrinsically geared towards the production of human life.  The woman in Thompson’s argument is supposedly minding her own business, not at all doing anything that might lead her to be attached to the violinist.  In reality, something more than mere existence is required for pregnancy.

Second, the marital act is, in the majority of circumstances, a free act.  By engaging in the act, the reasonable couple opens themselves to the possibility of the gift of life, not at all reminiscent of the oblivion of Thompson’s coercive example.  In a normal situation (excluding rape and like instances), the presence of another human life is not a complete surprise but is the consequence of the act.

Third, Thompson sees the violinist as a parasite to the woman’s body.  While that would be technically true in her analogy, the reality is slightly different.  The CDC tells us: “A parasite is an organism that lives on or in a host organism and gets its food from or at the expense of its host”. {2}  That is certainly different from any pregnancy, and especially that of humans.  Normally, a parasite is of a separate species than the host, and almost always has detrimental effects on the same.  The unborn human is completely different.  It is demonstrably of the same species (has human DNA) of its parent, unlike the parasite/host relationship.  

Can the woman separate herself from the violinist?  Of course!  This whole situation was involuntary on her part and there is no moral obligation for her continued captivity (in Catholic moral theology, this would get into the issue of extraordinary means of preserving life).  If she is very altruistic, she might continue to allow herself to be used in this way.  However, the authors of the above-cited Stanford Students for Life article make an important distinction: the difference between a right not to be killed and a (false) right not to die.  Separating herself from the violinist would cause him to die, but she would not be morally culpable unless she directly caused his death through some other means (the students give the example of stabbing him before removing herself).  A pregnancy is not 100% involuntary on the part of the woman, and the act of abortion does not merely remove the mother from the baby, but kills it first.  Thompson did not include that part in her analogy, conveniently skirting this important point. 

All this, brief as it is, goes to show that Thompson’s analogy fails at the most fundamental levels.  More philosophical and in-depth analyses have been done, but I believe they give the argument more credit than it is due.  Many have tried to defend her argument, and offer different versions that supposedly remove the fundamental flaws, but these still have serious problems that denote a severe case of grasping at straws. {3}

In the intensifying conflict over the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade, we are seeing protests (some of which are illegal) filled with people displaying emotional responses to the potential loss of their “abortion rights”.  Trying to talk to these people would be pointless at the particular time of the protest, as they are not exactly in a mood which leaves them open to logic, reasoning, and a fruitful discussion.  For an already emotionally-charged situation as abortion, no more emotional drama needs to be added.  Once this storm blows over, however, and the issue is sent back to the states, strong anti-abortion advocates will be needed to persuade people of the answers to what William Lane Craig would consider two crucial questions: “Do human beings possess intrinsic moral value?  Is the developing fetus a human being?” {4}  I believe that this is the simplest way to start a Socratic dialogue on the abortion issue, as it begins with the most important and most fundamental questions, the answers to which prove everything.

God love you!

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1. “The Violinist Argument”, at Stanford Students for Life (2013), at prolife.stanford.edu.

2. “About Parasites”, at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at cdc.gov.

3. To see an example of such attempts, read Eric Wiland, “Unconscious Violinists and the Use of Analogies in Moral Argument”, Journal of Medical Ethics 26, no. 6 (2000), at jme.bmj.com

4. William Lane Craig, “Abortion and Presidential Politics”, at Reasonable Faith (16 June 2008), at reasonablefaith.org.

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