In the fall of 1971, prior to Roe v. Wade, Judith Jarvis Thomson wrote A Defense of Abortion. Ms. Thomson, for the sake of argument only, accepts the premise that life begins at conception. She then argues, clearly and mercilessly, that even this extreme position still does not give anyone the right to violate a woman's right to the integrity of her body by forcing her to carry a pregnancy in lieu of an abortion.
The recent push for Personhood Amendments has made Thomson's arguments as relevant today as they were pre-Roe v. Wade. Her logic eviscerates the claim that such Personhood Amendments would necessarily ban most forms of contraception and all forms of abortion.
I urge you to read the whole thing. I have quoted as much below as fair use allows.
Hat tip to Marihilda for the link to this article in the diary Fetal Personhood Fight is Here To Stay, Time to Draw a Line by Something the Dog Said.
First, Ms. Thomson sets up a compelling hypothetical example:
I propose, then, that we grant that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. How does the argument go from here? Something like this, I take it. Every person has a right to life. So the fetus has a right to life. No doubt the mother has a right to decide what shall happen in and to her body; everyone would grant that. But surely a person's right to life is stronger and more stringent than the mother's right to decide what happens in and to her body, and so outweighs it. So the fetus may not be killed; an abortion may not be performed.
It sounds plausible. But now let me ask you to imagine this. You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you." Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. "Tough luck. I agree. but now you've got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him." I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, which suggests that something really is wrong with that plausible-sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago.
She then uses this hypothetical situation to demonstrate, point by point, that the anti-abortion principle is completely unsupportable no matter when independent life begins.
Of course, most of us pro-choice types don't believe that a unique human life begins at conception - as Ms. Thomson puts it, "the acorn is not the oak tree." She doesn't really believe this either.
After rejecting the argument that the life of the fertilized zygote is of more value than the woman's right to bodily integrity, she then moves on to the ethics of refusing to provide life support to this fertilized zygote, and whether or not a third party can intervene to act on the woman's desires.
Indeed, with one rather striking class of exceptions, no one in any country in the world is legally required to do anywhere near as much as this for anyone else. The class of exceptions is obvious. My main concern here is not the state of the law in respect to abortion, but it is worth drawing attention to the fact that in no state in this country is any man compelled by law to be even a Minimally Recent Samaritan to any person; there is no law under which charges could be brought against the thirty eight who stood by while Kitty Genovese died. By contrast, in most states in this country women are compelled by law to be not merely Minimally Decent Samaritans, but Good Samaritans to unborn persons inside them. This doesn't by itself settle anything one way or the other, because it may well be argued that there should be laws in this country as there are in many European countries--compelling at least Minimally Decent Samaritanism. But it does show that there is a gross injustice in the existing state of the law. And it shows also that the groups currently working against liberalization of abortion laws, in fact working toward having it declared unconstitutional for a state to permit abortion, had better start working for the adoption of Good Samaritan laws generally, or earn the charge that they are acting in bad faith.
I should think, myself, that Minimally Decent Samaritan laws would be one thing, Good Samaritan laws quite another, and in fact highly improper. But we are not here concerned with the law. What we should ask is not whether anybody should be compelled by law to be a Good Samaritan, but whether we must accede to a situation in which somebody is being compelled--by nature, perhaps--to be a Good Samaritan. We have, in other words, to look now at third-party interventions. I have been arguing that no person is morally required to make large sacrifices to sustain the life of another who has no right to demand them, and this even where the sacrifices do not include life itself; we are not morally required to be Good Samaritans or anyway Very Good Samaritans to one another. But what if a man cannot extricate himself from such a situation? What if he appeals to us to extricate him? It seems to me plain that there are cases in which we can, cases in which a Good Samaritan would extricate him. There you are, you were kidnapped, and nine years in bed with that violinist lie ahead of you. You have your own life to lead. You are sorry, but you simply cannot see giving up so much of your life to the sustaining of his. You cannot extricate yourself, and ask us to do so. I should have thought that--in light of his having no right to the use of your body--it was obvious that we do not have to accede to your being forced to give up so much. We can do what you ask. There is no injustice to the violinist in our doing so.
What I liked so much about this article was that it pointed out why arguments about when life begins are simply not relevant. It is the woman's right to bodily integrity that rightly takes precedence no matter when independent life begins. If an eight month old fetus puts a pregnant woman's life in danger, the woman's life takes precedence.
This is where present-day Catholic theology on abortion goes wrong: it assumes that the "innocent unborn" takes precedence over the "sinful woman" in every case. Instead, this argument shows that while the Church can extol the virtues of providing life support to every fertilized zygote and encourage its members to provide the support, the Church cannot compel anyone - especially anyone not Catholic - to provide this life support. As with all acts of charity, the moral decision - and the eternal consequences - depend upon the dictates of individual conscience and circumstance.
To take her arguments even further, denying a woman contraceptives is another way to violate that woman's right to determine what happens with her own body. It's dragging her into that hotel room and binding her so that she's helpless to prevent the violinist from tying into her kidneys.