An interesting analogy about abortion

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On another thread, someone who is doing some type of essay came across this analogy while doing research for it.:

“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 never would 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.”

The idea is that every rational person will agree that you should be allowed to unplug yourself from the violinist. It may be considered selfish and not necessarily a nice thing to do, but it should be morally permissible.

Now, as I’m sure a lot of people have already guessed, the analogy was used in defense of abortion, (if fact, in the article “A Defense of Abortion” by Judith Jarvis Thomson, 1971) and was meant to parallel the situation of a woman who has made the decision to “unplug” a fetus from her body.

So I’m curious:
Should you be allowed to unplug yourself from the violinist? If not, why?
If you can unplug yourself from the violinist, should a woman be allowed to have an abortion if she so chooses? And if you agree that it’s OK to unplug the violinist, but don’t think it’s OK to unplug the fetus, then what makes the two cases different?
 
To tell you the truth I’m not either… because I couldn’t do it. I don’t care if I was kidnapped or not, I could NOT disconnect knowing that I’d kill the person. It wouldn’t matter to me if it was a violinist or a bum off the street. BUT, I do think that the person who was connected against his/her will would have the right to do so. I don’t feel the situation is completely the same with a fetus though. The fetus deserves to live either way.
 
I remember that from my philosophy class. Of course, every time someone asked me how to combat this I’d simply just say: “A baby doesn’t kidnap you or force you to do anything. It’s the most innocent being in the world. You chose to have a baby by having sex. It wasn’t his choice. Therefore, your argument is BS.”

Sometimes people would ask me about rape and I’d flat out tell them that less than 5% of the abortions occur from rape. Plus, you can always put them up for adoption instead of murdering them in cold blood.

Our professor was kind of an atheist, so I would always respond: “Anyone with half a brain wouldn’t compare the two.”
 
The analogy doesn’t hold logically.

In the first instance, the violinist (or dependant) chose to hook up to his life support mechanism (you). Therefore his choice may have been a bad one. His life wasn’t taken from him. The option he chose was. Tough luck.

In instance #2, the baby (or dependant) had no choice. The life support mechanism chose to give life to the baby (dependant) AND THEN TAKE IT AWAY!

I guess maybe it IS all about choice.
 
The argument here is that your right to control your body trumps the violinists right to live. Ok, suppose that the violinist was hooked up in such a way that the only way you could unplug him was to tear hisbody into bits. In that case couldn’t the violinist tell you that you have no right to dice him up, because that would involve interfering with his body?

In order to abort a child you generally have to slice and dice their little bodies up. If the mother has a right to her own body, the child also has a right to it’s own body. The only way you could perform an abortion in that case would be if you used a method that did not in any way touch the child’s body. Bear in mind too, that the placenta is an organ of the child’s body, genetically speaking. First show me how you are going to detach the placenta from the lining of the womb without doing the slightest bit of injury to it. This means absolutely no tears, cuts, or abrasions. In fact this argument strengthens the case against abortion rather than weakens it.

There are a lot of other arguments that could be made against the analogy, but I think I will stop here.
 
Oh you’re forgetting that the violinist is in a coma, unable to speak or make that decision for himself.
 
I’m not sure I completely understand your reasoning.

In the original analogy the violinist violated your body without your consent (or choice) in order to hook up in the first place. To bring this to it’s foolish conclusion… If I had to dice him up to detach him (because I didn’t agree to attach in the first place), so be it.

For the analogy to hold, the baby would have to be the “violinist”, and attach him or herself to an unsuspecting mother.

As I originally stated, the analogies are illogical and mutually exclusive. They are in no way shape or form similar.
 
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TZiggy:
The analogy doesn’t hold logically.

In the first instance, the violinist (or dependant) chose to hook up to his life support mechanism (you). Therefore his choice may have been a bad one. His life wasn’t taken from him. The option he chose was. Tough luck.

In instance #2, the baby (or dependant) had no choice. The life support mechanism chose to give life to the baby (dependant) AND THEN TAKE IT AWAY!

I guess maybe it IS all about choice.
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The fact that the unborn baby had no choice is not as relevant as the fact that the mother of the unborn baby DID have a choice whether to engage in behavior KNOW to result in pregnancy. By choosing to engage in such behavior one also chooses to accept the risk of the outcome of such behavior even if one does not intend that outcome.

A classic case presented in law is one where a construction worker is working on a roof and, while working, tosses debris off the roof onto a sidewalk. While not intending to hurt anyone, he in fact kills someone by hitting him on the head with a brick. Is he guilty of a homocide? Yes, because the result of his action was forseeable and he should have acted accordingly. He bears responsibility for the outcome.

In the present example of the kidney comparison to the pregancy, the kidney “donor” did not have responsibility because his attachment to the “donee” was not an act of the Donor but was the act of third parties whereas the act of “conceiving” was the act of the mother and therefore does incur responsiblity in the same manner as the construction worker throwing bricks off the roof. The outcome was foreseeable and, even though not desired, still incurs to the actor.

IOW: The Mother WAS the actor that caused dependency. The kidney Donor WAS NOT the actor that caused dependency. Responsibility falls on the actor, not on the non-actor.
 
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TZiggy:
I’m not sure I completely understand your reasoning.

In the original analogy the violinist violated your body without your consent (or choice) in order to hook up in the first place. To bring this to it’s foolish conclusion… If I had to dice him up to detach him (because I didn’t agree to attach in the first place), so be it.

For the analogy to hold, the baby would have to be the “violinist”, and attach him or herself to an unsuspecting mother.

As I originally stated, the analogies are illogical and mutually exclusive. They are in no way shape or form similar.
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My understanding of the original analogy was that the violinist was unconscious. It was the Societ of Music Lovers that attached him to you. The violinist was innocent in every way. Since the analogy is intended to justify “detaching” a child from its mothers womb “innocent as a baby” would be the most appropriate phrase. The Society of Music Lovers was the guilty party. The violinist can claim that he is just as much a victim of the situation as you.

Therefore, if you object to the actions of the Society of Music Lovers as violating your bodily integrity, then the violinist has at least as much of a right to object to your decision to violate his bodily integrity by dicing him up.
 
As others have said, we generally don’t think the baby hooked itself to you voluntarily and without your consent.

This presupposes that sex should not have the consequence of pregnancy, and that any such consequence is strictly without your consent. Shame on that awful baby to attach itself to you, but oh that’s right. The baby is not conscious. I guess it’s shame on Mother Nature, no, shame on God for allowing that child you generated to hook itself to the uterus.

By my calculations, this analogy presupposes hostility toward God and human fertility. If an atheist uses the argument, it still presupposes hostility toward human fertility.

Do we know whether that argument was successful? It really is pretty stupid and contrived. Maybe I’ll see if I can come up with a better one.

Alan
 
Wasn’t there also an analogy of a robber breaking into a home in that article? My favourite part was at the end when she semi-recanted because she had to give herself an out. 😃 …OOOOH!!! AND, letting a child freeze to death because it has no right to the coat, although, it is nice of the person to share the coat…but, that person doesn’t HAVE to because it’s that person’s coat. This is a dumb article. Pay no mind to it.
 
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Loboto-Me:
On another thread, someone who is doing some type of essay came across this analogy while doing research for it.:
If you can unplug yourself from the violinist, should a woman be allowed to have an abortion if she so chooses? And if you agree that it’s OK to unplug the violinist, but don’t think it’s OK to unplug the fetus, then what makes the two cases different?
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this illogical case has been posed for years by the pro-aborts and has absolutely nothing in common with the situation faced by a women with an unplanned pregnancy. She took an active, deliberate, consensual (except in the 1 or 2% of cases resulting from rape or incest) role in the action which resulted in pregnancy. She engaged in an action whose sole biological purpose is to generate a child. She did it in full knowledge that a pregnancy might result, even though she may have taken stepts to prevent it (half of all abortions are sought because of contraceptive failure).

Lying down to go to bed at night is not an action which commonly leads to being hooked up to a victim of kidney disease. In any case, whether the person is a famous concernt violinist has absolutely nothing to do with the value of his life or his dignity as a human being, or the dignity of the host. This entire analogy is useless in this debate because it does not present an situation analogous to pregnancy.
 
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Loboto-Me:
Oh you’re forgetting that the violinist is in a coma, unable to speak or make that decision for himself.
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actually in a good analogy, the violinist would be “kicking” and moving around, indicating that he was alive and well…😉
 
It’s agreed. This argument sucks. Judith Thomson must have been drunk when she wrote it.
 
I will give the pro-abort who came up with that analogy credit. She at least acknowledged that abortion is killing an innocent human being. A point rarely conceded by pro-aborts.
 
This analogy appears to be more and more popular among younger women these days, especially those in higher education. I will not give any links to the sites, because they are literally enough to make you vomit, but there are very popular sites lately that go even further in making women who get pregnant (called, of course, breeders, not women) into some sort of subhuman label, categorizing babies as “cro-ch droppings”, and vilifying mothers and children as selfish, stupid, “wastes of air and space”. . .I could go on but probably you’re as nauseated as I am. . .and, no surprise, ANY PREGNANCY, not just an “unwanted” one, is dealt with as a “disgusting parasite” (the unborn child) being a total misery, horror, a drain upon the mother, an “attack” on the mother’s body, and some even go so far that they simultaneously assert that the fetus is “a blob of unconscious tissue” yet it MALEVOLENTLY ATTACKS the mother’s body. Yeah, it’s not a person or anything, it’s an attacking virus of death. . .

Gen X women are exposed to this–bombarded with this!!–daily.

Pray, pray, and pray some more.
Mary our Mother, forgive your children. . .
 
That’s disgusting!

They fail to remember that THEY were one of those “droppings”. I wonder what it is that raised them up from being droppings to being humans?
 
Oh, they remember. . .these poor women are so full of self loathing that they aren’t grateful they were even born, they are just full of scorn and contempt for all, even themselves. . .in fact, especially themselves.

A lot of links from those places are to the sort of “America is a vile place”, “Atheism rocks”, pornographic, or the sort of “humor” sites that only find humor in degradation of others, name-calling, depersonalizing, anarchistic, or acts of violence.

It is very depressing to think that so many of God’s beautiful children CHOOSE to wallow in slime, sin, and evil, and PREFER these to goodness and beauty and truth.
 
The analogies that I read about were as follows:
  • Rape = Violinist attached without consent.
  • Consentual = Violinist attached with consent, but the person changed their mind prior to the 9 month term.
In either case, the abortion is pre-viability. Nothing about the analogy relates to post-viability abortion.
 
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