(Adam Gianforte, middle, wins high honors)
Petra Junior, Adam Gianforte took top honors in the senior division at the Gallatin Valley Right to Life Oratory competition. He went on to win the Montana Right to Life Oratory competition in Helena on March 13th. He is quailifed to represent Montana at the National Right to Life competition in June.
His speech refuted an argument publised by philosopher Judity Thompson in 1971, just prior to the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. The speech is provided below for your review.
Confronting Judith Thompson
Allow me to read an excerpt of an article by American philosopher, Judith Jarvis Thompson. “...let me ask you to imagine this. You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with...a famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has...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?”
What I just read comes from an article that ran in a 1971 publication of the journal, Philosophy and Public Affairs. It is a thought experiment that poses a serious difficulty to the anti-abortion case. The situation set up here by the author, Ms. Thompson, is analogous to the predicament of a rape victim. The kidnapped person in the story, of course, corresponds to the victim; the violinist, to the unborn child. In both situations, a person is forced against her will to directly support another human life.
An interesting point to recognize here is that Ms. Thompson accepts, for the sake of argument, that a fetus is a human life. One of the key issues discussed in the abortion debate is the question of whether or not an embryo is a human life. However, this article shows that even if it were somehow possible to determine beyond all doubt that a fetus is a human life, abortion, in some instances at least, would not be defeated. For the sake of this speech I will simply assume that a fetus is a human life as Ms. Thompson does, though it is a difficult issue to determine that should be addressed.
But back to Ms. Thompson’s argument. What do you think? Does it seem right that the person should be forced to act as a life-support system for the violinist? I am going to discuss four problems with this metaphor. I'll begin by clarifying what is meant by a right to life. Next, I will discuss an important difference between the person connected to the violinist and a pregnant woman. Then I will present a counter-example to Ms. Thompson's argument, followed by a moral issue that is at stake here.
First of all, it is important to draw a distinction here between the right to life, and the right to whatever is needed to keep someone alive. In law, these are examples of negative and positive rights. British philosopher, Philippa Foot, puts it this way, “There are rights to noninterference, which form one class of rights; and there are also rights to goods or services, which are different. And corresponding to these two types of rights are, on the one hand, the duty not to interfere, called a ‘negative duty’, and on the other the duty to provide the goods or services, called a ‘positive duty’.” A pregnant woman has the negative duty of noninterference to not kill her child. In law, this outweighs the kidnapped person's positive duty to provide for the violinist. Foot sums it up as follows, “The case of abortion is of course completely different [than the case of the violinist]. The fetus is not in jeopardy because it is in its mother’s womb; it is merely dependent on her in the way children are dependent on their parents for food. An abortion, therefore, originates the sequence which ends in the death of the fetus, and the destruction comes about 'through the agency' of the mother who seeks the abortion.”
The violinist analogy is inaccurate on a second level. A pregnant woman is not confined to a hospital bed for nine months as the person in the story is. She is free to continue working and living life. And of course, just as the kidnapped person is free after nine months, so too, the mother is free to give up her child for adoption. Even if she were forced into the situation, as in the case of rape, a pregnancy is thus a small inconvenience when a life is on the line.
Thirdly, it is important to keep in mind that the example of the violinist is merely an analogy for abortion and should not be equated with it. As a thought experiment, we could come up with counter-analogies. Consider this, for instance: imagine a two year old boy who is the child of a rape victim. His mother decides that he is too much of a burden and doesn't want to care for him anymore. Would it be acceptable for her to stop feeding that child until he dies? Of course not! Anyone who knew of that situation would do everything in their power to save the two year old. Why would we do any less to save an unborn child that a mother plans to abort?
Let me close with one last point. So far, I have been mainly focusing on legal issues and rights, but let's look at it realistically. Ms. Thompson's thought experiment weighs the temporary inconvenience of a mother against an innocent human life. Regardless of a mother's rights
—which I hope I have shown don't allow her to abort her child—would she not be willing to bear the difficulties of pregnancy and perhaps motherhood to save a life? We are not dealing with some demeaning, parasitic attachment of two strangers, but what could become a beautiful bond between mother and child. When discussing the very lives of children, issues of personal freedom seem trivial.
Ms. Thompson's argument for abortion simply misrepresents these key ideas of relationship and the value of human life. It misrepresents pregnancy and motherhood. And it misrepresents the very concept of right to life. Abortion, regardless of the circumstances, results in the death of an unborn child and must not be tolerated.
Bibliography
1. Alcorn, Randy. ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments. Multnomah Books, 2000
2. Thompson, Judith Jarvis. Philosophy & Public Affairs. Vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1971)
3. Foot, Philippa. Killing and Letting Die. Blackwell Publishers 1984
ADAM - CONGRATULATIONS ON A JOB WELL DONE!
