The Pro-Abortion "Violinist" Argument Fails in the Real World
/The violinist argument is one of the most famous pro-abortion arguments to exist and has been repeatedly used, updated, and criticized by proponents and opposition. In this hypothetical scenario, premiered in Philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “In Defense of Abortion” essay, you wake up in the hospital attached by machines to a stranger. A doctor informs you that you were kidnapped by the Society of Music Lovers to save the world’s most famous violinist because you’re the only biological match. If you detach yourself, the violinist will die. If you stay attached for nine months, the violinist will live. What will you do and what should the law require? Thomson makes the case that it would be very kind of you to voluntarily save their life, but you should not be forced to do so, even if the violinist will die.
Anti-abortion advocates usually argue against the violinist argument by addressing how this hypothetical is not analogous to pregnancy, but the point of the essay isn’t to match pregnancy as much as possible. The essay adjusts the length of time and even goes into other fantastical scenarios about human spore seeds filtering in through your windows and needing to gestate on your carpet to prove Thomson’s point. The purpose of the essay is to prove a principle: “Having a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another person’s body—even if one needs it for life itself.”
The problem with the violinist scenario is that the fantastical premise is not grounded in reality.
First, I will address some of the typical responses from anti-abortion advocates. It’s also important to note Thomson argues abortion is not immoral even if the unborn is human, alive, and a person, so we will grant this premise for the sake of this discussion.
The violinist in this hypothetical is an adult stranger instead of your child, and parents have natural obligations to their children. Pro-abortion advocates have pushed back against this rebuttal by altering the scenario. If your born child required a new kidney, could the court mandate you to give it up to save them? This scenario also fails. In pregnancy, you’re already biologically connected to your child, who only exists and is in this predicament due to actions that were likely consensual. For the kidney scenario to be analogous to pregnancy, the parent would have needed to cause their child to be dependent, give them their kidney, and demand a recall. Would the courts allow a parent to repossess a kidney from their sick child? No. Also, the kidney’s purpose is to filter your blood. The purpose of the uterus is to be the safe space for a woman’s child to grow.
Philosopher David Boonin proposed a far less fantastical variation of the violinist argument by appealing to a real court case, McFall v. Shrimp. In short, a court in Pennsylvania ruled the state cannot force another person to donate body parts after McFall sued his cousin for backing out of donating bone marrow. If Shrimp can refuse to donate his organs, even though his cousin will die (and granting prior consent), then a mother shouldn’t be forced to donate her uterus. And since abortion is the only way to be free from the donation, not allowing the abortion is an act of force. A major issue with Boonin, Thompson, and the kidney scenario is that it views abortion as a refusal to provide resources rather than a conscious decision to commit violence. In pregnancy, your resources are already granted to your child. You may have consented to sex and not the pregnancy, but consent doesn’t make you pregnant. Your “will” won’t control the sperm, fertilize an egg, or direct it into your uterus. It’s a biological process; this is simply the way our species reproduces. The donation has already happened. If McFall already had Shrimp’s bone marrow, Shrimp obviously couldn’t kill his cousin to repossess it. If a woman no longer consents to pregnancy, it doesn’t change the fact that she’s still pregnant. If I don’t consent to being broke, my desire doesn’t make money appear in my bank account. I have to make a choice, and if I choose to commit violence against my neighbor and steal, that is an action committed against another human. An abortion is a choice to inject your offspring with a lethal drug, to tear off their arms and legs and crush their skull, to dismember them by sucking them through a vacuum, or taking a pill that will deliberately alter the mother’s body and cut off oxygen and nourishment, so the offspring will suffocate and starve to death. When activists claim that not allowing an abortion is an act of “force,” they are defining “force” as the government not permitting homicide. That’s a remarkable claim, considering the purpose of government is to protect our unalienable rights, such as the right to life. The right to life is not a right to live forever. That’s impossible. The right to life is a right to not be killed.
There is also a crucial difference between our natural development at the beginning of our lives when we are in a vulnerable yet normal and healthy state versus our bodies failing as we approach the end of our lives. Shrimp didn’t choose to kill his cousin. He was already dying from his illness, and his cousin chose not to save his life. The cause of death in an abortion is the act of violence committed against the offspring. If the unborn is a person, the burden of proof is on the abortionist to prove the pregnancy warrants such violence. Women do not have a right to kill, but there are extreme circumstances when killing may be deemed necessary and justified.
It is also important to note that in Jacobson v Massachusetts, the Supreme Court ruled states could enforce compulsory vaccination laws because an individual’s liberty is not absolute, especially when other lives are on the line. Donating a kidney or bone marrow is extreme. Human reproduction is extraordinary, but it is natural and common. If individual liberty can be restricted in the interest of preserving lives, banning the deliberate and needless killing of human preborn offspring is not a radical position.
Another major difference is the method of how the violinist will die. You don’t chop the violinist into pieces nor would you starve/suffocate him. Abortionists make sure the offspring is dead before they emerge from a woman’s body. If the abortion results in a live birth, the abortion is a failure. Pro-abortion congressmen have even voted against mandating medical care for children who survive abortions.
The reasoning is also vastly different. If you were kidnapped and assaulted, you are a victim seeking to restore your body to its normal function. You are not naturally made to filter blood for a stranger’s kidney. Pregnancy may be unwanted or inconvenient, but it is a normal biological process that a woman’s body prepares for. Thomson claims she does not argue that a right to secure death for the child exists and wouldn’t argue that you should violently kill the violinist, but this is a strange claim. Death is the purpose of the abortion. Reasons why women have abortions may vary, but most are to preserve their lifestyle, not their life. They can’t afford a baby, so they kill it. They don’t want to raise it alone, so they kill it. They don’t quite feel ready, so they kill it. They don’t want the child to be adopted and have to wonder about them for the rest of their life, so they kill it. They don’t want to raise a child with a disability, so they kill it. It may even be a mercy killing, in the eyes of the mother. The fact that the child is in their body may be their justification for abortion being permissible, but it is not the reason they obtain it. One may claim that simply terminating the pregnancy is the purpose, but abortion advocates want full-term abortions to be legal, even on healthy and “viable” fetuses who could survive after labor is induced. Abortion activists are even arguing that artificial wombs should not interfere with the right to choose an abortion because women should be able to avoid becoming biological mothers. Abortion is not about no longer being pregnant. That is inevitable. Abortion is about ending or delaying motherhood, and if your child already exists, death is the escape hatch. No matter how little a woman cares or how grieved she is about her decision, there is malice involved. In the case of the violinist, death is an unfortunate byproduct of regaining your bodily autonomy. With abortion, death is a feature—not a bug.
Another tactic by anti-abortionists is to switch perspectives. Imagine you wake up in the hospital attached to a man you don’t recognize. He drugged you and connected you to him, and if he pulls the plug before nine months, you will die. Does he have the right to unplug and kill you? Even if the law didn’t obligate doctors to strap him down and force him to continue sustaining you, there would likely be a murder charge in the event you were killed. What if he didn’t drug you? What if you were in a car crash that he accidentally caused and someone at the hospital made the call to connect you? Does he still have the right to unplug? What if you were both victims, kidnapped, and connected against your will for a social experiment? Would he still have the right to unplug and kill you?
The problem with pregnancy is that it’s a conflict of rights. The woman has bodily autonomy, but her offspring also has a right to life (and bodily autonomy), so who wins? How do you maximize the most liberty? In the case of pregnancy, the answer is that if they can both live, they should both live. Pregnancy can be an extraordinary strain on the mother’s body, but pregnancy is also temporary. Changes to her body may be permanent, but death is also permanent. If you kill that unique human individual through an abortion, they will never exist again. If you don’t want to be pregnant, you won’t be one day. If you don’t want to give birth, that can’t be avoided. Birth is the emergence from the womb. You may be able to control when it will happen, but you cannot change that it will.
The real issue is the premise of Thomson’s argument isn’t realistic. Let’s say it’s November 2008, you wake up from the hospital attached to Barrack Obama, who has just won the presidency, and on the way home from his victory party, he was in a terrible accident. The Democratic National Committee took it upon themselves to kidnap and connect you to sustain him, but it requires you being hooked up to him at least until his inauguration day. Would usually left-leaning abortion advocates passionately cheer that anyone in that scenario would have the right to unplug and kill the first black president because of bodily autonomy? Would the hospital or the courts allow that?
What if instead of being hooked to Obama, you were sustaining the life of the world’s most important epidemiologist, who is on the verge of discovering a cure for a virus that will kill millions every year? He only needs five months to stabilize, and nine to completely recover. Do you still have the right to unplug? If your bodily autonomy isn’t inconvenienced for five to nine months, it will lead to the death of hundreds of millions. Would you still argue that no human being has the right to be sustained with your body? Would the government agree with that?
Let’s imagine another scenario. What if there was a worldwide pandemic that was mostly taking the lives of the elderly or those with comorbidities such as respiratory issues, obesity, etc? The solution is to close people’s businesses, prevent in-person gatherings such as schools and church services, close down parks, beaches, boating, and fill skate parks with sand to stop rebellious young adults from defying orders, make everyone wear masks that clearly state they won’t prevent the spread of the virus, social distance, paint directional arrows on the aisles of grocery stores, prevent travel between an individual’s residences, and coerce people into taking a vaccine that will not stop the spread of the virus by threatening their employment, ability to attend school (even online), and participate in social activities? Unfortunately, this is not a hypothetical. During the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people were coerced into getting a vaccine—despite the risks of myocarditis, blood clots, allergic reactions, other medical complications, and even death—because they were told they were responsible for the survival of their neighbors, who may get infected and experience serious symptoms. If your neighbor wasn’t viable in a post-COVID-19 world, society still believed that your bodily autonomy had to be violated to save the lives of others.
There were many debates during the pandemic about abortion, and pro-abortion activists would note there are major differences, and I agree. There is a major difference between dying from a virus and being deliberately and needlessly killed by your mother. Absolutely. And one might say no one “forced” anyone to be vaccinated, but that’s not true. If we imposed the same social and financial consequences on mothers who aborted their children, abortion activists would call that force. There was more punishment for people who listened to sermons on their car radios in church parking lots or people who operated restaurants or gyms than there is for a mother in the US who kills her preborn offspring. President Joe Biden said during the pandemic that it wasn’t about your personal freedom or choice, yet his position on abortion is that the mother has the right to choose homicide. The sacredness of bodily autonomy was washed away, and all that remained was blatant hypocrisy. The Supreme Court did rule against Biden’s OSHA mandates that strong-armed businesses into enforcing mandates or perpetual testing (for only the unvaccinated) on their employees, but requirements were upheld for healthcare workers who work where government-funded healthcare was provided. In other words, the more entangled you are with the government, the more they can impose upon you.
The most obvious real-life example of how the premise of the violinist scenario falls apart is in cases where we punish mothers for child neglect. Kristel Candelario left her 16-month-old daughter alone for ten days while she went to Detroit and Puerto Rico, and I have yet to hear an abortion advocate condemn her conviction. Jailyn died from starvation and dehydration. Abortion advocates have said these cases are different, and of course, they are, but this mother was only living out Thomson’s principle: no one has the right to use your body to sustain their life.
Candelario didn’t purposely remove access to food from her daughter, unlike an abortion. She didn’t physically assault her, unlike an abortion. She didn’t even pull a plug. She simply chose not to provide care.
You could point out that Jailyn is a born person and there are obvious differences. Jailyn is heavier and needs to be held, her cries can be heard, you can smell her pee and poop, she needs to be changed, and a conscious effort needs to be made to feed her. The violinist is also a born human, and Thomson still believes they can be denied life-sustaining care.
One could argue that Jailyn is not connected. Correct. Jailyn’s mother did not have to make a decision that would lead to the immediate death of a person. She neglected a needy child who could not fend for herself. But even if Jailyn were outside of the womb and still connected via the umbilical cord, would that truly make it permissible to kill her? Dr. Kermit Gosnell was an abortionist convicted of murder. He would shortcut the process by inducing labor and cutting the spines of newborns, including babies older than thirty weeks. If all of those babies were still attached via the umbilical cord, did he murder no one? After all, he was acting in the wishes of their mothers.
Thomson’s people seeds scenario also cuts against the need to be connected. If human seeds wandered into your home like pollen and took root in your carpet and upholstery, Thomson argues they have no right to access your home. That extends beyond a person’s internal organs. Thomson argues you have no right to someone else’s property if it would sustain your life, even if it weren’t the other party’s fault. Since things like squatters’ rights exist, I also have doubts about Thomson’s conclusions. If you set sail on a months-long journey and discovered a toddler crawled on board, claiming it was your property probably wouldn’t get you out of jail time after chucking them into the ocean.
One could argue that the suffering of Jailyn makes the scenario very different. Jailyn’s suffering is horrifying to imagine, but even if Jailyn were somehow unaware of her pain and loneliness, it wouldn’t make her any less dead. If someone painlessly and quickly killed you in your sleep, would that mean no harm was committed because you were unaware of it? Thomson doesn’t even argue the violinist’s suffering is a good enough reason to sustain their life. She doesn’t consider their suffering at all.
Abortion activists have argued that someone else could have taken care of Jailyn, so it isn’t the same. What if no one would? Would Candelario be forced to cancel her vacation or take her along? Even the demand for her to find a temporary or new guardian still places a burden on her bodily autonomy. This also changes the principle. It’s not that the right to life doesn’t include being sustained by someone else’s body. It’s that the right to life should be thrown out the window if a child specifically needs their mother.
Thomson doesn’t argue there is never a case when one should sustain another’s life. If the violinist needed your body for one hour, she thinks that’s an acceptable imposition even if you were kidnapped and forcibly attached. Thomson also says the same for one-hour pregnancies. She doesn’t explain why it would be “indecent to refuse” care. She says it’s “plain” that you “ought” to keep the stranger alive for one hour. If one hour for one stranger is the morally decent thing to do, nine months for your child isn’t an outrageous ask.
One might say Jailyn’s mother assumed responsibility when she took her home, therefore, she chose to be a parent. Thomson makes the argument in her essay that you don’t have a special responsibility unless you’ve assumed it. But that would mean consent doesn’t have to be ongoing. If two parents purposely conceived and wanted to make a child, is the mother never allowed to change her mind and seek an abortion? If that’s the case, we can easily move the needle and argue if two consenting adults purposely engaged in procreation, they can’t opt out of parenthood via abortion.
The reality is that in civilized societies, the vulnerable are entitled to certain privileges (healthcare, food, education, etc.,). I live in a country that provides for the needy, from taxes confiscated from income generated by labor from millions of bodies. Abortion advocates normally support strong social safety nets for not only children but adults as well. We do not operate in a “survival of the fittest” worldview, so the idea that vulnerability is only a death sentence for the preborn is ludicrous. Our children are entitled to certain privileges, and parents have certain obligations to them. Even if a man doesn’t want to be a father, he still has to pay child support. If you can’t take care of your children, the state will remove them from your custody, and you might be charged if they were neglected and significantly harmed.
Parents are required to use their bodies to sustain the lives of their children. You are not obligated to donate a kidney, but you’re also not permitted to tear their limbs off if they require medical help.
Children in the womb are inherently sustained by their mothers. They come into existence exercising this privilege. It’s inherent to the parent-child relationship. This is the biological reality of our species, whether you believe God designed it this way or evolution deemed it to be so. However, women do not possess a natural right to kill their offspring at will, and society is under no obligation to supply the resources to commit the homicide or grant legal immunity if she chooses to commit the violence. We do not have to consent to the killing of millions. Some claim this would grant special rights to fetuses, but it's not special at all. It’s the ordinary privilege all humans experience. Fathers do not have a right to kill their progeny, and mothers should not be granted this special right either.
Not everyone qualifies for food stamps and subsidized housing either, but we make decisions in the best interests of our society while maximizing the most amount of liberty possible. We can choose to live in an ungoverned society and exercise the liberty of absolute bodily autonomy, but that would mean that someone could use their bodily autonomy to end your life, and there would be no authority to protect you or seek justice. We limit some of our liberties for the tradeoff of limited government. When the government refuses to protect life, they are violating their purpose.
Thomson opened up her essay trying to debunk the idea that we should protect human life at conception because that is when our human life begins, and every other point is arbitrary. She does this by stating, “Similar things might be said about the development of an acorn into an oak tree, and it does not follow that acorns are oak trees, or that we had better say they are.” Thomson is correct. An acorn is not a tree just as an adult is not a neonate. But I have always belonged to the species homosapien, now and as an embryo. An acorn is a nut that houses a seed, which is the embryonic form of a plant. The particular species, in this case, is oak. The seed and the tree were always oak. We don’t have to treat an acorn like a tree, and we certainly shouldn’t treat adults the same as our vulnerable and needy children.
We hold autonomous adults to a higher degree of accountability for the decisions they consciously make and the consequences that follow, deliberate or accidental. We even expect adults to navigate and deal with difficult circumstances that develop outside of their control. We impose moral obligations on the strong to protect the weak, and for those who have much to care for those who lack. We do not tolerate parents sacrificing their children to benefit themselves outside of the case of abortion. Parents are absolutely obligated to sustain the lives of their children, and women are not owed a blanket and special right to kill. The morality of abortion is not difficult. Life is difficult, but we don’t offer a kill switch for everyone else to get out of difficult or unwanted circumstances.
Philosopher Mary Anne Warren argued it’s necessary to disqualify the unborn from personhood because “once we allow the assumption that a fetus has full moral rights it becomes an extremely complex and difficult question whether and when abortion is justifiable.” There are issues with how pro-abortion activists disqualify embryos and fetuses from personhood, but one of the usual parameters is consciousness.
But the crux of the abortion lobby doesn’t revolve around personhood. It’s centered around bodily autonomy. If we discovered that consciousness was achieved the moment an embryo was implanted in the uterus, Planned Parenthood likely wouldn’t close its doors and denounce the sins of its organization. Their ethics revolve around a woman being able to decide what happens to her body. Following that ethic to its logical conclusion would permit abortion up until the moment of birth. It’s the mainstream position of Democrats in the United States to argue for no restrictions. Even under Roe v. Wade, states were allowed to kill healthy and viable fetuses.
The government should not allow this. My existence began the moment my father’s sperm fertilized an egg within my mother’s body, and just as it would be unjust to kill me without proper cause today, it would have been unjust to kill me in my mother’s womb.
The violinist scenario makes for an interesting conversation in the fantastical world of hypotheticals but in the real world, the principle is not applicable.
