Essay On Abortion By Judith Thomson

Most abortion arguments discussed today revolve around the premise that a fetus is a human being at conception. In Judith Thomson’s essay, “A Defense to Abortion”, she argues on the topic of abortions. She defends the mother’s right to choose what happens to her body on the assumption that a baby becomes a human at conception. In the argument, she gives the famous Violinist analogy. I will argue in this essay that her argumentative analogy is not sound because of the difference in social importance. Judith Thomson provides an analogy comparing the process of a mother experiencing childbirth to a mother supporting a famous violinist life by her own heartbeat. In the analogy, Thomson states that the mother has been hooked up to a famous, unconscious violinist via their circulatory systems. She was hooked up to the violinist against her will by the Society of Music lovers. The author explains that for nine months the mother would be responsible for using her body to bring the violinist back to consciousness. The analogy argues that a human’s right to life is more important than a woman’s right to her body; a violinist is a human, and therefore a violinist’s right to live is more important than a woman’s right to her body. First off, Thomson’s analogy is based on a few assumptions. The first one is the assumption that the pregnancy is an outcome of rape. A person could counter argue against the violinist’s analogy by stating that it’s a woman’s decision to have sex, and since