Summary Of Thomson's Essay B Thomson

In her essay, Thomson uses arguments from analogies to support her conclusions that abortion is sometimes morally permissible. As discussed in the lectures, an argument from analogy is an argument based on the similarity of two things – A is similar to B, and since it is morally permissible to do A, it is morally permissible to do B. Thomson presents several cases that she proposes to be morally analogous to different cases of abortion, in the case of rape; where the life of the mother is at risk; and in cases of consensual sex where no contraception was used, and where contraception was used and failed.

In her first argument, Thomson uses the story of the violinist as a parallel between a pregnancy that results from rape. Thomson wants the reader to believe that the two things she is comparing are similar and morally equivalent. In this story, a person wakes up in a hospital with a famous violinist attached to their kidneys, and is told that the violinist will need the use of their kidneys for nine months or he will die. Thomson then asks the reader, whether or not detaching from the violinist is immoral? Thomson answers this question by showing that it is morally permissible to detach from the violinist since the

When critically evaluating an argument from analogy there are two important items to consider, one, is there agreement with the moral intuition, and two, are the two cases morally analogous (or equivalent)? In the case of the violinist and the pregnancy that results from rape, there may be differing views on whether or not there is agreement with Thomson’s intuition. If the reader disagrees with Thomson’s intuition, then for them her argument will fail. But, if the reader agrees with the intuition, they then have to consider whether or not the two cases are equivalent. If the two cases are not morally equivalent then the analogy fails and the argument falls