Refuting Thomson’s Violinist Argument (AKA Parasite Pregnancies)

Lileigh Lehnen was an 8-1/2 month developed unborn child who suffered an injury prior to birth, was born via c-section, then died. Technically, the judge ruled her death a non-homocide because she wasn’t considered a person at the time of the attack based on Colorado law. Her location was critical, both to the cause of her death, and how she was treated by the court. Lileigh’s death highlights the irrational logic of abortion-choice, where one can legally be a non-person human-being.

Lately over at Jill Stanek’s blog I’ve run into several abortion-choice advocates who acknowledge the child is a human being, but argue the mother’s bodily-autonomy (sovereignty actually) overrules all rights of her child including the right to life.

In short – consent is for sexual intercourse, but not the resulting pregnancy.

Francis Beckwith, in Defending Life, points out the bodily autonomy argument has been made extensively by Judith Jarvis Thomson, Eileen McDonagh, David Boonin and others in variations on Thomson’s violinist example.

Here’s the scope of issues (addressed in 3 articles):

1. Metaphysical: The intrinsic nature of contestants – procreation & relationships;
2. Morality: agency of rights/responsibilities;
3. Intuitions, analogies and philosophical anthropologies – rationale & application.

1. Metaphysical: Intrinsic Nature of Contestants

Since the contest is about rights between two humans, we must first examine the metaphysical basis of origin, substance and existence of the human beings to determine if they are equal on every morally relevant point to decide this contest.

Thomson et al. concede the child is a human being. However, the child’s rights as a human being are contested, immediately indicating that the personhood of the unborn child is somehow different than born human beings. We need to discuss relationship, personhood and non-intrinsic objections to resolve the metaphysical question.

a. Relationship

With pregnancy there are 3 specific relationships: procreative/paternal relationship, location within mother, and dependency upon the mother.

The procreative/paternal relationship provides a strong basis for rejecting the other philosophical anthropology offered by Thomson et al., because through pro-creation, the very existence (not merely on-going life) of one of the beings is dependent, in part, upon the other being. The other part, the DNA for that child’s substance, was provided by the father. So quite literally, at the completion of conception (amphimixis), two have become one flesh. All human existence depends upon an unbroken chain of pregnancies – a relational continuum of life.

Thomson’s violinist arguments beg the question by leaning exclusively upon dependency upon mother, and assuming the pro-creative/paternal relationship is non-essential to the question of human rights. They throw out motherhood as a procreative process and assume an incomplete definition of motherhood. a metaphysical grounding detached from this means of origin within the context of the vital relationship that brings about humanity.

What they throw out cannot be thrown out: the procreative process and the substance nature of both mother and child are of the same nature, an on-going human nature. (They redefine motherhood.)

However, does 1) being of the same substance of human flesh and blood and 2) the existence of both “beings” brought about through a unbroken chain of pregnancies make them morally equal on all bodily rights?

Well, with criminal violations aside, we treat all born human beings of that same substance and that procreative process equally. In fact being human (in the flesh) is the very basis of human rights equality, since it’s critical we hang those rights off something tangible. And since all other born human beings arrived on this planet the same way, the human substance – flesh and blood, and the conception & gestational process is universally equal to all human beings. Clearly both substance and gestational process are pivotal to our discussion, while age and time is not.

b. Personhood

Arriving at the issue of personhood, the question must be raised: do the two contestants have the same moral basis for personhood? That is, not do they possess the same degree of development of person, but do they each possess all the essential common characteristics we recognize as necessary for a human person?

I believe this is the great schism in the debate, because the abortion-choice position assumes human beings can redefine the personhood of other human beings.  This would require an isolation of the person from their bodies – a nullification of the intrinsic nature of human beings.

Can that be rationally done? The issue is critical because we’re dealing with personal autonomy. How can we test this?

Because the mother-child existence relationship is unique, the only reasonable test of this detached sense of personhood is to swap the two contestants physical locations making the daughter the mother and the mother the daughter. The mother’s “person” is now within the body of the daughter – think of the movie Freaky Friday, then zoom back to the time of pregnancy. (But unlike Freaky Friday, the bodies are exchanged as well.) Granted this is a conceptual swap, but from a practical sense, our chain of unbroken pregnancies acknowledges the mother was a daughter at one time. So the proceative/gestational relationship is not rejected and the only assumption is removal of time constraints so we can exchange the spatial & birth order relationships between the two contested human beings.

Should that change the moral basis of the mother’s person, by exchanging places with the daughter?

One would reasonably say no – it shouldn’t and that’s precisely my point: to claim it would change the moral basis would be a circular argument (and reveal the personhood begging schism) because the claimed abortion “right” shouldn’t change no matter who was in the womb.

So far we’ve run into two problems:

1. The abortion choice position begs the question by assuming a rationale based upon a non-sequitur and in so doing they reject the metaphysical basis of their own personhood – the natural human procreative/gestational process.
2. They beg the question again by assuming a definition of personhood that cannot logically exist in the world of living, propogating humanity.

I know – that’s some deep thinking, so let me clarify: As human beings we don’t morally possess the right to redefine the personhood of any other other human being because such redefinition can be applied to yourself as a human being. It subjects humans and is circular. For logicians out there – whole (intrinsic or universally true) human beings cannot be declared non-whole, (partial or universally false) human beings. That’s self refuting, like saying TRUE is FALSE.

c. Non-intrinsic objections

Author: Chris Arsenault

Jesus geek, husband, father. Painter, sculptor, model-maker, author, teacher, designer, artist - these are what former friends used to describe me before I became addicted to the Internet and blogging.