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Violinist Analogy Argumentation   Term Paper ID:44903 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: With J Thomson's much-cited violinist-analogy article as the basis an evaluation of whether the ...... More...

5 Pages / 1125 Words 7 sources, 15 Citations, MLA Format $20.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: With J. Thomson's much-cited violinist-analogy article as the basis, an evaluation of whether the analogies and thought experimentation undertaken in the article are effective in conveying the case for the morality of abortion under certain circumstances. Also: the value of real-world benchmarks in evaluating the argument. Paper Introduction: Thomson\'s violinist analogy concerning an unwanted pregnancy ispersuasive in that it points up the aggressive and programmatic devaluationof the sentience of the pregnant person in the case on the part of thosewho insist that abortion should not be available as a choice for resolvingsuch a pregnancy In developing the violinist scenario Thomson establishesthe condition of a presumption that the kidnapping victim has anaffirmative obligation to nurture the violinist owing to the musician\'sprivileged status Similarly advocates against abortion mount the claimthat Thomson lays Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. The mandatory delaythus appears to rest on outmoded and unacceptable assumptions about thedecision-making capacity of women" (Lemieux; emphasis added). "They Know Best." The American Prospect 1 May 2 7. Taking that a step further, Beckwith would compel all unplannedpregnancies to be completed--for example if contraception efforts failed--because of the privileged position of the "natural bond" between mother andfetus (193). However, even a cursory glancethrough the headlines vividly demonstrates that there is no shortage ofchild abuse and neglect. At first glance, that argument seems adequately to answer Thomson'speople-seeds and burglar analogies. The in-laws? Of that, some $19 billion (62% of the total) wascollected and distributed, "an increase of 3.3 percentage points over thepercentage of current support collected and distributed in FY 2 7" (OCSE).Next consider behavior of public officials who have made a project ofcreating regulations meant to intervene between a woman's decision to abortand implementation of the decision. The father? Assumptionsabout women's psychoemotional condition that are embedded into law areevidence of the presumptive devaluation not just of women's autonomy but oftheir status as sentient beings, of, so to speak, their personhood.Irrespective of how one feels about abortion, that discrepancy in thestanding of men and women before the law, hence their access to the fullrange of social goods, is worth noting. "Abortion and Thomson's Violinist: Unplugging a Bad Analogy: Comments on Why the Prenatal Child Has the Right Under Individual Liberty to Be in the Mother's Womb." Libertarians for Life, 1991, 1993. Thomson has these points in hand but does not develop them. But back to real-world complexities. The only value that thisperson has is as a repository for a pregnancy; all other values slip away.Hirschmann (49-5 ) exposes that line of thought by arguing that mandating awoman to complete unwanted pregnancy is the equivalent of putting her in acondition of involuntary servitude. It's her self-same body after, as well as before, birth"(Gordon). The personhood argument, one commentator insists, must never beabandoned by antiabortion advocates because of "advances in abortivetechnology" (Sullivan 185) that enable women and others to engage in veryearly term abortions after conception but before nidation. Gordonglosses over the notion that that the fetus may be a deadly trap for amother, which is analogous to the kidnap victim's guaranteed kidney failureand death because of being tied to the violinist. Who willnurture the personhood of that child? 66 (2 3): 175-194.Sullivan, Dennis M. "A Thirty-Year Perspective on Personhood: How Has the Debate Changed?" Ethics and Medicine 17.3 (2 1): 177-186.Thomson, Judith Jarvis. And I am suggesting that if assuming responsibility for it would require large sacrifices, then they may refuse (Thomson). Begin with the enforcementof child support mandates. Further, the more onerous the physical or emotional danger to themother is, the more strenuously do antichoice advocates insist thatabortion is impermissible. They may wish to assume responsibility for it, or they may not wish to. So youcannot ever be unplugged from him" (Thomson). So Momma dies in childbirth after adangerous pregnancy, and what is born is grossly malformed. That is a feature of Gordon's argument againstabortion: "To conceive and then abort one's child is to turn conceptioninto a deadly trap for the child: it is to set her up in a vulnerableposition that is virtually certain to lead to her death" (Gordon). The status of personhood that is so stringentlyinsisted upon by antichoice advocates hardly seems to trouble them once theperson has left the womb through natural processes. Similarly, advocates against abortion mount the claimthat Thomson lays out early: But surely a person's right to life is stronger and more stringent than the mother's right to decide what happens in and to her body, and so outweighs it. Thomson develops the view that moral entitlement to choose an abortionhas limits, chiefly where parents have made a conscious effort to conceive.But she sights the limits of the obligations that pregnancy confers on thepregnant, distinguishing between parents who make no effort to prevent apregnancy and thereby take on the obligations of parenthood and nurturanceand those who do make that effort: But if they have taken all reasonable precautions against having a child, they do not simply by virtue of their biological relationship to the child who comes into existence have a special responsibility for it. Washington, D.C.: Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families, 2 9. The fetus, in that viewhas an unmediated right to be in the womb, whatever the cost to the womanin the case--and, it appears, whether the pregnancy was the result of rapeor consensual sex. In the violinist scenario, the hospital director uses the same logicto tie the kidnap victim to the patient: "Granted you have a right todecide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to lifeoutweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. .Sheldon, Sally. As Gordon puts it: "The problem in rape is whether thevictimization of one person should permit the victimization of someoneelse." By that logic the fact of pregnancy has the effect of suppressingthe rights and options of the pregnant person. Moreover, responsibility for rearing children toward whom one or bothparents may be ambivalent appears to fall more often on mothers thanfathers, and a growing body of judicial law demonstrates that fathers arenot exactly lacking in advocacy, whatever their role in the process. Personhood, inthat view, must be conferred early and the rights inhering in personhoodmust be insisted upon as a moral counter to the assertion of a woman'smoral autonomy. . .Hirschmann, Nancy J. The prohibition must be absolute. So the fetus may not be killed; an abortion may not be performed (Thomson). "Unwilling Fathers and Abortion: Terminating Men's Child Support Obligations." Modern Law Review. AsSheldon points out, men's advocacy groups "have claimed that if women areaccorded control over the decision to continue or terminate a pregnancythen it is unfair to hold genetic fathers liable for child support" (175).It has been argued that despite his role in creating the fetus, the father"no longer has any control over the process which converts his biologicalact into personhood" (Sheldon 175). What the arguments share above all is anaggressive proprietary claim on the individual whose body incurs anobligation merely because the claim has been made. If thenatural-bond argument were valid, and if the degree of thoughtful attentionto contraception is irrelevant to the people-seed pregnancy, then itfollows that, as long as everyone is discarding the woman's thought contentanyway, there must be no exception for rape, incest, physical danger to themother. The weight of evidence is that the argument lamenting the fate of thepoor fellows who are cut out of the personhood loop is very close tononsense, if real-world experience is any guide. As Justice John Paul Stevens noted inhis opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Therapeutic abortions of all kinds, including of course late-termabortions (so-called partial-birth abortions), ectopic-pregnancyterminations, and so on, are simply out of the question: "Tough luck; grinand bear it; think of England." The conceptualization, if one may so call it, of the little personinside the woman has claims and well-being that must be nurtured at allcosts. They are effective as far as theygo, but they do not, and perhaps should not have been expected to, capturethe devices and desires of antichoice advocates that, after 1973, have beenpersistently and programmatically visited on abortion discourse and policy. Thus fathers should not be required tosupply child support. It is as if personhoodis prenatal only (especially if the live birth turns out to have a vagina). Thomson characterizes thatlogic as "outrageous," but it completely tracks with the anti-abortionlogic that opens her article. .Office of Child Support Enforcement. Works CitedGordon, Doris. The moral argument about abortion vis-à-vis the violinist scenariocomes down to thoughtfulness, volition, and the acknowledgment of autonomy.To those who oppose access to abortion, volition and autonomy go out thewindow for the pregnant woman, no matter how thoughtful she is: "Whatdifference does it make for a woman's rights whether her kid is in the cribor in her womb? "Abortion, Self-Defense, and Involuntary Servitude." Texas Journal of Women and the Law 13 (2 3-2 4): 41-55.Lemieux, Scott. That is, the natural bond is meant totrump the consequences of the failure of the woman to adequately protecther "house" from the invasion of fertile people seeds. Casey, which upheld a 24-hour waitingperiod regulation for any woman requesting an abortion, "there is noevidence that the mandated delay benefits women . . Apparently no natural bond attaches to paternity. "A Defense of Abortion." Philosophy & Public Affairs 1.1 (Fall 1971). . Thomson's violinist analogy concerning an unwanted pregnancy ispersuasive in that it points up the aggressive and programmatic devaluationof the sentience of the pregnant person in the case on the part of thosewho insist that abortion should not be available as a choice for resolvingsuch a pregnancy. Both the argumentand its counter, however, are mounted in something of a vacuum; neither setof assertions gives an adequate account of real-world complexities. It is curiously, that the greatconcern for the fetus voiced in relation to the moment of conception seemsto disappear at the moment of birth. . In FY 2 8, there was more than $31 billion incurrent support due. In developing the violinist scenario, Thomson establishesthe condition of a presumption that the kidnapping victim has anaffirmative obligation to nurture the violinist owing to the musician'sprivileged status. No sourcesfound for this report specifically describe the consequences to livingchildren who were the result of rape, failed contraception, or the lack ofeconomic wherewithal on the part of parents. "FY 2 8 Preliminary Report" [press release]. Why?Undoubtedly the fact that she was writing in 1971, two years before Roe v.Wade made access to abortions, helps explain the direction of her argument.She seems to have intended to establish the argument for thoughtful,morally sound autonomy, and the violinist, burglar, and people-seed thoughtexperiments were the devices she used. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.