She is arguing that abortion is not impermissible, while pointing out it is not always permissible. She came to this conclusion with the different example which are taken alone. Each example represents a different case. The violinist example, for instance focuses on the fact that his life depends on yours. It does not include or misrepresent other factors such as the emotional attachment, the responsibility, the outcomes, and etc. For example, you do not have an emotional attachment to the violinist; you even do no know him. However, you have an emotional attachment to your baby. Furthermore, you do not have the responsibility of looking after the violinist. Yet, it is your duty to look after your baby. As Kant suggests, if you act according to your duty, you will be acting morally. Therefore, when you look after your child you are doing the right thing. Remember the distinction between good and right is huge. Doing the right thing might cause bad things, or vice versa.
Moving with the violinist example, she suggests that the violinist is innocent. Well, I am not a devil too. I am innocent as well. If giving birth will risk my life, the theme of innocence is irrelevant. Rather, the will should be relevant here. As Kant suggests, what determines an action’s morality is the will behind it. In order to perform the right action, one must have a good will. The good will here would be giving birth. However, this is a coin with two sides. What about mother’s life? She will die if she gives birth. Sacrificing the mother or the child? In this case the mother should act in accordance with good will and give birth to her child, even if it means risking her life. Therefore, even with the mother risking her life we are moving with a single conclusion; mother should give birth.
Last but not least, she talks about fetus being a human being. Even though this seems to be most important part of her argument, this is actually the most vulnerable one. The fetus is human after the moment of conception. So what? Does it matter that much? We are trying to determine the morality of the actions here. Thinking of fetus as a human being or not would be a consequential method. This argument seems inhuman; not valuing the life of a fetus as a human life. However, what gets the most value here is the will behind mother’s action. If she sees the baby as a human and gives birth because she does not want to kill someone, then she would treat her baby as a mean. However, if she sees the baby as her baby and gives birth because it is her duty to look after her child, then the mother is treating her baby as an end therefore acting morally. So far we came to the conclusion that one should give birth regardless of the different cases and the context. Proving this, now I want to move on to my own argument.
Up till now, we have defined abortion as impermissible. However as I stated before there is this one single exception to it; sexual harassment. There are a couple of reasons why I think this is the only case that can be counted as an exception. First of all, having sex with your husband is completely voluntarily performed. Being aware of the consequences, it is your duty to look after the child. However, the case of rape is exactly the opposite. Even though you are aware of the consequences, it is not in your control to stop the rape. This takes the baby away from your duty. Therefore in this case abortion can be permissible. Moreover, in this case you would have got an abortion right after the incident so no one would argue that you are killing someone—since the fetus would not be a human.
Another reasons that makes rape an extreme case is emotional attachment. You would not have an emotional attachment with the baby that you did not want in the first place. This looks like the violinist example Thomson provides. Not having an emotional attachment and not wanting the baby in the first place gives you the option of abortion. Considering this as the single exception, all the cases that Thomson provides including the chocolate and the violinist example are irrelevant since they are using the wrong yardsticks for measurement of morality.
All in all, Thomson’s examples are too extreme and they cannot be applied to real life. Her examples are different cases by themselves and need to be applied together. When applied together, the result would be convincing enough. The reason why I came to different conclusions with Thomson is that I tried to break her examples and I used Kantian philosophy to back up my arguments. However, that does not mean that either of us are correct in any sense.
