In
A Defense of Abortion, Thomson grants for the sake of argument that the fetus has a
right to life, but defends the permissibility of abortion by appeal to a
thought experiment: You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious
violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right
blood type to help. They have therefore
kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's
circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your
kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.[SUP]
[4][/SUP] Thomson takes it that you may now permissibly unplug yourself from the violinist even though this will cause his death: the right to life, Thomson says, does not entail the right to use another person's body, and so by unplugging the violinist you do not violate his right to life but merely deprive him of something—the use of your body—to which he has no right. "
f you do allow him to go on using your kidneys, this is a kindness on your part, and not something he can claim from you as his due."[SUP][5][/SUP] For the same reason, Thomson says, abortion does not violate the fetus's right to life but merely deprives the fetus of something—the use of the pregnant woman's body—to which it has no right. Thus, it is not that by terminating her pregnancy a woman violates her moral obligations, but rather that a woman who carries the fetus to term is a 'Good Samaritan' who goes beyond her obligation.
