Most opposition to abortion is grounded in two assumptions: the first is the moral personhood and right to life of the fetus; the second assumption is that, in a conflict of rights, the right to life must trump a woman's right to privacy, choice, and bodily autonomy. Many pro-choice arguments ignore the second assumption--perhaps because it seems intuitively implausible that any other right could outweigh a right to life--and focus solely on the first assumption, either offering support for the claim that fetal personhood occurs substantially later in fetal development than conception, or arguing that the criteria for moral personhood can never be met by a fetus. Neither proposition is acceptable or defensible to abortion opponents for whom it is an article of faith that a fetus has a right to life. Thomson puts forth an argument that grants, for the sake of argument, fetal personhood from conception, but challenges the second pro-life assumption that the right to life always overrides other rights.

Thomson's argument employs an analogy that has engendered controversy among both defenders and critics of abortion. Imagine, Thomson writes, that you awake one morning to find yourself hooked up to the body of an unconscious violinist who is suffering a fatal kidney ailment. The Society of Music Lovers has kidnapped you and plugged this famous violinist into your circulatory system, so that your kidneys can be used to filter his blood. You are told that in nine months, the famous violinist will have recovered, and can be safely detached, but in the meantime, to unhook him from your body would kill him. The violinist is a person, and so he has a right to life. Your life is not endangered, but you must remain tethered to the violinist against your will for nine months, thus greatly diminishing your freedom. If his right to life guarantees him the use of your body for life support, then it is morally incumbent on you to provide it, regardless of the cost to your personal freedom. The implications for abortion are clear: the violinist is meant to be analogous to a fetus, and you and your kidneys are analogous to a pregnant woman providing life support to a fetus. If, Thomson argues, it is implausible that you are morally obligated to sustain the violinist's life at such a cost to your personal freedom, then it ought to be equally implausible that a fetus's right to life guarantees it the right to continued use of a woman's body (Thomson). Thus, the fetus's right to life doesn't make abortion morally impermissible, for "having a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another person's body--even if one needs it for life itself" (Thomson, p. 336).

If Thomson's analogy is accepted, there are serious grounds for questioning the assumption that abortion is morally impermissible if a fetus has a right to life. However, both opponents and proponents of the right to abortion have argued against the soundness of Thomson's analogy. Abortion critics claim that there is a deep, even grotesque disanalogy between a fetus and the violinist, and that Thomson fails to attend to the moral distinction between intentionally killing and letting die. Abortion, it is argued, intentionally kills a fetus, but detaching oneself from the violinist only allows the violinist to die from his kidney ailment, an act with a very different moral status than murder. Abortion proponents and opponents alike raise a responsibility objection to Thomson's argument, claiming that her conclusion only holds in cases where pregnancy results from an involuntary act. Warren criticizes Thomson's analogy on those grounds, arguing that it is too weak to provide a thorough defense of a right to abortion, allowing it only in cases of rape (Warren, 1973). Since the majority of unwanted pregnancies are not the result of rape, Thomson's argument would permit abortion in only a small fraction of unwanted pregnancies. Thomson acknowledges that her argument leaves open the possibility that there may be some cases in which the unborn person acquires, tacitly or by consent, a right to the use of the mother's body, and in which abortion would be an unjust killing. But this possibility does not force the conclusion that all abortions are unjust killings. "Except in such cases as the unborn person has a right to demand it … nobody is morally required to make large sacrifices, of health, of all other interests and concerns, of all other duties and commitments, for nine years, or even for nine months, in order to keep another person alive" (Thomson, p. 338).

It is difficult to consistently maintain the position that a fetus's right to life trumps all other rights or considerations. In cases where the life of a pregnant woman is endangered by pregnancy, only the most extreme opponents of abortion claim that because abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent person, it is still morally wrong and the mother must be allowed to die. More moderate opposition to abortion allows exceptions for the life or health of the mother, and also for cases where pregnancy results from rape or incest. There is a clear inconsistency in the rape and incest exception, however, since it makes the unborn fetus's right to life contingent on the actions of its father. Abortion opponents who grant exceptions in cases of rape and incest must, if they are consistent, explain why those fetuses have a different moral status, or less of a right to life, than other fetuses, or why the right to life loses its priority to a woman's rights in those cases.

Pro-choice feminist arguments charge that most discussions of abortion place undue emphasis on fetal rights and too little emphasis on the contexts in which decisions about abortion take place. Susan Sherwin argues that traditional, nonfeminist approaches to the abortion controversy are too simplistic, considering the permissibility of abortion in isolation from the social and sexual subordination of women, and the struggle of women for control over their bodies and reproduction. Nonfeminist arguments thus mistakenly claim that the moral status of abortion turns exclusively on the moral status of the fetus (Sherwin). The central moral feature of pregnancy, Sherwin argues, is that it takes place in women's bodies and profoundly affects their lives. Because fetuses have a unique physical status of dependence on particular women, they have a unique social status as well--the value of a fetus, Sherwin claims, is determined solely by the nature of its primary relationship to the woman who carries it, and "no absolute value attaches to fetuses apart from their relational status" (p. 111). The focus on the fetus as an independent, rights-bearing entity denies pregnant women their proper roles as independent moral agents who, alone, have "the responsibility and privilege of determining a fetus's specific social status and value" (p. 110).

Some pro-life feminists attempt to sidestep the rights controversy and argue instead that abortion is inconsistent with the goals and ideals of feminism, such as opposition to violence, and the promulgation of an ethic of caring, nurturing, and interconnectedness. Others, like Sidney Callahan, argue that feminist goals cannot be achieved in a society that permits abortion (Callahan). The exclusion of the unborn from the sphere of rights and protection, Callahan argues, is analogous to the exclusion of women in unjust, patriarchal systems where "lesser orders of human life are granted rights only when wanted, chosen, or invested with value by the powerful" (Callahan, p. 368). Moreover, to grant a right to abortion in the name of women's privacy or autonomy validates the view that pregnancy and child-rearing are the sole responsibility of individual women, relieving men and the community from any responsibility. Thus "women will never climb to equality and social empowerment over mounds of dead fetuses …" (Callahan, p. 371). To exercise moral autonomy, Callahan argues, requires responsiveness and responsibility not only to what is wanted or chosen, but to what is unwanted and unchosen as well. Callahan makes no exceptions for pregnancy due to rape, arguing that even the involuntarily pregnant woman has "a moral obligation to the now-existing, dependent fetus whether she explicitly consented to its existence or not" (Callahan, p. 370).

Margaret Olivia Little argues that the literature on abortion deeply undersells the moral complexity of abortion, focusing too much on a thin moral assessment of its permissibility. She proposes that what is needed in the moral discussion of abortion is an ethics of gestation that addresses questions of "what it means to play a role in creating a person, how to assess responsibilities that involve sharing, not just risking, one's body and life, what follows from the fact that the entity in question is or would be one's child." (Little, p. 493). A more complex moral interpretation must move beyond questions of metaphysical and moral status and permissibility to consider abortion's "placement on the scales of decency, respectfulness, and responsibility" (Little, p. 492).

If fetuses are not persons, Little argues, they are nonetheless respect-worthy because they are burgeoning human lives, and abortion remains a serious matter because it involves the loss of something significant and valuable. Even if we allow that fetuses are persons, however, the important moral question is what positive duties and responsibilities, if any, pregnant women have to continue gestational assistance. Both liberal and conservative positions on the duties of parenthood assume that it is an all or nothing affair, and that pregnant women either have the same obligations and responsibilities to fetuses that they do to children, or that they owe nothing beyond general beneficence. But parenthood, Little claims, is more than a social role--it is, more crucially, a relationship that develops through time, interaction, and emotional intertwinement. Regardless of the view one takes on the personhood of fetuses, gestation uniquely changes the relationship a woman has to herself, bringing with it a new identity and an impending relationship with another that is not always welcome or sustainable. Thus, "assessing the moral status of abortion … is not just about assessing the contours of generic respect owed to burgeoning human life, it's about assessing the salience of impending relationship" (Little, p. 498).

The fetus's status becomes progressively weightier as pregnancy continues, Little suggests, but until the fetus is a person, there is a moral prerogative to decline parenthood and end pregnancy because it "so thoroughly changes what we might call one's fundamental practical identity …. As profound as the respect we should have for burgeoning human life, we should acknowledge moral prerogatives over identity-constituting commitments and enterprises as profound as motherhood" (Little, p. 498).

Bibliography:

1)         Callahan, Sidney. 1986. "A Case for Pro-Life Feminism." In Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, 5th edition, ed. Bonnie Steinbock and John D. Arras. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company.

2)         Little, Margaret Olivia. 2002. "The Morality of Abortion." In Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, 6th edition, ed. Bonnie Steinbock, John D. Arras, and Alex John London. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company.

3)         Sherwin, Susan. 1992. Patient No More. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

4)         Thomson, Judith Jarvis. 1971. "A Defense of Abortion." In Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, 5th edition, ed. Bonnie Steinbock and John D. Arras. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company.

5)         Warren, Mary Anne. 1973. "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion." In Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, 5th edition, ed. Bonnie Steinbock and John D. Arras. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company.

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