[Music] hey folks George here again this time we're going to continue our discussion around the moral issues regarding abortion now we're going to examine a famous article by Judith Jarvis Thompson entitled a defense of abortion she comes at it from a very interesting Viewpoint last time we discussed the debate whether or not the fetus is a person with moral rights Judith Jarvis Thompson is going to bring up another Point such that it doesn't matter if the fetus is a person we'll see how that argument works right now she starts her article off early by saying I'm inclined to think also that we shall probably have to agree that the fetus has already become a human person well before birth indeed it comes as a surprise when one first learns how early in its life it begins to acquire human characteristics she gives us the presumptive right to life argument that argument suggests that a fetus is a person every person has a right to life so a fetus has a rights to life and that right to life outweighs a woman's desires about her own body however Thompson brings in a now famous example of a violinist imagine that while you're asleep a dying violinist is connected to your body to keep him alive must you accept the situation to keep the violinist alive by the way this sounds a lot like becoming pregnant as a result of rape some pro-lifers make exceptions for rape however she was Jarvis Thompson sees that as odd that seems to suggest that some people have less a right to life and that is rather unpleasant when you say wait a second I thought a fetus had a rights to life yeah but if it's the product of rape it has less of a right to life that is rather unpleasant to Thompson and to myself let's go back to the extreme pro-life view that there shall be no abortions even to save the mother's life with that in mind Thomas says even if the fetus has a right to life so does the mother there is no reasonable way to consider abortion as murder if it is to save a mother's life by the way all reasonable morality allows for self-defense and it allows others like doctors or like policemen to help others secure their self-defense so in this case it seems completely absurd to uh Thompson to say that there are never any exceptions even for the mother's life so with that in mind let's examine this notion of a right to life right what does a right to life not mean well Thompson says it doesn't mean that when I have a right to life therefore I have a right to do whatever I want to another person's body to keep me alive back to her famous violinist example clearly the violinist has a right to life but the violinist does not have a right to be connected to me again we've talked about this regarding libertarian arguments who suggest that uh yes rights to life is a negative right such that I have a right that you shall not do anything to me right versus positive rights uh such that I have a right to something you must give me again if we recall certain libertarian arguments from other discussions or maybe we will discuss uh in the future other libertarian arguments they'll say that there are indeed negative rights but it's the positive rights which are much much more controversial right and that is all that Thompson is suggesting at the very least I have negative rights not to be bothered by other people who wants to force upon me my duty to save them by connecting to my body let's say so then what does all that mean let's figure out what right to life really means right to life really means the right to not be killed unjustly that's what right to life really means bringing it back to abortion like the violinist the fetus even if it is a person let's assume for the sake of this article that it is a person the fetus has a right to life but is abortion unjust killing in the case of rape obviously the mother has not given the fetus a right to use her body so at the very least uh so far Thompson has given us a good argument to suggest why abortion in the case of rape shall be allowed because if a fetus has a right to life it doesn't have a right to my body that I gave unjustly right well then uh fine a lot of people aren't too happy with that though because what kind of pregnancy might a fetus have the right to a mother's body well what if the mother freely chose to have sex which led to pregnancy but she didn't want pregnancy that's an interesting one right however Thompson has a way out of that she says wait if I leave the window open in my home and a burglar comes in it's absurd to say that the burglar has rights over my property just because I left the window open and presumably that analogy goes to uh having sex but not wanting a baby after having sex right in the same way that just because I leave my door unlocked or my window open it doesn't mean that the burglar that shows up that I don't want to show up has any rights to my property simply because I left the window open right and that's where Thompson is going to go a bit further and say yeah the rights to abortion is going to be a little bit more broad than merely rape right let's reconsider the violinist example right of course Thompson acknowledges it would be nice to help him maybe you even ought to help him you should help the violinist but even if I ought to help that doesn't give the violinist a right to my help even if it is morally good that I do help that doesn't mean the violinist has the right to take that help from me and so for a fetus right so for a fetus even if it is easy for me to do it still does not yield someone else's right to me and my body right nobody is morally required to make large sacrifices in order to keep another person alive we are not morally required to be Good Samaritans therefore there is no Injustice to disconnecting the violinist or having an abortion Now Thompson is very clear this doesn't prove that all abortion is always permissible right there might be as even warrant acknowledge some very um indecent abortions yes she's not Thompson isn't Thompson isn't arguing for an absolute right to an abortion all that said however Thompson does bring back uh from where she started earlier in the article when she said yeah it's clear that a fetus is a person at the end of the article she says yeah but by the way we've all just been pretending that a fetus is a person from conception so perhaps further down the way of uh development the fetus might become a person or something like a person but certainly not a zygote or very early stages of uh pregnancy that to me is a fascinating argument that Thompson has given us to explain even if the fetus does have a right to life that doesn't preclude the right to uh an abortion it might still allow for abortion rights even if fetuses have rights to life just like the violinist hope that summarizes for you a lot of Thompson's arguments and you have a better understanding of her ideas there again if you disagree with her where does she go wrong in her reason in an argumentation see you next time bye-bye