Stringing Up the Violinist:
Refuting A Common Abortion Argument

Close your eyes and imagine the following scenario:

"You wake up one 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. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you—we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you. Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says, "Tough luck, I agree, but you've now got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this: All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted, you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him." I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, which suggests that something really is wrong with that plausible-sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago."

Now what if someone told you, "See, this is just like abortion. Even if the fetus is a person, no woman should be forced to donate her body as a life support system for someone else. If you believed that the woman in the scenario shouldn’t be forced to have her body attached to the violinist, then you must also believe that women have the right to terminate their pregnancies anytime they want."

You may have heard this argument before, whether at school or in popular magazines. Judith Jarvis Thomson, an MIT philosophy professor, originally published it in the early 1970’s in an essay entitled, "A Defense of Abortion." Since then it has become one of the most famous pro-choice arguments in history. It is my intent in this essay to refute her thesis that states it is morally permissible to kill an unborn child.

To start, the pro-life position is easily summed up in the following syllogism.

Premise: It is wrong to kill an innocent human being.

Inference: An unborn child is an innocent human being.

Conclusion: It is wrong to kill an unborn child.

Most people who are pro-choice would challenge the inference, but Thomson challenges the premise instead. She admits herself that

Undaunted by conventional morality, Thomson then challenges the premise, "It is wrong to kill an innocent human being," with her oh so famous, "violinist parable" that I explained earlier. In order to refute Thomson one must show that her analogy between the violinist and the fetus is a false analogy.

To start, the analogy is a rather perverted view of pregnancy. Thomson’s view of pregnancy as spending nine months in a hospital bed hooked up to a strange violinist is disturbing and misleading. To start, nearly all pregnancies are the result of consensual sex, so the Society of Music Lovers is a far cry from reality. In addition, during the first part of pregnancies the fetus is not even noticeable. Later, when the woman displays the physical characteristics of pregnancy she is still capable of maintaining a normal routine of leisure, exercise, a social life, etc. Rarely, very rarely, is one confined to a hospital bed for nine months. Thomson suggestion of being connected for nine years or for one’s entire life (symbolizing parenthood) is patently ridiculous. One need only consider adoption as a viable option for mothers who truly do not want their child after birth. Second, the scenario completely ignores the relationship between mother and child and instead pits them as strangers competing against one another. Third, unplugging the violinist is a passive way of killing him, while abortion is a violent, active way of killing the unborn child. Finally and most importantly, the woman in the scenario doesn’t intend to kill the violinist, it is merely an unfortunate by-product of unplugging herself from the dialysis machine. The violinist will then die from his kidney ailment. This is contrasted in an abortion where the woman intentionally and directly kills the child. The child does not die in a passive way like the violinist. Instead, the child dies from burns, poison, or dismemberment during the procedure.

A more appropriate analogy would be:

Given that your poor planning and irresponsible behavior put your daughter in this state, are you morally responsible, as a parent, to give up some of your liberty for her life? I think yes, you are.

Also, an example from American Tort Law shows that from a legal standpoint, it would be completely inappropriate to place the unborn child into an environment or situation that is hostile or lethal for him or her.

On a cold January night in Minnesota, just after the turn of the twentieth century, Orland Dupue asked the Flateuas if he could stay with them for the night. Dupue had been invited as their guest and had dined with them. He had also become sick and fainted earlier. Nevertheless, the Flateaus refused and, left in the cold, Dupue contracted frostbite and lost his fingers. A civil suit was brought and the court ruled that the Flateaus were indeed liable for Dupue’s injuries. The judge in the case said, "The law as well as humanity required that he not be exposed in his helpless condition to the merciless elements," (Noonan 4-5).

The judge saw that while the Flateaus had no contractual obligation to Mr. Dupue, by being human beings, they had a moral obligation to protect him. Neither the Flateaus nor anyone, pregnant or not, has a right to place an innocent person in a situation where they face serious harm or death.

Hopefully I have demonstrated that no amount of philosophical sleight-of-hand can justify the killing of innocent people. While it would be permissible and understandable for the woman to unplug herself from the violinist, but this precedent does not carry over to abortion. Thomson’s analogy fails and it also demeans pregnancy and motherhood. She portrays one of the most natural and beautiful parts of life as bizarre, unnatural, and positively creepy. The analogy does not take into account that the unborn child is related to the mother, nearly always is a product of consensual sex, and is directly killed through abortion. Pope John Paul II urges us to pray and work towards "a culture of life." In order to do that one must show that Thomson and others like her, use abortion as a means to create a culture of death, and that it is completely intolerable. Through courage and prayer this holocaust will end as long as we trust God and follow His will in the matter.

"When the time comes as it surely will, when we face that awesome moment, the final judgment, I’ve often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates, you are there alone standing before God — and a terror will rip your soul like nothing you can imagine. But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone. I think there’ll be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world — and they will plead for everyone who has been in this movement. They will say to God, ‘Spare him, because he loved us,’ — and God will look at you and say not, ‘Did you succeed?’ but ‘Did you try?’"

-Congressman Henry Hyde

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