Abortion, Autonomy, and Control over One's Body

Summary

INTRODUCTION

It is often thought that if a developing human being is considered a “person” from the beginning, then it would follow that abortion (at any time) would be impermissible. For, after all, a person has a stringent right to life, and because life is a prerequisite for enjoying any other goods, it is plausible that the right to life is a “basic” or “fundamental” one, not easily overridden by other considerations. The right to life, it would seem, could not be outweighed by another individual's preferences, even preferences about what should happen in or to her body.

Judith Jarvis Thomson, in her remarkable 1971 essay, “A Defense of Abortion,” argues that even if we assume that a human fetus is a person, it does not follow that abortion is always impermissible. Part of her argument is that, in some contexts, an individual's right to determine what happens in or to her body overrides another individual's right to life. To support this contention, Thomson offers her (now famous) “violinist example,” which I shall describe in detail in the next section of this essay. The example raises subtle and difficult questions about the relationship between the right to life and the cluster of rights that constitute one's right to control over one's body. Furthermore, the example and its analysis raise important questions about the nature of autonomy.

In this essay I shall seek to show how certain ways of invoking autonomy cannot aid in a defense of Thomson's strategy of argumentation on behalf of the “pro-choice” position (according to which abortion is in some cases permissible).