I recently came across a pertinent piece to recent debate—philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson’s essay called A Defense Of Abortion. The essay proposes a scenario where you one day wake up and find yourself connected to a famous violinist. You now share a bodily symbiotic relationship where you must stay connected to him for 9 months to ensure his life. Do you stay connected or not?
This scenario raises multiple questions and I want to try to address most of them.
The most probing one to me is the contextual relevance. When I first read it, I immediately started examining the circumstances of my life that would permit me to continue. First would be ability and mobility: how much of my living conditions would have to change to accommodate the connection? How much of my mental and physical wellness am I willing to sacrifice to sustain his life?
Obviously, if much of my life is brought to a pause as a result of this situation it is hard for anyone to say yes. Time is irreplaceable for anyone unless for a good cause. You may ask…isnt saving someone’s life a good cause? That brings us to the human nature of transactionality. No matter the extent of selflessness one may possess, the consequence of his actions results in something he takes joy in, hence the motivation to pursue it in the first place. Perhaps the knowledge the violinist lives because of you is less strong of a motivator than you being the cause of his death due to your unconformity; however, you are randomly asked to bear the knowledge of his existence, how is that fair? Unless there exists something that weighs greater than the regret or sanity that compliance with the matter brings you, would one consider the act of sacrifice? Taking a breath from the abstraction, Judith Thompson intends to raise a parallel between the violinist and the philosophy of endurance when it comes to pregnancy. In real life, transactionality exists but it has become the norm that it is never questioned. Women endure pregnancy to, as a result, experience the joy of motherhood. If that person has no penchant for love towards the child why must she endure the physical taxation
So what do you get out of this? For some, the mere thought of sustaining life is worthy enough for sacrifice but for others compensation, say in the form of money, must exist for one to endure it. Surrogates endure pregnancy for the reward of money, without it nothing serves as the impetus for endurance.
We have now established that some sort of transactionality is rooted in our actions, even if we are not consciously aware of how it drives our decisions.
Circling back to the violinist, we must question the worth we assign to human life and how much of it ties back to our personal life. In our assumption the violinist is a stranger, that mere fact causes the onset of all deliberations. What if the violinist is a loved one? Personally there would be no question at all if all I have to give is 9 months to save someone dear to me. Under the assumption that that would be the norm we can conclude that the worth of human life relies on personal connection and knowledge. And that, in a way, connects to transactionality wherein the said person adds value to your life contrary to a stranger with no place in your story, where the worth of human life is internally subjective but externally expected otherwise.
A word in the scenario that I want to give importance to is ‘famous’ because that opens up a wider range of considerations, namely the duty to sustain life of someone with practical importance to society ( or future (un)promised importance when talking about a fetus).
Say you were, instead of a violinist, connected to a researcher that is on the verge of curing a deadly disease, now widespread. If this newfound situation of connection remains under the secrecy of your knowledge, you are given the right of choice; however, in the case this becomes known, society would do anything and everything, at expense of your life, to ensure the survival of the other. This brings into view the true perception of worth under circumstances of exigency.
When it comes to the fetus in general, where only the promised “worth” becomes a deciding factor it essentially turns into making a bet on contingencies. But is the person who is required to sustain life morally responsible to bear the consequences of a future society? Unless you are God, no one knows future potential nor the impact a single individual could make for the betterment of society.
A healthy seed may be planted in a garden but the ability of the potential tree to bear fruits that would sate the farmer that plants it depends on whether he will continue to supply the shoot with nourishment to help it reach there. It depends on the needs of the farmer on whether the fruit it bears is the one he craves or if it is the fruit that he can financially take on without burden. The future of the tree is also dependent on factors such as the placement in the soil in a field that may have been in possession for decades—factors independent of the farmer that plants the seed. You can't justify someone to sustain a life based on future potential when that future is majorly dependent on circumstantial factors.
Let's say in another case, the situation under which you got connected differed—instead of waking up to it out of randomness, say it was foisted upon you without choice, are you morally bound to the onerous fate? There's a difference between waking up connected randomly versus being connected deliberately by someone else's decision. Does the origin of the situation change your obligation? And who bears moral responsibility—you for disconnecting, or whoever connected you without asking? The fault must rest upon the person who connects for that decision—a decision that puts a person in a situation where a choice must be made, and the outcome of that choice should not be borne by the person in a place they did not choose to be in.
But perhaps the sanctity of life exists precisely when we refuse to make it conditional. The minute we consider and weigh the cost and benefit we lose the very aspect of compassion that constitutes humanity. If one decides to stay, for intentions that may not be entirely selfless, his resolve will result in the continuance of a life be it someone they know or do not. Though his actions constitute pathological altruism, none can say it is morally wrong when despite it, it serves the greater good.
Yet, whatever the worth of the violinist, whatever society demands, whatever potential exists — none of it transfers moral responsibility onto a body that never consented. Obligation cannot be imposed, but sometimes people comply anyway, for reasons that are too complex and grey to identify, and life continues because of it; no matter the consequence, the moral weight must rest upon the connector, not the person that chooses to withdraw for reasons concerning their bodily autonomy.