Personhood: One Factor Among Many: Judith Jarvis Thomson

Virginia Black
Introduction to Philosophy
Jorge Secada, Peter Tan
17 October 2014
Personhood: One Factor Among Many
What does it mean to be a 'human being '? When does a human fetus become a 'human being '? At what point does an individual physical being come into existence? Is there any morally relevant break along the biological process of development from the unicellular zygote to birth? The common foundation of abortion arguments will answer the initial question of what defines life, or more specifically, at what point in the development of the fetus the line should be drawn between life and non-life. Some argue it is from the moment of conception, others pick some arbitrary measurement of the pregnancy, and a considerable number of
Thomson believes that the reasoning behind the arguments that focus solely on personhood are misguided and insufficient. Her argument is extremely interesting and unique because she concedes the issue of personhood to her opponent, and then goes on to demonstrate why her concession does not give her opponent the upper hand. Thompson challenges the effectiveness of the premises of her opponents argument by demonstrating that abortion should be impermissible in all cases. Instead of focusing on personhood, Thompson chooses to demonstrate that the right to life is commonly misunderstood as an entitlement that would, at times, permit them to disregard the rights of others. She uses the analogy of “people-seeds [that] drift about in the air like pollen, and if you open your windows, one may drift in and take root in your carpets or upholstery”(Thompson). Her motivation for this particular argument lies in what she believes is a clever link between opening the window on a hot day and intercourse, as well as holes in window screens and faulty contraception. While I do agree with the underlying message of Thompson’s argument of the multidimensionality of abortion, I believe that it is difficult to create analogies for pregnancies.
Thompson is primarily motivated by autonomy, but if the right to life of both the mother and the fetus were always completely equal in every circumstance, wouldn’t we just flip a coin to decide if abortion is permissible or not? Intuitively, the mother is going to have a reason for the desire to remove the fetus from her body. If she has no reason at all, then no factor, not even personhood would be playing a role in swaying her decision one way or another. If her only reason was that she despised her fetus’ personhood and wanted to eliminate it, yes, personhood would play a role in deeming the abortion immoral, but not for the reasons that pro-lifers argue for. The pro-life advocates gloss over the morality of the mother’s motives in relation to established personhood, and focus solely on personhood itself, removed from external factors. I believe there is a distinct difference between kidney dialysis and blood transfusions as a means of sustaining a stranger’s life attached to you versus childbirth to sustain your own child’s life. Similarly, comparing a fetus to a parasite in order to establish the entitlement to remove it does not follow because that denotes the invasion of the woman’s body without considering how the fetus arrived inside of her in the first place. Why are we focusing on