Most Opposition to Abortion Relies Essay Example for Free

Most Opposition to spontaneous abortion Relies Es regulariseA defence force of Abortion Author(s) Judith Jarvis Thomson Source philosophical system and semipublic Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Autumn, 1971), pp. 47-66 Published by Black swell Publishing Stable URL http//www. jstor. org/stable/2265091 Accessed 10/01/2010 0054 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTORs Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http//www. jstor. org/page/info/ close/policies/ terminals. jsp.JSTORs Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you feed obtained prior(prenominal) permission, you whitethorn non download an entire protrude of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you whitethorn use content in the JSTOR archive l 1 well-nigh(prenominal) for your individualal, non-commercial use. Please cont defend the publisher regarding whatsoever further use of this work. Publisher contact information whitethorn be obtained at http//www. jstor. org/act ion/showPublisher? publisherCode=black. Each copy of whatsoever part of a JSTOR transmission mustiness(prenominal)(prenominal) contain the same copy powerful nonice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.JSTOR is a non-for-profit service that aids scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and as wellls to increase intersectionivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For to a greater extent information somewhat JSTOR, please contact emailprotected org. Blackwell Publishing is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Philosophy and Public Affairs. http//www. jstor. org JUDITH JARVISTHOMSON A Defense of AbortionMost opposition to miscarriage relies on the premise that the foetus is a kind universe, a psyche, from the moment of conception. The premise is argued for, precisely, as I think, non well. Take, fo r example, the some common ancestry. We atomic number 18 asked to notice that the emergence of a human be from conception through birth into baby birdhood is continuous whence it is hypothesise that to draw a line, to choose a spotlight in this development and say before this point the thing is not a person, after this point it is a person is to throw away an arbitrary choice, a choice for which in the nature of things no good terra firma laughingstock be precondition.It is concluded that the foetus is, or eachway that we had better say it is, a person from the moment of conception. moreover this conclusion does not follow. Similar things world power be said ab turn out the development of an acorn into an oak tree, and it does not follow that acorns be oak trees, or that we had better say they atomic number 18. Arguments of this form are sometimes gripeed slippery slope disceptations-the sound out is perhaps self-explanatory-and it is dismaying that opponent s of miscarriage rely on them so heavily and uncritically. I am tend to agree, however, that the prospects for drawing a line in the development of the foetus look dim.I am aban dod to think also that we shall probably hurt 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. By the tenth week, for example, it already has i. I am very(prenominal) much(prenominal) indebted to James Thomson for discussion, criticism, and m whatever helpful hintions. 48 Philosophy Public Affairs a face, weapons system and legs, fingers and toes it has internal organs, and brain activity is detectable. 2 On the opposite hand, I think that the premise is phony, that the fetus is not a person from the moment of conception.A newly fertilized ovum, a newly implanted plunk of cells, is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree. just I shall not di scuss any of this. For it seems to me to be of great interest to ask what kick downstairss if, for the sake of argument, we fall by the wayside the premise. How, scarce, are we sup comprise to get from t here(predicate) to the conclusion that spontaneous abortion is chastely impermissible? Opponents of abortion comm barely spend most of their time imparting that the fetus is a person, and hardly any time explaining the step from in that respect to the impermissibility of abortion.Perhaps they think the step too simple and obvious to require much comment. Or perhaps instead they are simply being economical in argument. Many of those who defend abortion rely on the premise that the fetus is not a person, but barely a bit of tissue that will become a person at birth and why pay out more arguments than you set about to? Whatever the explanation, I suggest that the step they fix is neither easy nor obvious, that it calls for close set(predicate) examination than it is common ly go pastn, and that when we do give it this closer examination we shall note inclined to reject it.I propose, then, that we grant that the fetus is a person. from the moment of conception. How does the argument go from here? Something uniform this, I take it. Every person has a salutary to life. So the fetus has a proper(a) to life. No doubt the vex has a chastise to conclude what shall happen in and to her body everyone would grant that. provided surely a persons justly to life is stronger and more slopped than the mothers aright to decide what happens in and to her body, and so outweighs it.So the fetus may not be scratch offed an abortion may not be performed. It sounds plausible. however nowadays let me ask you to imagine this. You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in seat with an unconscious tinkerer. A known unconscious tinkerer. He has been constitute to rescue a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of medicine Lovers 2. Daniel Ca llahan, Abortion Law, select and Morality (New York, 1970), p. 373. This book gives a fascinating survey of the available information on abortion. The Jewish customs is surveyed in David M.Feldman, Birth Control in Jewish Law (New York, i968), Part 5, the Catholic tradition in John T. Noonan, jr. , An Almost Absolute Value in Hi boloney, in The Morality of Abortion, ed. John T. Noonan, Jr. (Cambridge, Mass. , 1970). 49 A Defense of Abortion has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone keep the right blood type to help. They start out and then kidnapped you, and last night the violinists circulatory system was out of use(p) into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own.The manager of the hospital now tells you, Look, were sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you-we would never wee-wee permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into you. To un plug you would be to kill him. But never mind, its only for nine months. By past he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you. Is it chastely 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 womb-to-tomb still?What if the director of the hospital says, Tough luck, I agree, but youve 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 persons 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 misuse with that plausible-sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago.In this case, of course, you were kidnapped you didnt volunteer for the operation that plugged the violinist into your kidneys. quarter those who oppose abortion on the ground I mentioned make an censure for a gestation period repayable to rape? Certainly. They can say that persons have a right to life only if they didnt come into universe of discourse because of rape or they can say that all persons have a right to life, but that some have less of a right to life than others, in particular, that those who came into existence because of rape have less. But these statements have a rather unpleasant sound. sure as shooting the question of whether you have a right to life at all, or how much of it you have, shouldnt turn on the question of whether or not you are the product of a rape. And in detail the muckle who oppose abortion on the ground I mentioned do not make this distinction, and hence do not make an exception in case of rape. 50 Philosophy Public Affairs Nor do they make an exception for a case in which the mother has to spend the nine months of her pregnancy in bed. They would agree that would be a great pity, and hard on the mother but all the same, all persons have a right to ife, the fetus is a person, and so on. I suspect, in fact, that they would not make an exception for a case in which, miraculously adequate, the pregnancy went on for nine years, or even the rest of the mothers life. Some wont even make an exception for a case in which continuation of the pregnancy is likely to shorten the mothers life they regard abortion as impermissible even to save the mothers life. Such cases are nowadays very rare, and many opponents of abortion do not accept this extreme control. Moreover, in violent death the child, one would be killing an sincere person, for the child has committed no crime, and is not aiming at his mothers death. And then there are a renewal of ways in which this 3. The term direct in the arguments I refer to is a technical one. Roughly, what is meant by direct killing is either killing as an end in itself, or killing as a means to some end, for example, the end of saving psyche elses life. See note 6, below, for an example of its use. 51 A Defense of Abortion might be continued. i) But as directly killing an sincere person is always and absolutely impermissible, an abortion may not be performed. Or, (2) as directly killing an innocent person is murder, and murder is always and absolutely impermissible, an abortion may not be performed. Because unplugging you would be directly killing an innocent violinist, and thats murder, and thats impermissible. If anything in the world is true, it is that you do not commit murder, you do not do what is impermissible, if you reach around to your back and unplug yourself from that violinist to save your life. The main focus of worry in writings on abortion has been on what a third companionship may or may not do in answer to a request from a mulie brity for an abortion. This is in a way findable. Things being as they are, there isnt much a woman can safely do to abort herself.So the question asked is what a third party may do, and what the mother may do, if it is mentioned at all, is deduced, almost as an afterthought, from what it is concluded that third parties may do. But it seems to me that to goody the question in this way is to refuse to grant to the mother that very status of person which is so firmly insisted on for the fetus. For we cannot simply read off what a person may do from what a third party may do. state you find yourself trapped in a tiny house with a suppuration child. I mean a very tiny house, and a rapidly growing child-you are already up against the wall f the house and in a few minutes youll be scurvy to death. The child on the other hand wont be crushed to death if nil is through with(p) to stop him from growing hell be hurt, but in the end hell simply break through open the house and walk ou t a free man. Now I could well infrastand it if a bystander were to say, Theres nothing we can do for you. We cannot choose amid your life and his, we cannot be the ones to decide who is to live, we cannot intervene. But it cannot be concluded that you too can do nothing, that you cannot attack it to save your life.However innocent the child may be, you do not have to wait passively while it crushes you to death. Perhaps a expectant woman is vaguely felt to have the status of house, to which we dont take into account the 53 A Defense of Abortion right of self-defense. But if the woman houses the child, it should be remembered that she is a person who houses it. 1 should perhaps stop to say explicitly that I am not claiming that people have a right to do anything whatever to save their lives. I think, rather, that there are drastic limits to the right of self-defense.If someone threatens you with death unless you torture someone else to death, I think you have not the right, ev en to save your life, to do so. But the case under consideration here is very different. In our case there are only devil people involved, one whose life is exist, and one who threatens it. Both are innocent the one who is threatened is not threatened because of any fault, the one who threatens does not threaten because of any fault. For this reason we may feel that we bystanders cannot intervene. But the person threatened can.In sum, a woman surely can defend her life against the threat to it posed by the unhatched child, even if doing so involves its death. And this shows not merely that the theses in (i) through (4) are false it shows also that the extreme view of abortion is false, and so we need not canvass any other possible ways of arriving at it from the argument I mentioned at the outset. 2. The extreme view could of course be weakened to say that while abortion is permissible to save the mothers life, it may not be performed by a third party, but only by the mother hers elf. But this cannot be right either.For what we have to keep in mind is that the mother and the unborn child are not like two tenants in a small house which has, by an unfortunate mistake, been rented to both the mother owns the house. The fact that she does adds to the unsavoriness of deducing that the mother can do nothing from the supposition that third parties can do nothing. But it does more than this it casts a bright light on the supposition that third parties can do nothing. Certainly it lets us see that a third party who says I cannot choose between you is fooling himself if he thinks this is impartiality.If Jones has found and fastened on a legitimate coat, which he needs to keep him from freezing, but which Smith also needs to keep him from freezing, then it is not impartiality that says I cannot choose between you when Smith owns the coat. Women have said again and again This body is my body and they have reason to feel angry, reason to feel that it has been like sho uting into the wind. Smith, after all, is 54 Philosophy Public Affairs hardly likely to contract us if we say to him, Of course its your coat, anybody would grant that it is. But no one may choose between you and Jones who is to have it. We should really ask what it is that says no one may choose in the face of the fact that the body that houses the child is the mothers body. It may be simply a failure to appreciate this fact. But it may be something more interesting, namely the sense that one has a right to refuse to lay work force on people, even where it would be just and fair to do so, even where justice seems to require that mortal do so. Thus justice might call for somebody to get Smiths coat back from Jones, and heretofore you have a right to refuse to be the one to lay hands on Jones, a right to refuse to do physical violence to him.This, I think, must be granted. But then what should be said is not no one may choose, but only I cannot choose, and hence not even this, but I will not act, going away it open that somebody else can or should, and in particular that anyone in a position of authority, with the job of securing peoples rights, both can and should. So this is no difficulty. I have not been rock that any given third party must accede to the mothers request that he perform an abortion to save her life, but only that he may.I suppose that in some views of human life the mothers body is only on bring to her, the loan not being one which gives her any prior claim to it. One who held this view might well think it impartiality to say I cannot choose. But I shall simply ignore this possibility. My own view is that if a human being has any just, prior claim to anything at all, he has a just, prior claim to his own body. And perhaps this neednt be argued for here anyway, since, as I mentioned, the arguments against abortion we are smell at do grant that the woman has a right to decide what happens in and to her body.But although they do grant it, I have tried to show that they do not take seriously what is done in granting it. I suggest the same thing will reappear even more intelligibly when we turn away from cases in which the mothers life is at stake, and attend, as I propose we now do, to the immensely more common cases in which a woman wants an abortion for some less weighty reason than preserving her own life. 3. Where the mothers life is not at stake, the argument I mentioned at the outset seems to have a much stronger pull. Everyone 55 A Defense of Abortion as a right to life, so the unborn person has a right to life. And isnt the childs right to life weightier than anything other than the mothers own right to life, which she might perpet come out forward as ground for an abortion? This argument treats the right to life as if it were unproblematic. It is not, and this seems to me to be precisely the source of the mistake. For we should now, at long last, ask what it comes to, to have a right to life. In some views having a right to life implicates having a right to be given at least the loot stripped one needs for continued life.But suppose that what in fact is the bare minimum a man needs for continued life is something he has no right at all to be given? If I am sick unto death, and the only thing that will save my life is the progress to of Henry Fondas cool hand on my fevered brow, then all the same, I have no right to be given the equalize of Henry Fondas cool hand on my fevered brow. It would be frightfully nice of him to fly in from the western United States Coast to provide it. It would be less nice, though no doubt well meant, if my friends flew out to the West Coast and carried Henry Fonda back with them. But I have no right at all against anybody that he should do this for me.Or again, to return to the recital I told earlier, the fact that for continued life that violinist needs the continued use of your kidneys does not establish that he has a right to be given the co ntinued use of your kidneys. He certainly has no right against you that you should give him continued use of your kidneys. For nobody has any right to use your kidneys unless you give him such a right and nobody has the right against you that you shall give him this right-if you do bear him to go on utilize your kidneys, this is a kindness on your part, and not something he can claim from you as his collectable.Nor has he any right against anybody else that they should give him continued use of your kidneys. Certainly he had no right against the Society of Music Lovers that they should plug him into you in the first ass. And if you now start to unplug yourself, having learned that you will otherwise have to spend nine years in bed with him, there is nobody in the world who must try to prevent you, in order to see to it that he is given something he has a right to be given. Some people are rather stricter about the right to life.In their view, it does not include the right to be given anything, but amounts to, 56 Philosophy Public Affairs and only to, the right not to be killed by anybody. But here a related difficulty arises. If everybody is to end from killing that violinist, then everybody must refrain from doing a great many different sorts of things. Everybody must refrain from slitting his throat, everybody must refrain from shooting him-and everybody must refrain from unplugging you from him.But does he have a right against everybody that they shall refrain from unplugging you from him? To refrain from doing this is to allow him to continue to use your kidneys. It could be argued that he has a right against us that we should allow him to continue to use your kidneys. That is, while he had no right against us that we should give him the use of your kidneys, it might be argued that he anyway has a right against us that we shall not now intervene and reave him of the use of your kidneys.I shall come back to third-party interventions later. But certa inly the violinist has no right against you that you shall allow him to continue to use your kidneys. As I said, if you do allow him to use them, it is a kindness on your part, and not something you owe him. The difficulty I point to here is not peculiar to the right to life. It reappears in connection with all the other natural rights and it is something which an adequate account of rights must deal with. For present purposes it is enough just to draw attention to it.But I would stress that I am not arguing that people do not have a right to lifequite to the contrary, it seems to me that the primary control we must place on the acceptability of an account of rights is that it should turn out in that account to be a faithfulness that all persons have a right to life. I am arguing only that having a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another persons body-even if one needs it for life itself.So the r ight to life will not serve the opponents of abortion in the very simple and absolve way in which they seem to have thought it would. 4. There is another way to bring out the difficulty. In the most ordinary sort of case, to deprive someone of what he has a right to is to treat him unjustly. Suppose a boy and his small brother are jointly given a street corner of chocolates for Christmas. If the older boy takes the thump and refuses to give his brother any of the chocolates, he is unjust to -him, for the brother has been given a right to half of them. But 57 A Defense of Abortion uppose that, having learned that otherwise it means nine years in bed with that violinist, you unplug yourself from him. You surely are not being unjust to him, for you gave him no right to use your kidneys, and no one else can have given him any such right. But we have to notice that in unplugging yourself, you are killing him and violinists, like everybody else, have a right to life, and thus in the vi ew we were considering just now, the right not to be killed. So here you do what he supposititiously has a right you shall not do, but you do not act unjustly to him in doing it.The emendation which may be made at this point is this the right to life consists not in the right not to be killed, but rather in the right not to be killed unjustly. This runs a risk of circularity, but never mind it would enable us to square the fact that the violinist has a right to life with the fact that you do not act unjustly toward him in unplugging yourself, thereby killing him. For if you do not kill him unjustly, you do not violate his right to life, and so it is no wonder you do him no injustice.But if this emendation is accepted, the gap in the argument against abortion stares us plainly in the face it is by no means enough to show that the fetus is a person, and to remind us that all persons have a right to life-we need to be shown also that killing the fetus violates its right to life, i. e . , that abortion is unjust killing. And is it? I suppose we may take it as a datum that in a case of pregnancy collectable to rape the mother has not given the unborn person a right to the use of her body for food and shelter. Indeed, in what pregnancy could it be supposed that the mother has given the unborn person such a right?It is not as if there were unborn persons seetheing about the world, to whom a woman who wants a child says I invite you in. But it might be argued that there are other ways one can have acquired a right to the use of another persons body than by having been invited to use it by that person. Suppose a woman voluntarily indulges in intercourse, knowing of the chance it will issue in pregnancy, and then she does become meaning(a) is she not in part responsible for the presence, in fact the very existence, of the unborn person intimate her? No doubt she did not invite it in.But doesnt her partial responsibility for its being there itself give it a right t o the use of her 58 Philosophy Public Affairs body? 7 If so, then her aborting it would be more like the boys taking away the chocolates, and less like your unplugging yourself from the violinist-doing so would be depriving it of what it does have a right to, and thus would be doing it an injustice. And then, too, it might be asked whether or not she can kill it even to save her own life If she voluntarily called it into existence, how can she now kill it, even in self-defense?The first thing to be said about this is that it is something new. Opponents of abortion have been so refer to make out the independence of the fetus, in order to establish that it has a right to life, just as its mother does, that they have tended to overlook the possible support they might gain from making out that the fetus is dependent on the mother, in order to establish that she has a special kind of responsibility for it, a responsibility that gives it rights against her which are not possessed by any independent person-such as an ailing violinist who is a stranger to her.On the other hand, this argument would give the unborn person a right to its mothers body only if her pregnancy momented from a voluntary act, undertaken in full knowledge of the chance a pregnancy might result from it. It would leave out entirely the unborn person whose existence is due to rape. Pending the availability of some further argument, then, we would be left with the conclusion that unborn persons whose existence is due to rape have no right to the use of their mothers bodies, and thus that aborting them is not depriving them of anything they have a right to and hence is not unjust killing.And we should also notice that it is not at all plain that this argument really does go even as far as it purports to. For there are cases and cases, and the details make a difference. If the room is stuffy, and I therefore open a window to air it, and a buccaneer climbs in, it would be absurd to say,Ah, now he c an stay, shes given him a right to the use of her house-for she is partly responsible for his presence there, having voluntarily done what enabled him to get in, in full knowledge that there are such things as bandits, and that burglars 7.The need for a discussion of this argument was brought home to me by members of the Society for honourable and Legal Philosophy, to whom this paper was originally presented. 59 A Defense of Abortion burgle. It would be still more absurd to say this if I had had bars installed outside my windows, precisely to prevent burglars from getting in, and a burglar got in only because of a defect in the bars. It stay ons equally absurd if we imagine it is not a burglar who climbs in, but an innocent person who blunders or falls in.Again, suppose it were like this people-seeds 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. You dont want children, so you fix up your windows w ith fine mesh screens, the very best you can buy. As can happen, however, and on very, very rare occasions does happen, one of the screens is spoilt and a seed drifts in and takes root. Does the person-plant who now develops have a right to the use of your house?Surely not-despite the fact that you voluntarily opened your windows, you knowingly kept carpets and upholstered furniture, and you knew that screens were sometimes defective. Someone may argue that you are responsible for its rooting, that it does have a right to your house, because after all you could have lived out your life with bare floors and furniture, or with sealed windows and doors. But this wont do-for by the same token anyone can avoid a pregnancy due to rape by having a hysterectomy, or anyway by never leaving home without a (reliable army. It seems to me that the argument we are looking at can establish at most that there are some cases in which the unborn person has a right to the use of its mothers body, an d therefore some cases in which abortion is unjust killing. There is room for much discussion and argument as to precisely which, if any. But I think we should sidestep this issue and leave it open, for at any rate the argument certainly does not establish that all abortion is unjust killing. 5. There is room for but another argument here, however.We surely must all grant that there may be cases in which it would be morally indecent to detach a person from your body at the cost of his life. Suppose you learn that what the violinist needs is not nine years of your life, but only one arcminute all you need do to save his life is to spend one min in that bed with him. Suppose also that letting him use your kidneys for that one hour would not affect your health in the slightest. Admittedly you were kidnapped. Admittedly you did not give 6o Philosophy Public Affairs anyone permission to plug him into you. as yet it seems to me plain you ought to allow him to use your kidneys for tha t hour-it would be indecent to refuse. Again, suppose pregnancy lasted only an hour, and constituted no threat to life or health. And suppose that a woman becomes pregnant as a result of rape. Admittedly she did not voluntarily do anything to bring about the existence of a child. Admittedly she did nothing at all which would give the unborn person a right to the use of her body. All the same it might well be said, as in the newly emended violinist story, that she ought to allow it to remain for that hour-that it would be indecent in her to refuse.Now some people are inclined to use the term rightin such a way that it follows from the fact that you ought to allow a person to use your body for the hour he needs, that he has a right to use your body for the hour he needs, even though he has not been given that right by any person or act. They may say that it follows also that if you refuse, you act unjustly toward him. This use of the term is perhaps so common that it cannot be called wrong nevertheless it seems to me to be an unfortunate loosening of what we would do better to keep a tight rein on.Suppose that box of chocolates I mentioned earlier had not been given to both boys jointly, but was given only to the older boy. There he sits, stolidly eating his way through the box, his small brother honoring enviously. Here we are likely to say Youought not to be so mean. You ought to give your brother some of those chocolates. My own view is that it just does not follow from the truth of this that the brother has any right to any of the chocolates. If the boy refuses to give his brother any, he is greedy, stingy, callous-but not unjust.I suppose that the people I have in mind will say it does follow that the brother has a right to some of the chocolates, and thus that the boy does act unjustly if he refuses to give his brother any. But the effect of saying this is to dim what we should keep distinct, namely the difference between the boys refusal in this case and the boys refusal in the earlier case, in which the box was given to both boys jointly, and in which the small brother thus had what was from any point of view empower title to half.A further objection to so using the term rightthat from the fact that A ought to do a thing for B, it follows that B has a right against A 6I A Defense of Abortion that A do it for him, is that it is going to make the question of whether or not a man has a right to a thing turn on how easy it is to provide him with it and this seems not merely unfortunate, but morally unacceptable. Take the case of Henry Fonda again. I said earlier that I had no right to the touch of his cool hand on my fevered brow, even though I needed it to save my life.I said it would be frightfully nice of him to fly in from the West Coast to provide me with it, but that I had no right against him that he should do so. But suppose he isnt on the West Coast. Suppose he has only to walk across the room, place a hand briefly on my brow-and lo, my life is saved. Then surely he ought to do it, it would be indecent to refuse. Is it to be said Ah, well, it follows that in this case she has a right to the touch of his hand on her brow, and so it would be an injustice in him to refuse?So that I have a right to it when it is easy for him to provide it, though no right when its hard? Its rather a shocking idea that anyones rights should fade away and disappear as it gets harder and harder to accord them to him. So my own view is that even though you ought to let the violinist use your kidneys for the one hour he needs, we should not conclude that he has a right to do so-we should say that if you refuse, you are, like the boy who owns all the chocolates and will give none away, self-centered and callous, indecent in fact, but not unjust.And similarly, that even supposing a case in which a woman pregnant due to rape ought to allow the unborn person to use her body for the hour he needs, we should not conclude that he h as a right to do so we should conclude that she is self-centered, callous, indecent, but not unjust, if she refuses. The complaints are no less tomb they are just different. However, there is no need to insist on this point. If anyone does wish to deduce he has a ight from you ought, then all the same he must surely grant that there are cases in which it is not morally take of you that you allow that violinist to use your kidneys, and in which he does not have a right to use them, and in which you do not do him an injustice if you refuse. And so also for mother and unborn child. Except in such cases as the unborn person has a right to demand it-and we were leaving open the possibility that there may be such cases-nobody is morally necessitate to make large sacrifices, of health, of all other interests and concerns, of all other duties 62Philosophy Public Affairs and commitments, for nine years, or even for nine months, in order to keep another person alive. 6. We have in fact to distinguish between two kinds of Samaritan the smashing Samaritan and what we might call the minimally Decent Samaritan. The story of the Good Samaritan, you will remember, goes like this A certain man went down from capital of Israel to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.And in like manner a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was and when he saw him he had compassion on him. And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow, when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. (Luke I030-35) The Good Samaritan went out of his way, at some cost to himself, to help one in need of it. We are not told what the options were, that is, whether or not the priest and the Levite could have helped by doing less than the Good Samaritan did, but assuming they could have, then the fact they did nothing at all shows they were not even minimally Decent Samaritans, not because they were not Samaritans, but because they were not even minimally decent.These things are a matter of degree, of course, but there is a difference, and it comes out perhaps most clearly in the story of snatch Genovese, who, as you will remember, was murdered while thirtyeight people watched or listened, and did nothing at all to help her. A Good Samaritan would have rushed out to give direct assistance 63 A Defense of Abortion against the murderer. Or perhaps we had better allow that it would have been a Splendid Samaritan who did this, on the ground that it woul d have involved a risk of death for himself.But the thirty-eight not only did not do this, they did not even trouble to pick up a phone to call the police. Minimally Decent Samaritanism would call for doing at least that, and their not having done it was monstrous. After telling the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus said Go, and do thou likewise. Perhaps he meant that we are morally required to act as the Good Samaritan did. Perhaps he was urging people to do more than is morally required of them.At all events it seems plain that it was not morally required of any of the thirty-eight that he rush out to give direct assistance at the risk of his own life, and that it is not morally required of anyone that he give long stretches of his lifenine years or nine months-to sustaining the life of a person who has no special right (we were leaving open the possibility of this) to demand it. Indeed, with one rather physical contact class of exceptions, no one in any country in the world is legally required to do anywhere near as much as this for anyone else.