Judith Jarvis Thomson

Agora

Judith Jarvis Thomson

1929–2020

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

Even if the fetus has a right to life, that right does not include using another person’s body – so abortion can be permissible even if the fetus is a person.

Placement

Analytic Philosophy · North America · Ethics

MIT moral philosopher: her violinist thought experiment separates the right to life from the right to use another’s body; she gave Foot’s runaway tram its name – the “trolley problem”.

Key ideas

The violinist argument
Trolley problem
Rights and permissibility

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Influence

Influenced by 1

Philippa Foot

influenced by
Thomson named the runaway tram of Foot’s essay on double effect (1967) the ‘trolley problem’ and set it against a transplant case (1976; ‘The Trolley Problem’, 1985). J. J. Thomson, “Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem”, The Monist 59 (1976); “The Trolley Problem”, Yale Law Journal 94 (1985); P. Foot, “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect”, Oxford Review 5 (1967); SEP “Doctrine of Double Effect”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Philippa Foot › 1920–2010

Works

1971A Defense of Abortion
Even if the fetus is a person, the right to life does not include the right to use another’s body – the violinist case.
1976Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem
Why may the driver turn the trolley to kill one, while a surgeon may not kill one patient to save five? Rights, not numbers, decide.

Position

Her 1971 article “A Defense of Abortion” changed the debate by granting, for the sake of argument, that the fetus is a person. Imagine you wake up connected to a famous violinist who will die unless he uses your kidneys for nine months: you would be generous to stay, but you are not obliged to, because the right to life does not include the right to use another person’s body. So abortion can be permissible even if the fetus is a person. In “Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem” she took up Foot’s runaway tram, named it, and asked why one may divert the trolley to kill one rather than five but may not kill one patient to save five with his organs.

Life & context

Judith Jarvis Thomson (1929–2020) was born in New York, studied at Barnard, Cambridge and Columbia, and taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1964 until her retirement. She was one of the first women to hold a senior position in American analytic philosophy and served as president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. Her work ranges over metaphysics, the theory of action and, above all, moral philosophy.