Question 1: Thompson claims abortion is morally permissible independent of evaluations of moral status. This conclusion is approached by employing a thought experiment, involving the society of music lovers and life-saving treatment. One way of understanding Thompson’s argument is:

1.      Pulling the plug in the Music Lovers case is morally permissible
2.      Pulling the plug in the Music Lovers case is morally analogous to cases of abortion
3.      Hence, cases of abortion are morally permissible

It seems plausible that (1) is true. You might wonder whether (2) is true. This rests in part on the meaning of “morally analogous”…

A heuristic for testing if a situation A is morally analogous to situation B, is to examine whether the explanation for moral judgments about A are of the same type as those for B. For example, compare John stealing candy from a baby to John stealing medication from a pharmacist. Presumably, the explanation for judgments that the former is wrong are of the same type as those for the latter, namely, stealing is wrong. If so, these situations may be morally analogous. On the other hand, though John stealing from a baby and John murdering Sally are both morally wrong, the explanations of judgments differ in each case, suggesting these cases aren’t morally analogous. Similarly, if we add that John murders Sally by stealing medication she needs to survive, these situations aren’t obviously morally analogous, since the explanation for moral judgments about John stealing candy from a baby seems just a part of explanations for moral judgments about John murdering Sally by stealing her medication. That’s sufficient to make these explanations of different types, at least for our discussion here.

Initial Post: I’d like you to identify various morally relevant* differences between these cases that make the claimed morally analogy suspect. Once you’ve identified differences, adjust the Music Lovers case so it is morally analogous to typical cases of abortion. Call your adjusted case “Music Lovers 2”.

Response Posts: I’d like you to examine whether the proposed Music Lovers 2 cases of your peers affects the soundness of Thompson’s original argument. For Thompson’s argument to be valid - which is required for soundness, since only valid arguments can be sound - changing “Music Lovers” in premise (2) to “Music Lovers 2” requires changing premise (1) also, that is:

4. Pulling the plug in the Music Lovers 2 case is morally permissible
5. Pulling the plug in the Music Lovers 2 case is morally analogous to cases of abortion
6. Hence, cases of abortion are morally permissible

Premise (1) of the original argument seemed true, but not premise (2). I think you’ll find replacement with “Music Lovers 2” will make premise (5) true, but make premise (4) false.

*Note: Some differences will be relevant to judgments about the permissibility of the situations, e.g. intention, kidnapping, others won’t, e.g. the presence of certain medical equipment.

Answer: We can make progress on this question by first observing – simply due to the respective structures of the situations compared – that Music Lovers is at best analogous to a rather specific subset of abortion cases. Cases of abortion arise for many reasons, are conducted in a variety of ways, and consequences are frequently much different than analogous consequences in Music Lovers. Of course, we’re interested in morally relevant differences, so this structural observation alone is insufficient to put (2) in question. To see why, observe the following argument:

1.      Murdering Steve with arsenic is morally wrong
2.      Murdering Steve with arsenic is morally analogous to murdering Steve
3.      Hence, murdering Steve is morally wrong

Murdering Steve with arsenic is – structurally speaking – analogous only to a subset of ways to murder Steve. Nevertheless, these situations both involve the same morally relevant features, namely, murdering, i.e. unjustified killing. In arguments involving claims of moral analogy, morally relevant features are most important to keep in mind.

That said, it isn’t too difficult to identify morally relevant differences between Music Lovers and cases of abortion. For example, typically cases of abortion do not involve an individual taken involuntarily and hooked up to anyone. This seems a clear violation of autonomy, and so clearly morally relevant. Such a difference suggests, however, that Thompson’s argument as presented above isn’t sound, since premise (2) is false. That is, it’s not true that pulling the plug in Music Lovers is morally analogous to cases of abortion, since many cases of abortion differ from Music Lovers in this rather important way.

We can attempt to repair the argument, however, by expanding Music Lovers so that it’s also morally analogous to cases of abortion that do not involve being kidnapped and involuntarily hooked up to someone. Suppose, for instance, you enter a lottery knowing that one person who enters will be selected and expected to be hooked up to the musician in Thompson’s case, in the interest of saving that musician’s life. As it turns out, you’re selected, and then you are hooked up to the musician. Call this Music Lovers 2. The argument now runs:

We questioned premise (2) in the original argument, since there seem important differences between Music Lovers and cases of abortion. We’ve now attempted to repair premise (2), resulting in premise (5) above. A few observations are in order though. First, note that while we have surely made progress on making premise (5) true, there are other morally relevant differences which might undermine the truth of this premise. For example, in most cases of abortion the developing entity is dependent on the mother because of the mother’s actions. This is not so in Music Lovers 2. As described, you entering the lottery is not why the musician needs your help. This is simply to say to make premise (5) fully general we’d need to continue adjusting morally relevant variables, and there are many more to adjust. Putting that aside, second, we can already see trouble on the horizon for Thompson’s argument as described above. To ensure this argument is valid, if we adjust Music Lovers to Music Lovers 2 in premise (5), then we must adjust it similarly in premise (4). Recall, in the original argument premise (1) seemed true, and if you share my intuitions, it seemed obviously true. Note, however, that premise (4) is at least not so obviously true. That is, it’s not obviously morally permissible for you to unplug given that you’d entered the lottery knowing the consequences. This suggests adjusting the Music Lovers case so it aligns more with cases of abortion runs the risk of making the first premise of Thompson’s argument false at the expense of making the second premise true.