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\title{Philosophy and Public Affairs, Paper \#10}
\author{Greg Hudson}
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Thesis: Thomson responds to the allegation that the mother has a
special responsibility to the fetus by alleging that the fetus can
only have a right against the mother if she has granted it to the
fetus.  Her objection is convincing if one accepts her conception of
responsibilities, but not otherwise.
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In this paper, I will examine the special responsibility objection to
abortion, and Thomson's response to it.  I will argue that Thomson's
response assumes a certain conception of responsibilities which she
assumes her reader shares, and that her argument is convincing only if
we accept this view.

Thomson presents the objection close to the end of the article: ``It
may be said that what is important is not merely the fact that the
fetus is a person, but that it is a person for whom the woman has a
special kind of responsibility issuing from the fact that she is its
mother.''  Given that, one could claim that all of Thomson's violinist
analogies are irrelevant, because all of those analogies presuppose
that you have never seen this violinist in your life before.
Moreover, one could argue that since society does require parents to
provide support for their children, the mother should be compelled to
provide support for the fetus, and therefore prevented from having an
abortion.\footnote{Judith Jarvis Thomson.  ``A Defense of Abortion.''
{\em The Problem of Abortion}.  2nd. ed.  Belmont: Wadsworth.  1984.
p. 186.}

Thomson says only a few words about this objection at the end of the
article, referring us instead back to section four.  But she does say
something important here: ``If [the parents] have taken all reasonable
precautions against having a child, they do not simply by virtue of
their biological relationship to the child who comes into existence
have a special responsibility for it.''\footnote{Thomson, p. 186}.
Here Thomson rejects the notion that the special responsibility can
come directly from the biological relationship between the mother and
the child, but must instead arise because the mother has assumed this
responsibility.

Thomson has already discussed in section four an objection similar to
the special responsibility objection: the allegation that the mother
has a special responsibility to the fetus because she has voluntarily
called it into existence.  There she argued that the mother doesn't
necessarily invite the fetus in simply because she allowed it in; she
makes the analogy that we do not invite burglars in by opening our
windows, and that we are not responsible for such
burglars\footnote{Thomson, p. 182}.  In this way Thomson argues that
the mother does not assume a responsibility for the fetus simply by
willingly engaging in intercourse, and if we accept the argument that
she cannot have a responsibility that she did not assume, then she
must not have a special responsibility.

All of these objections rely on Thomson's voluntaristic conception of
responsibilities.  For instance, when she says, ``Surely we do not
have any such `special responsibility' for a person unless we have
assumed it,'' she makes a strong assumption.  One could come up with
many sources of responsibility besides that of individual, voluntary
assumption: biological relationships, the needs of society, the will
of some divine entity, and so forth.

What does this mean for Thomson's argument?  One could say that she is
merely narrowing the size of her audience, that she is only speaking
to those who share her conception of responsibility.  But since the
original objection was that the mother has a special responsibility to
the fetus because she is its mother, this restriction on the audience
would seem to defeat the purpose.  Thomson does provide a
voluntaristic explanation of society's requirement that parents
support their children, but we can still say, ``No, society should
require parents to support their children because people have a
responsibility to support their biological offspring,'' or something
like that.  So Thomson's argument, though quite solid if you share her
conception of responsibilities, is not especially convincing to those
who are likely to pose the special responsibility objection in the
first place.

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