Argument Formalizer

The violinist

Judith Jarvis Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion", Philosophy & Public Affairs 1(1), 1971

The violinist as a counterexample

valid

  1. If a person's right to life always outweighs another person's right to decide what happens in and to her body, then you are morally required to stay plugged into the violinist for the rest of your life.

  2. You are not morally required to stay plugged into the violinist for the rest of your life.

  3. If [1] and [2], then a person's right to life does not always outweigh another person's right to decide what happens in and to her body.

  4. Therefore, a person's right to life does not always outweigh another person's right to decide what happens in and to her body. [1,2,3]

  5. The argument that abortion is impermissible because the fetus is a person depends on the claim that a person's right to life always outweighs another person's right to decide what happens in and to her body.

  6. If [4] and [5], then the argument that abortion is impermissible because the fetus is a person depends on a claim that is false.

  7. Therefore, the argument that abortion is impermissible because the fetus is a person depends on a claim that is false. [4,5,6]

Editor's note

The live tool could not complete this passage: its repair stage failed output validation on both attempts and the run failed closed, so no artifact exists yet. The argument shown is a hand-authored reconstruction that passed the deterministic syntax and transparent-entailment gates. It will be replaced by a tool artifact when a run succeeds. Textbook reading: the case is a counterexample to the premise that a right to life always outweighs a right to decide what happens in one's body; without that premise the argument from fetal personhood to impermissibility does not go through. The reconstruction stops there, as Thomson's opening section does; her positive account of what the right to life does entail comes later in the paper.