In discussing contentious issues, it is common for both sides to use analogies to illustrate points, showing how as a matter of consistency our behavior might change if we think about things in different ways.
One common such analogy when it comes to abortion is the Violinist Analogy. In essence, it argues that if you woke up hooked up to a innocent violinist whose failing kidneys require the use of your body for nine months to survive, you are not obligated to do so. Ultimately, it is meant to illustrate that your right to control your own body outweighs the violinist’s right to life, and similarly, that even if a fetus is considered a person, a pregnant woman is not ethically required to not kill the child to stop it from being dependent on her body.
There are few things that are more important to a civilized society than self ownership, and we can clearly see how while staying connected to the violinist is a morally good act, you should not be obligated to do so. However, in it’s comparison to abortion, the violinist analogy and similar variations arguing bodily autonomy are missing one of the most integral things they proport to defend in the first place, consent and choice.
Save perhaps in cases of rape, the mother was not a hapless bystander that woke up connected to another person. Her own decisions and actions directly caused the child’s dependence on her. Nobody abducted her and tied her to a violinist, she connected herself to her kid.
To prohibit someone from obtaining an abortion is no more a violation of their bodily autonomy than it would be to prevent them from cutting a kidney from someone who they freely donated it to, someone who has become dependent upon it for their very survival, or prohibiting her from ending the lives of her already born children, children who are dependent upon her and others for their every need, and are wholly incapable of independent existence.
Some will argue that because sex does not always result in pregnancy, and that people can even take steps to avoid that outcome, consenting to having sex cannot be linked to the potential of a child’s creation and dependence upon you. However, we don’t really apply such logic in any other area.
Imagine for a moment that you are a gambler. You enjoy gambling, and have even come up with strategies to help maximize your chances of avoiding losing money. Unfortunately however, your methods are not always foolproof, and sometimes you end up with a bad hand.
If you end up with a run of bad luck, it doesn’t matter that you didn’t directly intend to lose the game, and that gambling doesn’t always result in losses. The employment of strategies that helped maximize your chances of winning does not give you the right to lean over the table and dismember the others seated around it.
Likewise, some will argue that one must continually consent at every moment, and that if they withdraw their consent at any time they have just grounds to end the life of their child. While such a concept seems reasonable enough in some situations, when it comes to pregnancy it is rediculously illogical.
Certainly if one withdraws their consent to one thing or another, the process should begin as quickly as possible to extricate the nonconsenting individual, but it isn’t always fast or convenient, and when one cannot immediately disentangle themselves from the situations that they have consented to, they don’t get to start terminating the lives of others or violate their rights in another manner in an effort to sever those ties. If you invite someone onto a boat with you and then go out to the middle of the sea, you can’t then threaten to kill them if they don’t get off your boat and drown in the water.
It is wholly illogical to argue that you no longer consent to something you agreed to and then start killing other people who are stuck in the positions you placed them in. You can’t change the past, and whether it’s inviting someone onto your boat, donating an organ, or anything else, if we apply such twisted logic to any other area it’s quite obvious how incredibly absurd it is.
Outside of cases such as rape, the violinist argument and other such defenses of abortion based on bodily autonomy are clearly inapplicable to abortion.
