http://home.earthlink.net/~bkwormtoo/id35.html
apparantly I am not alone in considering this analogy is flawed:
"In this analogy (
http://www.willamette.edu/cla/rhetoric/courses/argumentation/Judith Jarvis Thompson.pdf, the one who is rendered unconscious, abducted, and involuntarily connected to the violinist is supposed to be analogous to a woman who is unexpectedly pregnant. The dilemma posed in the analogy is supposed to communicate how outrageous it is to require a woman in such a circumstance to carry her baby to full term and give birth. The violinist "analogy" is a good example of how hypothetical scenarios can be crafted so as to build the conclusion into the premises - a fallacy called "begging the question".
The details of the story are also contrived to force a false either-or choice by precluding other possible choices. Medically, the "analogy" was absurd some 35 years ago when the "analogy" was concocted, and it remains absurd today.
It also fails to be an analogy. The vioinist, who is supposed to be analogous to the baby in utero is a stranger who is unrelated to the host, who is supposed to represent the unexpectedly pregnant woman. In
the real world, a woman participates in the creation of her baby, if only through her egg being the source of half of the baby's genetic material. Usually her participation in the physical act that led to the creation of her baby is also voluntary. In the "analogy", during the abduction, the confinement in a medical facility, and being hooked up to the violinist the host is unconscious and all are done by force. In real life, the processes of implantation of the baby into the lining of the uterus and the development of the placenta are both cooperative processes between the baby and the woman's body. In other words, there is nothing analogous to the kidnaping or the medical facility, and there are no persons corresponding to the kidnappers or the doctor who effected the artificial hook-up between the two persons. There isn’t even a direct cross-connection of the pregnant woman’s and the baby’s blood streams. In the "analogy" the host will have no life outside of the medical facility for nine months, and the "dilemma" is supposed to be analogous to the choice faced by the pregnant woman. In real life, for the vast majority of pregnancies, the woman isn’t certain she is pregnant for up to a month or two, has almost no restrictions on her life for 5 or more months from conception, and is able to continue many of her usual activities, subject to some significant limitations and discomfort, for the rest of her pregnancy. Thus, entirely giving up nine months of life is very different from what a pregnant woman normally experiences.
Almost nothing in the "analogy" is truly analogous to a pregnancy. The details of the story are contrived to make an unexpected pregnancy seem an unnatural, outrageous burden and imposition on the woman who is pregnant in order to manipulate the hearer/reader toward the pro-abortion conclusion. The true outrage in all this is the self-serving, tendentious misrepresentation of the sublime, entirely natural, process that culminates in the birth of a baby.
The violinist "analogy" is fallacious, medically absurd, and fails to be analogous. Nevertheless, this "analogy" is still advanced by abortion advocates, demonstrating their dedication to abortion, even when it is at the expense of intellectual honesty"
