Thompson draws the following lessons from the analogy:
Lesson 1: The right to life is not the right to use someone else's body to stay alive. Because the violinist is a person, he has a right to life, but this does not imply that he has a right to use your body in order to stay alive.
If he had a right to use your body in order to stay alive, then that right might outweigh your right to determine what happens in and to your body.
But having a right to life does not imply having a right to use someone else's body to stay alive so that right does not necessarily trump your right to determine what happens in your body.
Thompson further illustrates her point with the Henry Fonda thought experiment. She writes
If I am sick unto death and the only thing that will save my life is the touch of Henry Fonda's cool hand on my fevered brow, then all the same, I have no right to be given the touch of Henry Fonda's cool hand on my fevered brow. It might be rightfully nice of him to fly in from the West Coast to provide it. It would be less nice, though no doubt well meant, if my friends flew out to the West Coast and carried Henry Fonda back with them. But I have no right at all against anybody that he should do this for me.
Returning to the Violinist analogy, if the violinist required not nine months of your time, but only a single hour, he still would not have a right to use your body, and so you would not be violating his rights by disconnecting.
Thomson concedes that it might be bad in some other way for you to disconnect.
You might be "self centered, callous, and indecent" if you refuse to stay connected for an hour, but you would not be behaving unjustly.
Applied to the issue of abortion, the lesson is that even if the fetus has a right to life, this does not automatically give it the right to use your body to stay alive.
