A Defence of Abortion (Translation and Notions by Alexander Finiarel)

Abstract

“A defense of abortion” is the most famous work by American moral philosopher Judith Thomson. It is of interest because Thomson is trying to overcome the gap between pro-choicers who think that a fetus is not a person and a woman has a right to dispose her body as she wants and pro-lifers who on the contrary think that a fetus is already a person which has a right to live and this right outweighs a woman’s right to dispose her body. To do that Thomson proposes an unusual for this dispute way: she assumes that pro-lifers are right about a fetus being a person. She thinks that basing on this argument they jump into the premature conclusion that abortion is impermissible. She draws our attention to the fact that the right to live does not include the right to demand from anybody any efforts or resources to support one’s life and this is exactly what a pregnant woman does since the fetus resides in her body and feeds at her expense. Hence, if a woman did not want the fetus to be in her body, if she did not want to call it into the existence and even more so if the fetus threatens her own health and life then she has every right to get rid of it and a third party has a right to help her even if it would perhaps be an indecent act.