Thomson’s argument on Abortion

The standard argument against abortion rests on the claim that the fetus is a person and therefore has a
right to life. Thomson shows why this standard argument against abortion is a somewhat inadequate
account of the morality of abortion.

Thomson argues, quite persuasively, that the right to life does not guarantee the use of another’s body
against their will. There are other relevant factors in determining what rights a person has in a given
circumstance. None of her arguments apply to pregnancy in which sex was voluntary and no effort was
made to prevent pregnancy

She argues that abortion in permissible in three types of cases:

Rape (violinist experiment)

Threat to mother’s life (modified violinist experiment, growing baby and small house example, smith
and jones experiment)

Cases where attempts were made to prevent the pregnancy (burglar and people seeds experiment)

At the end of her paper she says we must not fall below the standard of minimally decent samaritanism
(MDS). However, she never really says what that standard is

She doesn’t think anyone has an obligation to save anyone else’s life

The right to life is not an absolute right. Therefore. in some cases abortion is morally permissible.

Marquis’s argument on Abortion

The controversial premise in the standard abortion debate is that a fetus is a person. Thomson grants
this for the sake of the argument. However, Marquis attempts to make his argument against abortion
without relying on the controversial premise. He attempts to make his argument without relying on any
conception of rights. However, as we will see this causes problems for him.

Marquis, like Thomson is looking to sidestep the impasse in the abortion discussion by finding a way
around the disagreement regarding the personhood of the fetus. To do this he relies on the fact the
fetuses have a future of value and the claim that just like it is wrong to deprive an adult human being of
their future of value it is also wrong to deprive a fetus of its future of value. On the surface his approach
is not committed on any of the three normative ethical theories (utilitarianism, contractarianism,
contractualism) that we have covered. One obvious problem with this approach is that it seems to prove
too much. It seems show that in addition to abortion being wrong, contraception is also wrong, because
in some cases contraception denies a possible person a future of value. However, Marquis thinks that
only actual persons, ie. already existing persons or entities that will become persons, have futures of
value.