Responsibility In A Defense Of Abortion, By Judith Jarvis Thomson

Is a pregnant woman always responsible for the fetus that lives inside her? In “A Defense of Abortion”, Judith Jarvis Thomson adopts the position that “the fetus is a person from the moment of conception” (212) for her argument. A person has the right to life, which leads some to believe that abortion can never be a morally permissible act. However, a woman, even in pregnancy, reserves a considerable amount of liberty over her body. Thomson uses the analogy of comparing sperm to seeds as a way to examine the ethics of abortion and the responsibility of a pregnant woman to the fetus inside of her. The seeds in Thomson’s analogy have the ability to grow into person-plants if they germinate in carpets or upholstery–a woman’s reproductive organs–in

As a woman cannot consent to the act of rape, she could not assume the responsibility of getting pregnant. Surely the woman cannot be responsible just because she has the ability to get pregnant. The fetus does not have an eminent right to the woman’s body at contraception even if it is a person. She has no moral ties to a fetus conceived from rape. She didn’t plan on having sexual intercourse that had the possibility to result in pregnancy. Thomson says that an unborn person only has a right to the mother’s body if her pregnancy resulted from a voluntary act (216). One can connect this to the person-seed analogy, although it is not directed said by Thomson, by saying that rape is akin to forcing open a window when the woman wants her house to stay quarantined from the possibility of a seed to float in. Thomson acknowledges the absurdity of the argument of a fetus’ implicit right to use its mother’s body by stating that it is not expected from a woman to getting a hysterectomy or having an army to protect from rape to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Thus, a fetus conceived out of unconsensual intercourse does not have the right to exist in its mother’s body. This strengthens her argument that not all unborn people have the right to live inside the mother’s