A Defense of Abortion (Obrona aborcji)

Wprowadzenie

The essay appeared in the first volume of Philosophy & Public Affairs in 1971, two years before the US Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade. Instead of denying that the foetus is a person, Thomson grants this for the sake of argument and asks whether its right to life obliges a pregnant woman to sustain it. Besides the violinist, she uses other analogies – “people-seeds” drifting through a window screen, Henry Fonda’s cool hand on a fevered brow – to separate what a right to life entails from what decency might ask. Being a “minimally decent Samaritan” is not morally required to the point of great sacrifice. The essay is often described as the most reprinted article in contemporary philosophy.

Więcej dzieł: Judith Jarvis Thomson

• 1976Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem (Zabijanie, pozwalanie umrzeć i problem wagonika)