Work · Analytic Philosophy
A Defense of Abortion
Even if the fetus is a person, the right to life does not include the right to use another’s body – the violinist case.
Introduction
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.
More works by Judith Jarvis Thomson
As of November 2026 · Improve this page · How Agora is made