& Public Affairs, I, no. I (Fall 1971): 47–66 [see chapter 2 in this volume], has argued with great force and ingenuity that this conclusion is mistaken. I will comment on her argument later in this paper.3 3 While this is the position conservatives tend to hold, it is not clear that it is the position they ought to hold. For if the fetus is a person it is far from clear that it is permissible to destroy it to save the mother. Two moral principles lend support to the view that it is the fetus which should live. First, other things being equal, should not one give something to a person who has had less rather than to a person who has had more? The mother has had a chance to live, while the fetus has not. The choice is thus between giving the mother more of an opportunity to enjoy life while giving the fetus none at all and giving the fetus an opportunity to enjoy life while not giving the mother a further opportunity to do so. Surely fairness requires the latter. Secondly, since the fetus has a greater life expectancy than the mother, one is in effect distributing more goods by choosing the life of the fetus over the life of the mother.The position I am here recommending to the conservative should not be confused with the official Catholic position. The Catholic Church holds that it is seriously wrong to kill a fetus directly even if failure to do so will result in the death of both the mother and the fetus. This perverse value judgment is not part of the conservative’s position.
4 4 Section 230.3 of the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code (Philadelphia, 1962). There is some interesting, though at times confused, discussion of the proposed code in Model Penal Code – Tentative Draft No. 9 (Philadelphia, 1959), pp. 146–62.
5 5 A clear example of such an unwillingness to entertain seriously the possibility that moral judgments widely accepted in one’s own society may nevertheless be incorrect is provided by Roger Wertheimer’s superficial dismissal of infanticide on pages 69–70 of his article “Understanding the Abortion Argument,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, I, no. I (Fall 1971): 67–95.
6 6 Compare the discussion of the concept of a right offered by Richard B. Brandt in his Ethical Theory (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1959), pp. 434–41. As Brandt points out, some philosophers have maintained that only things that can claim rights can have rights. I agree with Brandt’s view that “inability to claim does not destroy the right” (p. 440).
7 7 B. A. Brody, “Abortion and the Law,” Journal of Philosophy, LXVIII, no. 12 (17 June 1971): 357–69. See pp. 357–8.
8 8 Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion,” p. 47.
9 9 Wertheimer, “Understanding the Abortion Argument,” p. 69.
10 10 Ibid.
11 11 Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion,” pp. 47–8.
12 12 Ibid., p. 65.
13 13 Wertheimer, “Understanding the Abortion Argument,” p. 78.
14 14 A moral principle accepted by a person is basic for him if and only if his acceptance of it is not dependent upon any of his (nonmoral) factual beliefs. That is, no change in his factual beliefs would cause him to abandon the principle in question.
15 15 Wertheimer, “Understanding the Abortion Argument,” p. 88.
16 16 Again, compare the analysis defended by Brandt in Ethical Theory, pp. 434–41.
17 17 In everyday life one often speaks of desiring things, such as an apple or a newspaper. Such talk is elliptical, the context together with one’s ordinary beliefs serving to make it clear that one wants to eat the apple and read the newspaper. To say that what one desires is that a certain proposition be true should not be construed as involving any particular ontological commitment. The point is merely that it is sentences such as “John wants it to be the case that he is eating an apple in the next few minutes” that provide a completely explicit description of a person’s desires. If one fails to use such sentences one can be badly misled about what concepts are presupposed by a particular desire.
18 18 There are, however, situations other than those discussed here which might seem to count against the claim that a person cannot have a right unless he is conceptually capable of having the corresponding desire. Can’t a young child, for example, have a right to an estate, even though he may not be conceptually capable of wanting the estate? It is clear that such situations have to be carefully considered if one is to arrive at a satisfactory account of the concept of a right. My inclination is to say that the correct description is not that the child now has a right to the estate, but that he will come to have such a right when he is mature, and that in the meantime no one else has a right to the estate. My reason for saying that the child does not now have a right to the estate is that he cannot now do things with the estate, such as selling it or giving it away that he will be able to do later on.
19 19 Another frequent suggestion as to the cutoff point not listed here is quickening. I omit it because it seems clear that if abortion after quickening is wrong, its wrongness must be tied up with the motility of the fetus, not with the mother’s awareness of the fetus’ ability to move about.
20 20 Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion,” p. 56.
21 21 A good example of a failure to probe this issue is provided by Brody’s “Abortion and the Law.”
22 22 Admittedly the modification is a substantial one, since given a society that refused to compensate women, a woman who had an abortion would not be doing anything wrong.
23 23 Compare Wertheimer’s remarks, “Understanding the Abortion Argument,” p. 79.
24 24 This requires qualification. If their central nervous systems were radically different from ours, it might be thought that one would not be justified in ascribing to them mental states of an experiential sort. And then, since it seems to be a conceptual truth that only things having experiential states can have rights, one would be forced to conclude that one was not justified in ascribing any rights to them.
25 25 Philippa Foot, “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect,” Oxford Review,
