PHL281H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Surrogacy, Moral Agency, Ronald Dworkin
Document Summary
Fetus is a rights-bearer like you and me. Abortion is murder, i. e. the killing of someone with the right to life. Woman"s right to her body against the fetus means that death of the fetus is not an unjust killing. Reductio on the idea that the fetus is best thought of as a rights-bearer. Fetus is not a pre-existing entity that can secure the permission of the mother before the start of a pregnancy. One of the most peculiar facets about the discussion of abortion in philosophical literature is that it is often abstract and independent from how we usually thinking about reproduction, viz. the male role. Speci cally, it takes two to make a baby. Thomson relies on locke"s theory of right. Rather than modelling fetuses as rights- bearers, perhaps it would be better to see fetuses as parental property. This is generally how we speak about our children, i. e. she is my child.
