The Improved Conservative Argument:
(1) Each person has right to life.
(2) The fetus, from the moment of conception, is a person.
(3) Therefore, the fetus has a right to life.
(4) Abortion violates the right to life of the fetus.
(5) Making abortion illegal violates the right to liberty of the mother.
(6) The violation of a stronger right in order to protect a weaker right is morally impermissible.
(7) The right to life is stronger than the right to determine what happens in and to one’s body (the right to liberty).
(8) Therefore, abortion is morally impermissible.
This is the conservative argument that Judith Jarvis Thomson considers in her paper, ‘A Defense of Abortion’.
Thomson points out that most of the discussion focuses on premise (2), i.e., on the question of whether the fetus is a person with a right to life.
Thomson also notes that conservatives think that if they can show that premise (2) is true, then they have proven that abortion is morally impermissible.
Thomson doesn’t think that premise (2) is true, but she thinks that we can grant it to the conservative (for the sake of argument), and still show that the conservative position is mistaken.
This is a pretty interesting strategy, since she is considering her opponent’s position in its best possible light, and she still thinks that she can show that it is a bad argument (that is, she is granting the most controversial point).
Which premise of the Improved Conservative Argument does Thomson explicitly grant (at least for the sake of argument)?
1. Abortion violates the right to life of the fetus.
2. The right to life is not stronger than the right to determine what happens in and to ones body (the right to liberty).
3. The fetus, from the moment of conception, is a person.
4. All of the above.