Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that abortion may be morally justified in some cases. This statement is:

• A. True
• B. False
• C. Abortion is morally justified only if the mother chooses
• D. Abortion is always morally permissible.

Answer: (A)

The important idea here is that rights can conflict, and the moral permissibility of abortion rests on bodily autonomy rather than a simple calculation of who has a right to life. Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that even if we grant the fetus a right to life, that right does not automatically grant it the right to use the pregnant person’s body. Because of that, abortion can be morally permissible in some circumstances.

Her famous thought experiments, like the violinist tied to your life-support system, illustrate that being morally required to sustain another’s life through your own body is not guaranteed by the other’s right to life. You can choose to disconnect and still act morally, because your own bodily autonomy and well-being matter too. From this, she extends the idea to ordinary pregnancies: there can be cases where continuing a pregnancy imposes unacceptable burdens on the woman or conflicts with her rights, and in those cases abortion can be ethically permissible, and sometimes required. She also emphasizes that there can be cases where abortion is not justified, so the claim isn’t saying abortion is always right, just that it can be morally justified in some cases.

So the statement is true because Thomson shows that the fetus’s right to life does not by itself make abortion impermissible in all cases; there are scenarios where terminating the pregnancy is morally permissible.