Judith Jarvis Thomson’s position on abortion can be described as ...

• A. It is never morally justified to abort.
• B. It is always morally justified to abort.
• C. Abortion may be morally justified in some cases.
• D. It is morally required to carry pregnancy to term.

Answer: (C)

The idea being tested is that abortion is not categorically prohibited or required, but can be morally permissible in some situations. Thomson argues that even if a fetus has a right to life, that right does not automatically trump a woman’s right to control her own body. The right to life doesn’t guarantee that someone else must use your body to sustain that life. To make this concrete, she uses thought experiments (like a person being connected to a life-support violinist or the scenario with “people seeds”) to show that one’s bodily autonomy can outweigh another’s right to life in many cases. From this, the strongest, most accurate description of her view is that abortion may be morally justified in some cases. It’s not asserted as always right and not denied as never permissible, and it doesn’t claim that carrying to term is morally mandatory in every circumstance. The other options overstate or understate her position: abortion isn’t deemed never permissible, nor always permissible, and it isn’t presented as something that must always be done to satisfy the fetus’s rights.