Prof. Thomson, the Violinist, and the Kidney Machine.

Questioning the Other Premise of the Anti-Choice Argument

The argument against legal abortion is stated thusly as a Modus Ponens in the home page of this essay series.

If a fetus is a person, then abortion should be illegal

A fetus is a person.
Therefore abortion should be illegal.

Most rebuttals to this argument focus on the second premise, and deny that the fetus is a person. Professor Judith…