Rights and Responsibility
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Consider the possibility that rights and obligations depend at least in part on the extent to which we are responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves.

For example, you may have no obligation to risk your life to save someone else who has fallen out of a boat if you did not contribute to that person's plight. But what if you pushed him overboard? What if you told him the water was only three feet deep when it was 20 feet deep? What if he slipped on a banana peel that you accidentally left on deck?

If someone depends upon you for life support, you may not always be obliged to provide it. But what if you are responsible for that person being completely dependent upon you? Does this change your obligations and thereby limit your right to withdraw support?

If we assume that an embryo or fetus is at some point an individual with serious rights, these considerations may apply. In short, some philosophers have argued, the extent to which a woman is responsible for her pregnancy has a very important impact on her obligations to continue.

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