Abortion Rights And Wrongs

What are Rights?

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One approach to the moral questions connected to abortion is through an analysis of rights. The fundamental assumption behind modern theories about rights is that each individual person is of enormous intrinsic value. Rights are a moral (and legal) device for protecting valuable individuals from harm.

The most common sort of moral right is essentially a guaranteed freedom to perform some act X or to be provided with some thing Y. If I have a moral right to do X, then others have the moral obligation or duty to refrain from interfering with my action. If I have a right to be provided with Y, then someone or some group or some institution has the obligation or duty to provide me with Y. If a moral right is written into law it becomes a legal or "positive" right.

Reference: There are hundreds of works on moral and legal rights. Modern discssions include Robert Nozick Anarchy, State, and Utopia and Ronald Dworkin Taking Rights Seriously and Judith Thomson The Realm of Rights. Dworkin and Thomson have also written elsewhere on abortion.

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