The Right to Life
	CONTINUE ON	Review Related Ideas and then Return Here

Baruch Brody has suggested that we need not say that the embryo or fetus has a right to its mother's body, but rather that she does not have the right to kill it in the exercise of her right to bodily control. On this view, her situation is like a person who has a right to control and defend her bicycle, but does not thereby have a right to kill someone because they try to steal the bike.

But what about Thomson's violinist? Would you maintain that the person to whom the violinist is attached must remain so if the only way to sever the link kills the violinist? What if the violinist requires your kidneys for the next 50 years?

If your intuitions here are inconsistent, what principle should you use to decide between them?

Ariadne Home	Abortion Bibliography	Abortion Home