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Both of these arguments confront a series of standard problems, some of which have already been mentioned.

In the first case, you must defend birth as a morally significant dividing line that corresponds to a change in rights and moral status for the child. Why should this be so? Pro-life writers often say that birth is only a change of address. What do you reply? In the second case, you must show that a woman has a right to control her body even when it involves destroying another person and when the destruction can be avoided by continuing the pregnancy for a few more weeks. Look back at some of the objections that have been made to Thomson's arguments.

Thomson herself asks what it would be permissible to do if pregnancy only lasted one hour. She believes that the "decent" thing would be to have the baby, although the fetus would still not have a right to its mother's body. Philosopher John Finnis asks whether we would agree with Thomson's analysis of the violinist's case if the person with good kidneys had to dismember and kill the violinist in order to detach him.

We could combine these questions. Suppose the violinist only had to be attached to someone else for one hour and had to be dismembered in order to be detached. Would it still be morally permissible to detach him? If we say yes, how does this case differ from the case of Smith's driveway (described in the next paragraph)?

Consider this case: We agree that Smith has a right to drive his car out of the driveway to his home. But suppose someone has fallen down unconscious on the driveway. Does Smith's right to drive out imply the right to drive over (and kill) the unconscious person? After all, it's his driveway! Assume that he never gave the unconscious person permission to be there.

Why does it seem that Smith's property right to the driveway does not include the right to drive over an unconscious man? Is it the fact that the man will be killed if he does while Smith will only be inconvenienced if he doesn't? Is there some principle of proportion that should be observed? Is there some inherent limit to Smith's right that we haven't clarified? Is it the other man's right to life? Something else? What do you think? Can you connect these considerations to abortion?