Gestation as Good Samaritanism

Tür:

Kitap Bölümü

Yazar:

Kate Greasley

Yayın yılı:

2017

Yayıncı:

Oxford University Press

Abstract This chapter discusses the possibility that abortion is clearly permissible in almost all cases whether or not the fetus is a person, because abortion is not, in truth, an act of killing, but only the refusal by a pregnant woman to be a Good Samaritan. It presents and criticizes Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous ‘violinist analogy’ argument in defence of the ‘Good Samaritan Thesis’ that continued pregnancy is a form of non-obligatory assistance to another, if the fetus is a person. Against this thesis, I argue that the problem of abortion, if fetal personhood is presumed, is not a question of positive duties to rescue others, but of the negative duty to refrain from killing them. Given that this is the case, the Good Samaritan Thesis fails.

Künye/erişim: kaynak bağlantısı