Knowra Judith Jarvis Thomson Judith Jarvis Thomson Judith Jarvis Thomson (1929–2020) was an American moral philosopher whose work on rights, abortion, and thought experiments shaped debates in contemporary ethics.
James Thomson : James Thomson was a British philosopher whose work included metaphysics, logic, and the philosophy of language. Her husband and frequent philosophical collaborator, he coauthored work on the nature of rights.
Rights : Rights are claims, freedoms, or powers that impose duties or protections within moral, legal, or political systems. Thomson analyzes what rights permit and whether a right to life entails aid from others.
A Defense of Abortion : A 1971 philosophical essay by Judith Jarvis Thomson arguing that a right to life does not automatically include a right to use another’s body. This essay develops her best-known argument through rights analysis and imagined cases.
Moral status of abortion : The moral status of abortion concerns whether and under what conditions ending a pregnancy is ethically permissible. Thomson grants for argument’s sake that a fetus has a right to life, then disputes what follows.
Abortion debate : The abortion debate concerns the moral, legal, and political status of ending a pregnancy. Her essay became a foundational intervention that shifted discussion toward bodily rights and obligation.
Philippa Foot : Philippa Foot was a British moral philosopher associated with virtue ethics and influential trolley-problem cases. Foot’s trolley cases prompted a debate with Thomson about killing, letting die, and moral rights.
Right to life : The right to life is a moral or legal claim against being killed or deprived of continued life. Her abortion argument separates having this right from having a claim to another person’s body.
Violinist argument : A thought experiment in which someone is connected without consent to a violinist who needs their body to survive. It illustrates how a person’s right to life might fail to establish entitlement to bodily support.
Fetal personhood : Fetal personhood is the claim that a fetus qualifies as a person with the moral status or rights of persons. Her essay largely sidesteps personhood by examining bodily entitlement even under a strong fetal-rights assumption.
Thought experiment : A thought experiment uses an imagined situation to clarify or test a claim, principle, or intuition. Her imaginative cases became models for testing ethical principles beyond the abortion debate.
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