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Full Idea
Maybe the right to life consists not in the right not to be killed, but in the right not to be killed unjustly.
Gist of Idea
The right to life is not a right not to be killed, but not to be killed unjustly
Source
Judith (Jarvis) Thomson (A Defense of Abortion [1971], p.131)
Book Ref
'Ethics for Modern Life', ed/tr. Abelson,R./Friquegnon,M [St Martin's 1987], p.131
A Reaction
Sounds tautological. There is no right to life, then, but just the requirement that people behave justly?
| 4695 | Maybe abortion can be justified despite the foetus having full human rights [Thomson, by Foot] |
| 4696 | The foetus is safe in the womb, so abortion initiates its death, with the mother as the agent. [Foot on Thomson] |
| 4057 | A newly fertilized ovum is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree [Thomson] |
| 4058 | Is someone's right to life diminished if they were conceived by a rape? [Thomson] |
| 4059 | It can't be murder for a mother to perform an abortion on herself to save her own life [Thomson] |
| 4061 | The right to life is not a right not to be killed, but not to be killed unjustly [Thomson] |
| 4060 | The right to life does not bestow the right to use someone else's body to support that life [Thomson] |
| 4062 | No one is morally required to make huge sacrifices to keep someone else alive for nine months [Thomson] |
| 13267 | Temporal parts is a crazy doctrine, because it entails constantly creating stuff ex nihilo [Thomson, by Koslicki] |
| 16209 | How can point-duration slices of people have beliefs or desires? [Thomson] |