Retten til liv: En undersøgelse af et centralt argument i abortdebatten

With recent changes in abortion laws in countries such as the USA and Norway, the debates surrounding the ethics of abortion have gained renewed energy. In this article, we investigate a well-known habitué in these debates, namely the right to life. While the controversy often focuses on who has the right to life, there has been less attention to the question of what such a right actually might entail. One famous approach to this question is Judith Jarvis Thomson’s seminal 1971 article “In defence of abortion”. We present Thomson’s discussion of the meaning of a right to life, and with her we conclude that even if a foetus’ right to life is granted, it does not necessarily follow that the foetus has a right to be carried to term.