ORIGINAL ARTICLE Thomson, the right to life, and partial birth abortion or two MULES * for Sister Sarah

In this paper, I argue that Thomson’s famous attempt to reconcile the fetus’s putative right to life with robust abortion rights is not tenable. Given her view, whether or not an abortion violates the fetus’s right to life depends on the abortion procedure utilised. And I argue that Thomson’s view implies that any late term abortion that involves feticide is impermissible. In particular, this would rule out the par-tial birth abortion technique which has been so controversial of late. I have always found Judith Jarvis Thomson’s arguments in“A defense of abortion ” to be very persuasive.1 I have evenbeen convinced of her most controversial conclusion, that the termination of a pregnancy which resulted from contraceptive failure is morally permissible, even if the fetus is a person with a full right to life. But recently, as I taught Thomson’s article to a group of undergraduates for the nth time, it occurred to me that there is a worrisome gap in her argument. In particular, I have come to believe that it follows from Thomson’s own principles that employing an abortion technique which does not merely remove the fetus from the womb, but which more directly kills it, is morally impermissi