Judith Jarvis Thomson and "A Defense of Abortion"

Judith Jarvis Thomson was an American philosopher (October 4, 1929 – November 20, 2020), mostly known for her studies on ethics.

She was born in New York. She received her MA on philosophy from Cambridge University at 1956 and PhD degree on philosophy from Columbia University at 1959. Later on, she worked as a professor in various universities including Cambridge, Columbia University, MIT and Yale.

Thomson is well known for her discussion about a very famous thought experiment 'Trolley Problem'. This thought experiment was firstly used by Philippa Foot, on her paper “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect”. However, Thomson is the one coinining the name Trolley Problem, and extending the cases of the problem to take a closer look into the factors contributing to the decissions.

She discussed about ethics around Abortion in her paper "A Defense of Abortion".

A Defense of Abortion
Generaly discussion on abortion relys on the discussion about whether a fetus is an human with rights or not. In this paper J.J. Thomson argues that abortion would be permissible even if a fetus is a complete human, therefore skipping the discussion.