Judith Jarvis Thompson is a philosophy professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has proposed and interesting and somewhat controversial response to the issue of Abortion in her paper entitled, "A Defense of Abortion" which was published in 1971, 18 years prior to Marquis publication of his pro-life argument.
However Thompson's argument has been construed as a criticism of Marquis's future like ours argument. She begins by granting that from the moment of conception a fetus, in the broad sense of the term, is a person with a right to life. This constitutes an important concession on Thompson's part.
Not all pro-choice persons agree that an early term fetus is a person with a right to life. Thompson herself does not believe this and she indicates that a newly fertilized ovum, a new implanted clump of cells is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree. She concedes the point for the sake of the argument.
Thompson then asks if a fetus' right to life outweighs a woman's right to determine what will happen in and to her body?
She answers that sometimes it does, but not in every instance.
