Abstract

Many people believe the morality of abortion stands or falls with the moral status of the fetus. Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist argument bypasses the question of fetal moral status; even if the fetus has a right to life, she argues the gestational mother has a right to disconnect herself from the fetus. However, should ectogenesis – a technology that would allow the fetus to develop outside the womb – become sufficiently advanced, the fetus would no longer need a gestational mother to live. Recently, Joona Räsänen has argued that parents have a right to secure the death of a fetus that has been removed from the mother’s body, and that this right might extend to infanticide. However, here I argue Räsänen’s position ignores the moral status of the fetus; if the fetus is morally comparable to beings like us, then of course parents lack a right to the death of their children. However, if the fetus is morally comparable to a tumor, then the right to kill it is philosophically uninteresting.