Abortion: Ambiguous Criteria and Confusing Policies

Abstract

The focus of this article is the woman-fetus conflict of rights, subsumed in the abortion debate. The issue is first examined from the perspective of distributive justice in a liberal society. In the absence of universal criteria of the personhood of the fetus, the results of recent opinion polls are analyzed as proxies of "aggregate intuition" on this issue. The analysis leads to a reframing of the terms of the conflict of rights in the abortion debate and a reexamination of contemporary policies on the subject.