Thomson Judith Jarvis (b.1929), American analytic philosopher best known for her contribution to moral philosophy and for her paper ‘A Defense of Abortion’ (1971). Thomson has taught at M.I.T. since 1964. Her work is centrally concerned with issues in moral philosophy, most notably questions regarding rights, and with issues in metaphysics such as the identity across time of people and the ontology of events. Her Acts and Other Events (1977) is a study of human action and provides an analysis of the part– whole relation among events. ‘A Defense of Abortion’ has not only influenced much later work on this topic but is one of the most widely discussed papers in contemporary philosophy. By appeal to imaginative scenarios analogous to pregnancy, Thomson argues that even if the fetus is assumed to be a person, its rights are in many circumstances outweighed by the rights of the pregnant woman. Thus the paper advances an argument for a right to abortion that does not turn upon the question of whether the fetus is a person. Several of Thomson’s essays, including ‘Preferential Hiring’ (1973), ‘The Right to Privacy’ (1975), and ‘Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem’ (1976), address the questions of what constitutes an infringement of rights and when it is morally permissible to infringe a right. These are collected in Rights, Restitution, and Risk: Essays in Moral Theory (1986). Thomson’s The Realm of Rights (1990) offers a systematic account of human rights, addressing first what it is to have a right and second which rights we have.
Thomson’s work is distinguished by its exceptionally lucid style and its reliance on highly inventive examples. The centrality of examples to her work reflects a methodological conviction that our views about actual and imagined cases provide the data for moral theorizing.
See also ACTION THEORY, ETHICS, RIGHT. A.E.B.