In A Defense of Abortion (Cahn and Markie), Judith Thomson presents an argument that abortion can be morally permissible even if the fetus is considered a person. The main reason he made such an argument was that the abortion issue had effectively reached a stalemate at the time. The typical anti-abortion argument was based on the idea that a fetus is a person and since killing a person is wrong, abortion is wrong. Pro-abortionists take the opposite view: namely, that a fetus is not a person and therefore not entitled to people's rights and therefore killing it could not be wrong. Thomson's argument is presented in three components. The first section deals with the now famous violinist thought experiment. This experiment presents a situation where you wake up one morning and find that you have been kidnapped and hooked up to a sick violinist so that his body can use your kidneys for the next nine months. The intuitive and instinctive reaction to this situation is that you have no moral duty to remain tied to the violinist and, above all, that he (or the people who kidnapped you) have no right to demand the use of your body for this period . From a deontological point of view, it can be seen that in a conflict between the right to life of the fetus and the right to bodily integrity of the mother, the rights of the mother prevail over those of the fetus. Thomson distills this concept by saying that “the right to life consists not in the right not to be killed, but rather in the right not to be killed unjustly.” Thomson acknowledges that this thought experiment has very limited application – particularly to those cases in which a pregnancy is the result of coercion or violence. In the second…half of the document…the court let states ban late-term abortions. Many believe that a fetus near the end of pregnancy is simply too similar to a human to find justification for killing it, unless the pregnancy threatens the mother's health. The spectrum line that the court ended up defining was based on when the fetus becomes viable. Before this time, the fetus is entirely dependent on the mother and the court has left the mother the option to withdraw her support for the fetus. Once the point of viability has been reached, society as a whole is then able to assist in the care of the child. This, therefore, is the moment when the fetus obtains the additional requirement to its right to life discussed above. Works Cited Cahn, Steven M., and Peter Markie, Ethics: History, Theory and Contemporary Issues. 4th edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Roe v. Wade. No. 410. United States. 1973.