What about when the woman’s health is at stake?
We should pursue all ethical medical means1 to find ways to improve people’s health and to improve the prospects of mothers facing medically difficult pregnancies. But killing an innocent person is not one of those ethical medical means. If my flu could be instantly cured by killing you, that wouldn’t give me the right to do so because your right to life as an innocent person trumps my right to be as healthy as I can make myself.2 Again, the question is whether or not the fetus is a person. If he is, then any health risks that he confers on someone else do not justify intentionally killing him. If he is not, then it doesn’t matter whether or not the woman’s health is at stake—she should have a right to abortion either way.
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When a pregnancy poses a grave threat to the mother’s health, it could be appropriate to induce premature delivery in a way that balances the risk to the fetus and the risks borne by the mother if she were to continue the pregnancy. But health problems would never justify ripping or burning the fetus to death. ↩
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This is an example of a BPA. Note that we are only attempting to establish Premise 1 here. ↩