dly trap for a mother, which is analogous to the kidnap victim's guaranteed kidney failure and death because of being tied to the violinist. The fetus, in that view has an unmediated right to be in the womb, whatever the cost to the woman in the case--and, it appears, whether the pregnancy was the result of rape or consensual sex. As Gordon puts it: "The problem in rape is whether the victimization of one person should permit the victimization of someone else." By that logic the fact of pregnancy has the effect of suppressing the rights and options of the pregnant person. The only value that this person has is as a repository for a pregnancy; all other values slip away. Hirschmann (49-50) exposes that line of thought by arguing that mandating a woman to complete unwanted pregnancy is the equivalent of putting her in a condition of involuntary servitude.
Thomson develops the view that moral entitlement to choose an abortion has limits, chiefly where parents have made a conscious effort to conceive. But she sights the limits of the obligations that pregnancy confers on the pregnant, distinguishing between parents who make no effort to prevent a pregnancy and thereby take on the obligations of parenthood and nurturance and those who do make that effort:
But if they have taken all reasonable precautions against having a child, they do not simply by virtue of
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