Judith Jarvis Thomson

With philosophical nerve and unforgettable thought experiments, Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" transformed the moral debate on reproductive rights. First published in 1971, it became a cornerstone of modern moral philosophy, widely taught, fiercely debated, and endlessly cited. Few essays have so deeply shaped public discourse-or made abstract reasoning feel so urgently and disarmingly human.

The concept of a right is fundamental to moral, political, and legal thinking, but much of the use of that concept is selective and fragmentary. It is common merely to appeal to this or that intuitively plausible attribution of rights as needed for purposes of argument. In The Realm of Rights, Judith Thomson provides a full-scale, systematic theory of human...