AnalPhilosopher

The liberal view of abortion is advanced chiefly by the women's movement in the democracies of the West, although one need not be a feminist in order to espouse it. Of the two features that render the abortion conflict particularly perplexing, the liberal view addresses only the special nature of the fetus. The claim that is the heart of this view, and on which all of its further components depend, is that a fetus is not the kind of entity whose rights or interests are properly taken into consideration in determining the morality of abortion. Although abortion results in the death of the fetus, it does no harm or injury because the fetus is not the sort of thing that can be harmed or injured. Abortion therefore lacks a victim. In the liberal's opinion the appearance of interpersonal conflict in the case of abortion is an illusion. The only party whose rights or interests are at stake is the pregnant woman; because the fetus is granted no standing in the question, there can be no genuine conflict. As long as an abortion is consented to and carried out competently, then it is a private matter between a woman and her physician. There is simply no issue concerning the moral status of abortion—or at any rate no issue that does not equally arise for all other surgical procedures.

On the liberal view abortion is morally on a par with appendectomy. If this is so, there is no ground for state regulation of abortion that is not also a ground for state regulation of appendectomy. Any law that stipulates permissible grounds for performing abortions, or that prohibits their performance altogether, is an unwarranted invasion of the contractual relationship between a woman and her physician. For abortion, the only permissible policy is a permissive policy.

(L. W. Sumner, Abortion and Moral Theory [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981], 15)