Rights, Duties, and Abortion

In a recent article on Judith Thomson's defense of abortion, Duncan Richter concludes: "Thomson's argument is good enough to suggest that pro-lifers would do well to focus less on a fetus' alleged right to life and concentrate instead on questions of callousness and indifference." It runs counter to common-sense to consider first trimester fetuses as fully human, with the same rights as everyone else. Since a human being is a rational animal, there are many ways in which early fetuses obviously do not meet this definition. Therefore, first trimester fetuses plausibly only have rights as potential human beings. Richter is also probably correct in thinking that pro-lifers should concentrate on such things as callousness and indifference in relation to these abortions, but not for the reasons advanced in his paper.