ABSTRACT
Some abortion defenders claim that fetuses are parts of pregnant women. Abortion opponents often respond that fetuses aren’t maternal parts by appealing to the following: they differ genetically from the women gestating them; they differ in function from other maternal parts, as fetuses don’t contribute to their mothers’ survival; they possess a developmental telos toward independence from their mothers; they stand in tenant/niche rather than part/whole relationships to their mothers; they are substances, and substances can’t be parts of other substances. Drawing upon Elselijn Kingma’s work, I’ll respond that these provide little reason to doubt the parthood claim. Nevertheless, ironically, the fetal parthood thesis dooms the following three popular defenses of abortion: fetuses can be terminated on the grounds that they violate their mothers’ bodily integrity; fetuses can be killed, as they are trespassing on their mothers’ bodies; fetuses can be aborted because pregnant women have a right to self-defense. These three defenses fail on merely conceptual grounds as bodily parts can’t trespass upon their whole, nor can they violate the integrity of that whole, nor are they legitimate targets of a right to self-defense as that right is exercised against external threats, typically, to the first two rights.
