ABSTRACT
IN THIS ESSAY I will argue that the right to abortion must be guaranteed, as it is absolutely essential to the establishment of minimum conditions of individuation. The traditional conceptions of individuality offered by liberal thinkers mistakenly assume individuality as a given. Against this position, I argue that individuation is a fragile achievement, and one, as the word implies, that is necessarily dependent on constitutive relations with others. I, therefore, accept the communitarian insight that “selves” only come into “being” in a web of relations and socio-symboilc ties in which we are entangled from the beginning of our lives. However, I adamantly oppose the rejection of rights and the critique of “overindividuation” advocated by some “communitarian” feminists. 1
