The focus of this article is the woman-fetus conflict of rights, subsumed
in the abortion debate. The issue is first examined from the perspective
of distributive justice in a liberal society. In the absence of universal
criteria of the personhood of the fetus, the results of recent opinion
polls are analyzed as proxies of "aggregate intuition" on this issue.
The analysis leads to a reframing of the terms of the conflict of rights
in the abortion debate and a reexamination of contemporary policies
on the subject.
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