"A Defense of Abortion" is a moral philosophy essay by Judith Jarvis Thomson first published in Philosophy & Public Affairs in 1971. Granting for the sake of argument that the fetus has a right to life, Thomson uses thought experiments to argue that the fetus's right to life does not override the pregnant woman's right to have jurisdiction over her body, and that induced abortion is therefore not morally impermissible. Thomson's argument has many critics on both sides of the abortion debate, yet it continues to receive defense. Thomson's imaginative examples and controversial conclusions have made "A Defense of Abortion" perhaps "the most widely reprinted essay in all of contemporary philosophy".