




































AQUINNO VOLUME 4 ISSUE 3 DECEMBER 2024.cdr


AUTONOMY'S DOMINION: RONALD DWORKIN'S ARGUMENTS ON ABORTION

Celestine Edozie Anyaorah, Ph.D
Department of Philosophy  

Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Ebonyi State
 edozie.celestine@gmail.com

&
Solomon Eyesan, Ph.D

Department of Philosophy 
Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Ebonyi State

eyesansolom@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Ronald Dworkin's arguments on abortion are still very ad rem to his rights thesis or liberal theory 
of law which hinges on the jurisprudential position that people should consider rights as trumps, 
such that the individual liberty protected by the right, trumps the various collective goals with 
which the right might be in conflict. For Dworkin, the individuals' right to personal autonomy 
protects their desire to have abortion within the first trimester of pregnancy. The problem that 
warrants this study is to ascertain the personhood of a foetus, as Dworkin denies that a foetus is a 
person, especially at its early developmental stage. This study's objective is to analyse Dworkin's 
arguments on abortion. Significantly, this study will be very important to legal and medical 
philosophers, legal and medical practitioners, clinical and forensic psychologists, medical 
physicists, and so on. This research work will help them to do their works better in their different 
fields. The study adopts the analytic method of philosophical research. Finally, this study submits 
that foetuses are viable persons from the moment of conception. The newly conceived foetus, the 
newborn child and the mature adult are all at different stages of development. All, therefore, 
deserve human dignity. More abortions would be prevented when pregnant women are seen as 
potential allies of their unborn babies.

Keywords: Dworkin, abortion, autonomy, foetus, human dignity, individual rights. 

INTRODUCTION

In Life's Dominion, Dworkin makes an elegant attempt to persuade thoughtful opponents of 
abortion to cease advocating their legal prohibition (Rakowski, 2001, 33). He defines abortion 
as “a waste of the start of human life. Death intervenes before life in earnest has begun” 
(Dworkin, 1993, 190). He denies the personhood of a foetus. He argues that women's decision to 
have abortion should be esteemed as a matter of privacy and personal freedom, therefore, 
government should not interpose. For him, the insistence that women should carry their 
pregnancy against their will is tantamount to slavery. Also, the moral weight of a potential life is 
dependent upon the quality of life the offspring would have. In other words, if the potential life 
would be subject to a life of suffering, to itself and to the mother, like being born blind or 
crippled; he argues that terminating the foetus may be morally justifiable. A detailed analysis 
and criticisms of Dworkin's arguments in this regard is the subject matter of subsequent sections.

ABORTION: DWORKIN'S ARGUMENT IN LIFE'S DOMINION

In Life's Dominion, Dworkin handles the debates about abortion that have taken a place in the 
contemporary politics in different countries including his own country. He urges people to 

53



discard portraits of these issues that paint irresoluble conflicts of rights. Instead, he suggests that 
these debates should be re-conceptualised to reflect a recognition that what propels them is an 
essentially religious disagreement about the intrinsic value of human life (Shiffrin, 2004, 
195).With regard to abortion, John D. Inazu in his 2012 essay, “The Limits of Integrity,” points 
out that Dworkin identifies three values at issue in the constitutional debate over abortion: (I) 
law as integrity; (II) the rights and interests of persons; and (III) the sacredness of human life. He 
applies the first value of law as integrity to any constitutional question. It demands coherence 
within the ongoing practice of legal interpretation (Inazu, 2012, 191; Dworkin, 1986, 257). 

Dworkin's second value, the rights and interests of persons, comes in two forms: the right to 
procreative autonomy of a woman seeking abortion and the right to equal protection from harm 
by the foetus if the foetus is a “person” in the constitutional sense, that is, whether the foetus is a 
helpless unborn child with rights and interests of its own from the moment of conception, such 
that permitting abortion is permitting murder. The threshold question of whether a foetus is a 
person to whom rights attach forms the basis of what Dworkin calls the “derivative” objection to 
abortion (Dworkin, 1993, 11; Inazu, 111). The objection is derived in the sense that the 
protections it demands from government come from the constitutional rights attributed to the 
foetus. He disregards the derived objection in his most inclusive consideration of abortion in 
Life's Dominion.

The last value that Dworkin regards in his interpretation of the problem of abortion is the 
sacredness of human life. He associates this value with the “detached” objection to abortion, by 
which he means that the responsibility of government to protect the foetus is not derived from 
constitutional rights. He explains the value of sacredness: 

The hallmark of the sacred as distinct from the incrementally 
valuable is that the sacred is intrinsically valuable because, and 
therefore only once, it exists. It is inviolable because of what it 
represents or embodies. It is not important that there be more 
people. But once a human life has begun, it is very important that it 
flourish and not be wasted (Dworkin, 1993, 73-74).

He goes further to observe that the sanctity of life is a highly contentious value. It is 
controversial, for example, whether abortion or childbirth best serves the intrinsic value of life 
when a foetus is deformed, or when having a child would seriously depress a woman's chance to 
make something valuable of her own life (Dworkin, 151).

ABORTION: RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND JUDICIAL DECISIONS 

Dworkin's appeal to the sacred leads him to conclude that “we may describe most people's 
beliefs about the inherent value of human life, beliefs deployed in their opinions about abortion, 
as essentially religious beliefs” (Dworkin, 155). His philosophical authority for this turn to 
religious belief is the Supreme Court's decision in United States vs. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163 (1965), 
which suggested that an atheist's system of beliefs may have a place in the life of its possessor 
parallel to that filled by the orthodox belief in God (Dworkin, 184). Dworkin makes a point to 
which he returns in Religion Without God: “once the idea of religion is separated from the idea of 
a god, however, courts that accept the constraints of integrity face great difficulty in 
distinguishing between religious and other kinds of conviction” (Dworkin, 2013, 162). 

Furthermore, he argues that one constraining principle is content. For instance, he states that a 
belief in the objective and intrinsic importance of human life has a distinctly religious content. 
He contends that people should classify a belief as religious by asking whether it is sufficiently 
similar in content to plainly religious beliefs (Dworkin, 155). For him, the category of religious 

54

                                            Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol 4 Issue 3, December 2024.
ISSN: 2786-9792



belief is expansive. In Life's Dominion, therefore, there is an emphasis that religious belief or 
conviction need not presuppose a god: 

Convictions that endorse the objective importance of human life 
speak to the same issues, about the place of an individual human 
life in an impersonal and infinite universe, as orthodox religious 
beliefs do for those who hold them… I can think of no plausible 
account of the content that a belief must have in order to be 
deemed religious that would rule out convictions about why and 
how human life has intrinsic objective importance, except the 
abandoned notion that religious belief must presuppose a god 
(Dworkin, 163-164).

Having established his broad interpretation of religious belief, Dworkin sets out to assess the 
competing interpretive arguments about abortion on the basis of the three values he has 
identified: integrity, rights and interests, and the sacredness of human life. His value of legal 
integrity reinforces both the right to procreative autonomy and the rejection of any notion of 
rights for a foetus. As for procreative autonomy, he writes: “The law's integrity demands that the 
principles necessary to support an authoritative set of judicial decisions must be accepted in 
other contexts as well. It might seem an appealing political compromise to apply the principles 
of procreative autonomy to contraception, which almost no one now thinks states can forbid, but 
not to abortion, which powerful constituencies violently oppose” (Dworkin, 158). So, he argues 
that the point of integrity in the legal system is to rule out political compromises of that kind. 
Law as integrity should represent conviction, not the tactical strategies of justices eager to 
satisfy as many political constituencies as possible.

Therefore, Dworkin argues that his claim for procreative autonomy takes cognizance of 
precedent which law as integrity demands. Given that Griswold vs. Connecticut and Einsenstadt 
vs. Baird have acknowledged the right to avoid conception when having sex, he argues that the 
right to terminate pregnancy must follow, because the likelihood of unwanted reproduction is all 
the greater once pregnancy has begun. Meanwhile, if the right to avoid procreation is deemed 
fundamental before conception through the use of contraception in certain cases, it should be 
equally fundamental after conception occurs. 

For Dworkin, integrity equally provides a clear answer to the question of the personhood, and, 
thus, the rights, of the foetus. He believes that precedent interpreting the Equal Protection Clause 
clearly rejects the idea. He clarifies that his argument accepts the U.S. Supreme Court's decision 
that a foetus is not a constitutional person “with rights and interests of its own,” and instead 
frames the issue in terms of what governmental regulation is permissible to express respect for 
the sanctity of human life (Inazu, 160).

Dworkin translates his argument into an account of constitutionally allowable and unallowable 
governmental stanard. He distinguishes between government insisting upon, that is, coercing 
conformity and encouraging responsibility: government may not compel a woman's abortion 
decision to further its view about sanctity, but it may regulate in ways that encourage her to 'treat 
the question of abortion seriously,' because it is a decision implicating the intrinsic value of the 
sanctity of life (Dworkin, 161; Inazu, 193).

Most of Dworkin's legal arguments track the Supreme Court's controversial progression from 
Griswold vs. Connecticut 381 U.S. 479 (1965), which announced a constitutional right of 
privacy, to Eisenstadt vs. Baird 405 U.S. 438 (1972), which transformed that right to an 
individual right, to Roe vs. Wade 410 U.S. (1973), which applied that right to abortion (Dworkin, 
160-168; Inazu, 193). Dworkin admonishes that few people understand the constitutional issues 

55

Anayorah, C.E. & Eyasan S.          Autonomy's Dominion: Ronald Dworkin's Arguments On Abortion



raised in Roe. In a single paragraph in Life's Dominion, he identifies three leading features of the 
decision: 

(1) States may not prohibit abortion at all before the second 
trimester. 

(2) States may not prohibit abortion before the third trimester 
except in those rare cases when it would jeopardize the mother's 
health. 

(3) Roe held unconstitutional the anti-abortion laws of most states 
(McClain, 1998, 91).

Dworkin appends a fourth important feature: 

(4) States may outlaw abortion altogether when the foetus has 
become viable, that is, in the third trimester of pregnancy 
(Dworkin, 107).

Dworkin senses he has a “persuasive interest” at hand in his insistence that women have right to 
abort especially when the foetus has not become viable. He declares that unwanted pregnancies 
impose a kind of slavery on women, that a woman's life might as well be destroyed. Avoiding 
slavery and self-destruction would seem to be compelling interests (Dworkin, 103), In 
establishing a right to abort, he contends that if the state cannot impose the harm of unwanted 
pregnancy upon women, it follows that the state cannot impose the greater harm of carrying, 
bearing and caring for that unwanted child (Dworkin, 155). The question now is: would giving 
out a new born child for adoption not alleviate this burden? Dworkin brushes it aside in a short 
paragraph. According to him, “many women could suffer great emotional pain for many years if 
they turned a child over to others to raise and love, even if the only alternative was abortion” 
(Bradley, 1993, 339).

He observes that the right to procreative autonomy, from which a right of choice about abortion 
flows, is well grounded in the First Amendment as well as in the best interpretation of 
constitutional liberty and equality (Dworkin, 106-107). Dworkin also grounds the right to 
procreative autonomy in “Western political culture more generally,” namely, in its belief in 
individual human dignity: that people have the moral right and the moral responsibility to 
confront the most fundamental questions about the meaning and value of their own life for 
themselves, answering to their own consciences and convictions (Dworkin, 103-104). 
Moreover, he reiterates the essentially religious nature of the issue, enlisting some of the core 
tenets of his account of ethical liberalism. He argues: 

Tolerance is a cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. We are 
committed, by our love of liberty and dignity, to live in 
communities in which no group is thought clever or spiritual or 
numerous enough to decide essentially religious matters for 
everyone else. If we have genuine concern for the lives others 
lead, we will also accept that no life is a good one lived against the 
grain of conviction, that it does not help someone else's life but 
spoils it to force values upon him he cannot accept but can only 
bow before out of fear or prudence(Dworkin, 166).

In Religion without God, Dworkin returns to his argument for a First Amendment grounding for 
the right to procreative autonomy. Acknowledging the problems with a concept of religion 
limited to theism, he avers that “if freedom of religion is not restricted to opinions about a god, 
but embraces all deep convictions about the purpose and responsibilities of life, then it might be 

56

                                            Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol 4 Issue 3, December 2024.
ISSN: 2786-9792



thought an open question whether the right to abortion is a religious issue” (Dworkin, 2013, 
107). For Dworkin, “much of the opposition to abortion assumes that a god has forbidden the act; 
but not all opposition is based on theism, and few women who want an abortion believe that a 
god has equally ordered them to abort” (Dworkin, 107).

This idea of being “ordered” to abort is not a good way to put the matter; although analysis of 
women's abortion decisions may indicate that a woman's religious convictions play a role in her 
decision-making to continue or to terminate a pregnancy. In Our Right To Choose: Towards A 
New Ethics of Abortion, Beverly W. Harrison avers that different religious denominations vary 
in their ethical teachings about whether and when abortion is morally permissible; even within 
denominations opposing abortion rights, some dissenting voices argue for protecting a woman's 
moral and legal right to follow her conscience in matters of sexuality and reproductive health 
(Harrison, 1983, 117). In this sense, a subtler framing of Dworkin's argument could draw on a 
spectrum of conscientious religious views to suggest the “essentially religious” nature of the 
issue for many people.

Also, Dworkin revisits the abortion issue in Religion without God to contend that moving away 
from a special right to religious freedom to a more general right to ethical independence could 
help to make progress on the “religious wars” that have entered into politics, in which “sexual 
and reproductive morality,” including the right to abortion, is undoubtedly the most divisive 
issue of all (Dworkin, 2013, 137). Dworkin observes that when the Supreme Court decided that a 
state lacks power to criminalize early abortions, the Court had no choice but to locate its opinion 
doctrinally in “the equal protection and due process clauses” rather than the “First Amendment 
guarantees of religious freedom” because, while opponents of abortion very often cite a god's 
will as warrant, few women who want choice in these matters conceive their desire as grounded 
in religion (Dworkin, 2013, 138).

Meanwhile, Dworkin's sacredness of life language does more work but is ultimately 
unpersuasive. He classifies all views about the sacredness of life as “religious” because, as one 
has already quoted, “once the idea of religion is separated from the idea of a god courts that 
accept the constraints of integrity face great difficulty in distinguishing between religious and 
other kinds of convictions.” Having framed these arguments as religious arguments whose 
expression is protected by the Free Exercise Clause, Dworkin declares that they fall beyond the 
competence of legal interpretation. According to him, any government that prohibits abortion 
commits itself to a controversial interpretation of the sanctity of life and so limits liberty by 
commanding one essentially religious position over others, which the First Amendment forbids. 
He writes: 

A state may not curtail liberty, in order to protect an intrinsic value, 
when the effect on one group of citizens would be special and 
grave, when the community is seriously divided about what 
respect for that value requires, and when people's opinion about 
the nature of that value reflect essentially religious convictions 
that are fundamental to moral personality (Dworkin, 144).

Dworkin's resolution of the abortion debate thus hinges on two assumptions. First, he classifies 
secular beliefs “about the intrinsic importance of human life” as religious. Second, he classifies 
secular beliefs that a foetus lacks personhood as not religious. After this razor-thin difference 
between religious and non-religious beliefs, his interpretive theory is almost an afterthought: 
religious arguments are wholly excluded, and the only permissible conclusion under a theory of 
law as integrity is to embrace Roe vs. Wade that considers and rejects the notion that the foetus is 
a person (Dworkin, 1993, 165).

57

Anayorah, C.E. & Eyasan S.          Autonomy's Dominion: Ronald Dworkin's Arguments On Abortion



Dworkin argues that the free exercise of religion should include a broad understanding of what 
“religious” belief is. The key to resolving the abortion controversy, therefore, is to broaden the 
scope of this “religious” belief and then discard those beliefs from the argument. Once the debate 
is recast in these terms, according to him, “we will see that a responsible legal settlement of the 
controversy, one that will not insult or demean any group, one that everyone can accept with full 
self-respect, is indeed available” (Bradley, 335-336).

DWORKIN AND INVESTMENT-BASED THEORY OF HUMAN LIFE

In Life's Dominion, Dworkin defends what he calls “investment-based theory of inviolability,” 
that once a human life has begun, it is regrettable when the investment in that life is wasted. He 
uses this investment theory to explain people's feelings toward human life after as well as before 
birth. The longer a child has been alive, the more effort invested in her and the more regrettable it 
is if the child dies prematurely. On the other hand, if the investment in someone's life has largely 
yielded good results or paid off, as with the elderly, or is destined to be frustrated in any event, as 
with the severely disabled, then death is not so tragic (Dworkin, 1993, 98). Human life, for 
Dworkin, is normally most inviolable from early adolescence to early middle-age because 
people within this range embody great investment and also, if healthy, great promise. As an 
example of how abortion can actually manifest respect for life's inherent value, he mentions the 
pregnant teenager who may find a greater investment in her own life wasted if she does not, by 
abortion, waste a lesser investment she and others may have made in her unborn child (Dworkin, 
99; Stith, 310-311). For, Dworkin, the inviolability of life may well require the desolation of life, 
paradoxically speaking.

It is apparent Dworkin's approach to the issue of abortion is troublesome. He attempts to 
eliminate the fact that the foetus is a human entity that has vital interests that are worth 
discussing and protecting (Araujo, 1993, 745). Patricia A. King in her article, “The Juridical 
Status of the Foetus: A Proposal for Legal Protection of the Unborn,” takes a thoughtful 
approach in considering how we think and talk about the interests of the foetus. Unlike Dworkin, 
King asserts that the pre-viable foetus does have interests and those interests merit discussion 
and protection. She states: “the unborn foetus, the newborn child and the mature adult are all at 
different stages of development, and the fact that a foetus is not conscious or socially responsive 
should not preclude all legal protection” (King, 1979, 1673).

REVISITING DWORKIN'S CONCEPT OF ABORTION

In Life's Dominion, Dworkin has presented an argument that unborn foetuses do not have equal 
rights to life. He argues that nothing can have a right without having interests, and nothing can 
have an interest without having consciousness. Therefore, he reasons that because foetuses at 
least in the early stages of pregnancy lack consciousness, they do not have interests and rights 
(Dworkin, 1993, 15-16; Stith, 303). Dworkin's argument is problematic at this point. There are 
people who, because of illness or misfortune, concede apathy to carry on with life. Would they, 
therefore, have flimsier rights? 

Even more questionable is Dworkin's claim that an entity cannot have interests, and thus cannot 
have rights, if that entity does not have consciousness (Dworkin, 16-20). The query, therefore, is: 
Do people's rights become attenuated as they tire and fall asleep at night? He is also not correct 
when he makes the claim in Life's Dominion that a caterpillar has no interest in becoming a 
butterfly (Dworkin, 16; Stith, 304). These examples could be used against Dworkin to 
demonstrate that interests without consciousness are indeed quite possible. So, wanton killing of 
insects or even plants is wrong despite their alleged lack of consciousness. How much more 

58

                                            Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol 4 Issue 3, December 2024.
ISSN: 2786-9792



human beings? 

In Life's Dominion, Dworkin actually begins with the pro-life thesis that abortion destroys an 
inviolable human life, but he ends with a pro-choice position even stronger than that of Roe vs. 
Wade and its progeny. Dworkin understands human life to be inviolable only to the extent that 
killing would result in a net waste of investment: where it produces a net investment gain, killing 
can be required by people's sense of life's inviolability. Foetuses and infants, because they have 
less investment in them, are less inviolable than older human beings (Dworkin, 153). Their lives, 
thus, can be outweighed by others. Infants, for Dworkin, are scarcely more inviolable than 
foetuses, for little has been invested in “mere biological development: conception, fetal 
development and infancy. To really count, one's life must have been determined not just by 
biological formation, but by social, individual training and choice” (Dworkin, 88; Stith, 317). 
Therefore, the death of an adolescent person is worse than the death of a toddler because the 
adolescent's death spoils the investments that have been made in his or her life, in Dworkin's 
conceptual schemes.

Dworkin's theory of investment initially came up from his efforts to mediate and solve the 
abortion controversy. Reflecting upon common pro-choice and pro-life attitude towards 
abortion, he comes up with that theory believing that it will make sense to both sides. However, 
his theory is very pernicious in consequence and very erroneous in concept. The idea of respect 
for human life expresses much more closely, and safely, how we feel about human life. So, 
common commitment to respect for life, to the inviolability that undergirds all individuality, may 
be the safe source of solidarity (Stith, 358), Also, Dworkin rightly lays much emphasis on another 
explanation of the respect-worthiness of human life: it is made in the “image” of God (Dworkin, 
82). However, he fails to understand the biblical or psychological import of the idea of image and 
representation. He believes it means only that each individual is “a creative masterpiece” 
treasured fundamentally, for the talent and effort already committed. God's image is not just a 
divinely great masterpiece, as he believes. It does not just exemplify divine beauty; it exemplifies 
God Himself to humanity. Reverence and respect for our neighbours is apparently called for 
because the one God is literally present in them. In the Gospel according to St. Matthew 25.40, 
Christ can then say: “whatever you do to the least of my brethren that you dounto me.” 

In Evangelium Vitae, that is, The Gospel of Life, Pope John Paul II points out that human life is a 
manifestation of God in the world. Man has been given a sublime dignity based on the intimate 
bond which unites him to his Creator. In man there shines forth a reflection of God Himself; 
hence, the life which God offers to man is a gift by which God shares something of Himself with 
His creature (John Paul II, §65).In what seems almost a direct reply to Dworkin's notion that 
being an “image of God” means only that each human being is “a creative masterpiece,” the Pope 
adds: “Man and his life appear to us not only as one of the greatest marvels of creation: for God 
has granted to man a dignity which is near to divine. In every child who is born…we see the image 
of God's glory. We celebrate this glory in every human being, a sign of the living God, an icon of 
Jesus Christ” (John Paul II, §84).

Also, in The Problem of Threats to Human Life, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger argues that abortion is 
more than murder because the victim is not an adult, but a helpless child. According to him, 
“abortion is part of true war of the mighty against the weak. With the complicity of states, colossal 
means have been used against people at the dawn of their lives” (Ratzinger, 15). Unlike 
Dworkin's theory of investment, I believe that there is something in every normal human being 
that responds to weakness with compassion and deference. Those whose lives are diminished or 
weakened deserve special respect. I am deeply convinced that when a blind man is robbed of a 
wallet, our humanity is more greatly injured than when a sighted person has his wallet stolen. 

Again, Hans Jonas affirms that our treatment of newborn children stands out as a kind of 

59

Anayorah, C.E. & Eyasan S.          Autonomy's Dominion: Ronald Dworkin's Arguments On Abortion



archetype for decency. He points to the newborn, whose mere breathing unquestionably 
addresses an “ought” to the world around, namely, to take care of him or her (1985, 131). 
Dworkin's idea reasons to the contrary: because the unborn child is utterly dependent, he may be 
killed. Moreover, the human image in an infant elicits from us more than reverence. Unlike some 
divine presence in a Church or painted icon, the image of God or humanity in a child is dynamic, 
rather than static. As a “directed power,” it can, therefore, call forth respect as well as reverence. 
In contrast to Dworkin's position, according to Richard Stith, no distinction should be drawn, 
with respect to the right to life, between the born and the unborn or between any prenatal stages of 
human development. To draw such a distinction would be to hold that human nature, the latent but 
developing human image, is insufficient for human dignity, and some actualised human 
perfection is needed. By so doing, he undercuts the inherent inviolability of neonatal as well as 
prenatal human life (Stith, 367).

Furthermore, humanly speaking, most women who commit abortion would not wish to do so if 
they were fully advised and empowered. The mother-child bond, even in its earliest and weakest 
stages, can have influence against abortion in favour of active back up for the child. So, unlike 
Dworkin who argues that laws against abortion impose “a kind of slavery” on women, I really see 
abortion as a “self-wounding” by the pregnant woman. Therefore, it is a mistake on Dworkin's 
part to view troubled pregnant women as necessarily unfriendly, unconcerned or nonchalant to 
the life of the foetus, or as enemies of the foetus who must be retrained by force. More abortions 
may well be foreclosed by considering pregnant women as prospective friends of their unborn 
babies, women who would offer support but often have no means to do so. Unlike Dworkin's 
approval of abortion in order to uphold individual rights and autonomy, Catherine A. Mackinnon 
points out that abortion often harms women either physically or psychically (Mackinnon, 1281).

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

This study proposes that states and their legal systems should approve the substitution of 
counselling that favours life, especially for women having crisis with their pregnancy, instead of 
penal threats on them during early pregnancy. In other words, rather than always debating over 
how many burdens pregnant women can or should be made to bear, the Constitution should 
stipulate or mandate a regime, that is, organised method, in which the state is required to 
encourage, mitigate and alleviate maternal self-sacrifice to the extent humanly possible. In this 
manner and for the most part, abortion remains technically illegal and unsupported by public or 
private health insurance, in order to teach its wrongfulness. Furthermore, for the state to take any 
part in abortion, it would implicate it in an “act of killing” (Stith, 378).

In addition, the dignity of the unborn is to be taught in other ways as well. For instance, the 
constitutional court should indicate that the state has a duty to strengthen the public's will to 
protect unborn life in its school curricula and in all broadcast media, which are also legally bound 
to maintain human dignity. Also, the state must proactively keep down coercions to abort by 
insisting upon a “child friendly” society. For example, it must ban the termination of leases as the 
result of the addition of a newborn child, as opposed to what is obtainable in some countries like 
China. More still, it must guarantee that the task of raising children will not lead to discrimination 
at the workplace (Stith, 378). Again, the state's law should protect the pregnant woman from 
pressures to abort coming from third parties, like husbands, parents, friends or employers, for 
instance, by enacting appropriate laws punishing such behaviour, especially when it ends up 
causing an abortion.

Even the adherents of Dworkin's theory who think abortion justified or excused, and who thus 
oppose its penalisation, might agree to these measures designed to encourage a choice for life. 
Furthermore, many of them might concur that birth is too much to expect of a woman only insofar 
as it requires her to bear burdens that are both “heavy” and “unusual”(Kommers, 32). Aid to 

60

                                            Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol 4 Issue 3, December 2024.
ISSN: 2786-9792



women in defying sexist and other coercions to abort could make childbearing less severely 
burdensome and so, more expectable. Likewise, demanding greater levels of sacrifice by men 
and other non-pregnant people, for example, legally required blood or marrow donation by 
parents to children, would make pregnancy's level of burden less unusual. (Stith, 378). As all 
these processes heighten, abortion could come to seem less justified or excused to many who 
endorse it. They might still not consider penalisation the best route to prevent, but they would 
support other forms of state action solicitously mindful of unborn life.

REFERENCES
Araujo, R. J. (1993). Abortion, Ethics and the Common Good. Who Are We? What Do We Want? 

How Do We Get There? Marquette Law Review. 79. 4, 701-754.
Bradley, G. V. (1993). Life's Dominion: A Review Essay.Notre Dame Law Review,69. 2,329-391.
Dworkin, R. M. (1993).Life's Dominion: An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia, and 

Individual  Freedom. New York: Alfred Knopf Press.
Dworkin, R. M. (1975). Hard Cases.Harvard Law Review, 88. 2, 1057-1078.
Dworkin, R. M. (1977).Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Dworkin, R. M. (1981). The Forum of Principle.New York University Law Review, 56. 4, 469-

494.
aDworkin, R. M. (1981 ). What is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Welfare.Journal of Philosophy and 

Public Affairs, 10. 3, 1-21.
bDworkin, R. M. (1981 ). What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources.” Journal of Philosophy 

and Public Affairs, 10. 4, 283-345. 
Dworkin, R. M. What is Equality? Part 3: The Place of Liberty.Iowa Law Review, 73. 2, 1-23.
Dworkin, R. M. (1985). A Matter of Principle. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Dworkin, R. M. (1986).Law's Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Dworkin, R. M. (1988). What is Equality? Part 4: Political Equality.University of San Francisco 

Law Review, 22. 3, 1-20.
Dworkin, R. M. (1989). Liberal Community. California Law Review, 77. 2, 479-499.
Dworkin, R. M. (1990). Equality, Democracy, and Constitution: We the People in Court.Alberta 

Law Review, 28. 2, 324-345.
Dworkin, R. M. (2006). Justice in Robes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Dworkin, R. M. (2010). Response.Boston University Law Review, 90. 1, 1059-1087.
Dworkin, R. M. (2011). Justice for Hedgehogs. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Dworkin, R. M. (2013). Religion Without God. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Inazu, John. D. (2012). The Limits of Integrity.Law and Contemporary Problem, 75. 4, 181-200.
John Paul II. (1995).Evangelium Vitae. Vatican City: Vatican Publications.
King, P. A. (1979). The Judicial Status of the Fetus (sic): A Proposal for Legal Protection of the 

Unborn. Michigan Law Review, 77. 7,1647-1687.
Kommers, D. (1994). The Constitutional Law of Abortion in Germany: Should Americans Pay 

Attention?.Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy, 10. 4, 17-38.
McClain, L. C. (1994). Rights and Irresponsibility.Duke Law Journal, 43. 2, 989-1088.
Rakowski, E. (2001). Ronald Dworkin, Reverence for Life, and the Limits of State 

Power.Utilitas13. 1, 33-64.
Shiffrin, Seana. V. (2004). Autonomy, Beneficence, and the Permanently Demented, in Dworkin 

and His Critics. Edited by Justine Burley. Malden: Blackwell.
Stith, R. (1997). On Death and Dworkin: A Critique of His Theory of Inviolability. Maryland Law 

Review, 56. 2, 289-383.
West, R. (2010). Rights, Harm, and Duties: A Response to Justice for Hedgehogs. Boston 

University Law Review, 90. 1, 819-837.

61

Anayorah, C.E. & Eyasan S.          Autonomy's Dominion: Ronald Dworkin's Arguments On Abortion


