The following essay will examine the morality of abortion with specific reference to the writings of Don Marquis, Judith Jarvis Thompson, Peter Singer, and Mary Anne Warren. I will begin by evaluating the strength of the argument provided by Marquis that abortion is impermissible because it deprives a being of a potential “future like ours,” and then move on to consider the writings of Singer, Thomson, and Warren to refute both Marquis argues and supports my claim that abortion is morally permissible primarily because of the threat to women's freedom and bodily autonomy that extending the right to life to the fetus in the womb would pose. To fully understand the argument we should first define the parameters of the debate and the key ideas supported by each side. Throughout this essay I will use the terms conservative and liberal as defined by Singer (p. 125) to refer to both sides of the debate. The argument usually centers on the question of whether or not a fetus qualifies as a person – a complex, self-aware being with future-oriented preferences (Study Guide, p. 20) – those on the conservative side usually argue that a fetus is a person, or at least a potential person, and they consequently compare abortion to murder, while those on the liberal side tend to refute the proposed personhood of a fetus. Both Singer and Warren agree that human development is a gradual process and it is impossible to pinpoint an exact stage at which personality is achieved (Singer, p. 129, Study Guide, p.187), however it is clear, at least, that this happens somewhere in early childhood and that while in the womb the fetus only qualifies as a merely conscious being (Singer, p. 136). While I personally agree that a fetus is not a person at all and possesses nothing of…half of paper…nor potential it is too fragile a concept to be relevant and therefore in this essay, however For To avoid repeating the same reasoning, I decided to examine another aspect of the issue by shifting attention from the fetus to the woman, whose personality and right to life and bodily autonomy are not at all questionable or worthy of debate. Thus it becomes clear that granting legal personhood to a fetus cannot be done without grossly violating women's rights, and therefore abortion is morally permissible and should be readily available to those women who do not seek to take responsibility for a pregnancy. or fulfill the role of mother, because a woman's right to her own body prevails over that of another being, and it would be immoral to deny it due to the consequences that would arise from treating a fetus as an equal person.