Dignity and Abortion in Law, Philosophy, and Bioethics

Dignity has been a notoriously elusive concept to philosophers. Nevertheless, in the realms of politics, law, and policymaking, appeals to dignity are frequent, and do not always align with the understandings most commonly endorsed by the philosophical literature. This paper considers how "dignity" is frequently appealed to in ethical arguments about the permissibility of abortion, and argues that the judicial decisions related to reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights over the past 30 years in the United States offer deep insights into the nature of "dignity" that philosophers and other theorists ought to pay attention to. These insights not only have profound implications for our understanding of the nature of "dignity," but also for ethical analysis more broadly.