Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter investigates a Rawlsian perspective on the permissibility of abortion. Noting that Rawls does not discuss abortion at all in A Theory of Justice, it first considers whether the parties in the original position should consider either access to or protection from abortion to be part of the basic liberties. It then considers Rawls’s two brief discussions of abortion in Political Liberalism and “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited.” Here, Rawls first implies that public reason entails support for abortion but later describes it as an issue for citizens to decide. Finally, the chapter argues that abortion shows Rawlsian public reason to be at best incomplete and at worst impossible, since the state must take a non-neutral position on fetal personhood before proceeding.</jats:p>