This is a legal argument in favor of abortion taking the stance that the majority of people do not consider a fetus a full person, but rather see human life as intrinsically sacred.

There were a lot of interesting points and I did find this book really worthwhile overall. Dworkin talked about the value of human life and how people who place equal value on it can hold such different beliefs. He made several arguments relating to abortion that I'd never heard phrased in quite those ways before that I found fascinating and well constructed.

I also really enjoyed the discussion on dementia at the end. I did expect more on euthanasia based on the title, but it was relegated to one chapter at the end with an additional chapter on dementia, relating to both euthanasia and bodily autonomy, which was my favorite of the book.

However, it felt very repetitive. It felt like he reiterated his point on no one believing the fetus is an actual person every other page. He'd say things like 'but this belief holds no weight if you take into account my prior statement, that most people do not see a fetus as a person.' Like my dude when we're fifty pages into the book you don't need to keep telling me what your main point is. By that point I've got it.

There was also a fair amount of ableism, which may or may not have been intentional based on the topic and the fact that eugenics was also briefly covered. He also spent a lot of time telling you what you believe, whether you're in favor of abortion or not, and that what you think you believe is wrong. And then he went off on a lot of weird tangents, like when he talked about the commonly held belief that a ten year old dying is sadder than a three year old dying. Like I'm not even judging that one, I'm just so confused because I'm fairly certain I've never heard that before. If he wants to make that statement, sure, but is it really such a commonly held belief as he kept reiterating? I have no idea.

I think I would have really enjoyed this had it been condensed into a fifty page essay or something. There was so much repetition and so much extraneous tangents that despite large portions of the book being worthwhile, overall my experience wasn't that enjoyable. I'm still glad I read it, though.