diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 2d18011d514..cf9e88558d6 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -139,6 +139,10 @@ Core and Builtins
 Library
 -------
 
+- Issue #3807: _multiprocessing build fails when configure is passed 
+  --without-threads argument. When this occurs, _multiprocessing will
+  be disabled, and not compiled.
+
 - Issue #5008: When a file is opened in append mode with the new IO library,
   do an explicit seek to the end of file (so that e.g. tell() returns the
   file size rather than 0). This is consistent with the behaviour of the
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 27d1fe1570f..174a8b2cd4e 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -1063,9 +1063,12 @@ class PyBuildExt(build_ext):
             if macros.get('HAVE_SEM_OPEN', False):
                 multiprocessing_srcs.append('_multiprocessing/semaphore.c')
 
-        exts.append ( Extension('_multiprocessing', multiprocessing_srcs,
-                                 define_macros=list(macros.items()),
-                                 include_dirs=["Modules/_multiprocessing"]))
+        if sysconfig.get_config_var('WITH_THREAD'):
+            exts.append ( Extension('_multiprocessing', multiprocessing_srcs,
+                                    define_macros=list(macros.items()),
+                                    include_dirs=["Modules/_multiprocessing"]))
+        else:
+            missing.append('_multiprocessing')
         # End multiprocessing
 
         # Platform-specific libraries