diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 2d18011..cf9e885 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -139,6 +139,10 @@
 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 27d1fe1..174a8b2 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -1063,9 +1063,12 @@
             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