diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 204ea809158..52693202919 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -145,6 +145,10 @@ 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 0948e67538c..1aa14d127da 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -1315,9 +1315,13 @@ 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=macros.items(),
-                                 include_dirs=["Modules/_multiprocessing"]))
+        if sysconfig.get_config_var('WITH_THREAD'):
+            exts.append ( Extension('_multiprocessing', multiprocessing_srcs,
+                                    define_macros=macros.items(),
+                                    include_dirs=["Modules/_multiprocessing"]))
+        else:
+            missing.append('_multiprocessing')
+
         # End multiprocessing