Abortion Rights And Wrongs

Persons

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In constructing your definition of a person, consider the following:

  • Animals are alive, conscious, and feel pleasure and pain, but we do not consider them persons.
  • If reasoning or using language is crucial, then what about infants, people in comas, and those who are severely retarded?
  • If intelligent beings from Mars landed on earth, would we consider them persons? What features would they have to possess in order to be considered the moral equivalent of persons? Would you feel that they should be treated on a par with human beings? Would it be wrong to kill them? Why or why not? Must one be human to be a person?
  • Why do the properties that confer personhood have moral importance? Why do they have so much moral importance?

As you develop a definition of personhood, consider how it relates to the morality of abortion. Does adopting a particular definition of 'person,' even assuming we adopt it for good reasons and not arbitrarily, settle the main issue? Why or why not?

Reference: For arguments in favor of narrow views of personhood see Warren and Tooley. For a more inclusive definition, see Brody. For various versions of the argument based on the number of chromosomes in the embryo, see Willke (part III, chapter 7) and Noonan's paper "An Almost Absolute Value in History."
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