A Gradualist View

A Gradualist View

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We have spoken as though there is a point or a phase in pregnancy (or infancy) at which rights of some sort are acquired. Many discussions of rights sound as though a being either does or does not qualify. But what if personhood, rights, and value are acquired gradually? Can we make sense of this notion? Robert Wennberg calls this the "gradualist" thesis. He allows that it has problems, but also believes that it has advantages.

The gradualist thesis eliminates the search for decisive points or phases. It can be made to fit well with the commonly held belief that early abortions are less serious than later abortions and that infanticide is a violation of an infant's right to life.

Mary Ann Warren suggested that a newly born infant is "close" to being a person. Joel Feinberg has referred to infants and well-developed fetuses as "near-persons." Perhaps a well-developed gradualist view would include the concept of a near-person. How might you define it? What moral status would it have? How would it fit into a reasoned view of the morality of abortion? For the sake of clarification, you might want to ask how a near-person would compare to a highly developed animal such as a monkey.

Reference: Robert Wennberg, Life in the Balance, p. 112 and 150. See also Warren's "Postscript on Infanticide" included with her article in the Feinberg anthology. Feinberg's remarks are in section four of his article "Abortion" in Matters of Life and Death, edited by Tom Regan.

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	A Gradualist View
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