Rights by Relationship
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Loren Lomasky has raised some interesting questions about the basis of moral rights. Is it always because of the intrinsic properties of a thing that it can have rights? Might it sometimes be because of relationships that it has to other things, perhaps to other parties that do have rights because of their intrinsic characteristics?

Sometimes a thing 'A' is able to understand that there is a good-for-A. This helps to make it the kind of thing that can have rights. But what about the possibility that there is a good-for-A even though A cannot recognize it? If some other party could recognize it, could we then meaningfully say that A has rights after all?

Lomasky has argued that the paradigm case of beings with rights have rights by virtue of their status as "project pursuers," but that infants have rights because they are identical with the project pursuers they will become and there is reason for others to acknowledge them as parties worthy of respect. On this view, Tooley has taken too narrow of view of who or what can have rights.

How might Lomasky's view be applied to the case of abortion?

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