Sentience: Objections
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If sentience is the criterion of moral standing, then a human fetus and a cat fetus qualify equally. Yet no one argues that it is terribly wrong to kill a cat fetus. Sumner needs a way to distinguish these cases. To do so, he points out that the human fetus is harmed far more seriously than the cat fetus. The human fetus loses its future life as a human being. The cat fetus loses only its future life as a cat.

But why can't we say this about the embryo? Sumner replies that we shouldn't do so because the embryo is not a sentient creature and has not yet acquired any moral standing. What if we said the embryo has moral standing because it is alive? Then we could say it is grievously harmed by losing its future life as a human being. How do you reply? How should we go about picking a criterion of moral standing? Are there uncontroversial moral judgments that can guide us?

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