Rights: Objections
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Tooley's standard for deciding what is a person and what can have rights is a very high one (similar to Mary Ann Warren's). It implies that infants are not persons and cannot have rights. This is not a consequence that most people (pro-life or pro-choice) can easily accept.

Tooley's high standards also imply that infanticide is morally permissible (or at least not a violation of the infant's rights). If someone stole into your home and killed your two day old child, he would not be guilty of murder and he would not violate the rights of the infant. This is a highly counter-intuitive position. Can you defend it? Notice that all high standards for personhood create this problem.

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