What Can Have Rights?
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Philosopher Joel Feinberg raised this question and formulated what he calls the "interest principle" as an answer. Consider a rock. Why is it absurd (not simply mistaken) to say that a rock has rights? Perhaps because a rock or a "mere thing" can have no "good of its own." It can be useful to others, but it lacks "conscious wishes, desires, and hopes" or "urges or impulses" or "unconscious drives, aims, and goals." Without this basis, a mere thing cannot have interests or a good of its own to be protected by rights. There can be nothing that is "due" to a rock that a right can guarantee. A rock lacks a basic prerequisite for having rights. They just don't seem to apply to its case.

In short, Feinberg concludes, no being that lacks interests can be properly said to have rights. It simply doesn't make sense to do so. Would you apply the interest principle to the embryo?

See Feinberg's paper "The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations" in his anthology Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty. Tooley's discussion of the same topic is in his book Abortion and Infanticide, chapter 5. Devine's criticisms of Tooley can be found in chapter II, section 10 of his Ethics of Homicide.

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