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Two points are crucial in Sumner's argument. (1) He argues that we should ascribe rights on the basis of the qualities that a being has at a given time, not the qualities it will have at some later time. Therefore, the embryo does not acquire moral status because it will (normally) become sentient. (2) He does not want to say that aborting a human fetus is no more serious than aborting an equally sentient kitten. To do so he argues that the harm done to the human fetus is enormously greater than the harm done to the kitten. The fetus has been deprived of a full human life; the kitten has not. The sentient fetus' future gets consideration but the non-sentient embryo's future does not.