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Our everyday experience seems to break down into a core of cases, in which we are quite sure that a person is present, and a surrounding ring of disputed cases. Within the core, all the usual markings are there: reasoning, use of language, self-consciousness, planning for the future, loving and hating, moral responsibility, and so forth. But outside the core are the problems: children who are severely retarded, people in comas, fetuses, infants, and others.

In some of the problem cases the usual marks of personhood were once present but are now gone (e.g., coma). In others they are not now present but probably will develop (e.g., fetuses and infants). In still others they never appear (e.g., the severely retarded).

Philosophers usually attempt to move from the more certain to the less certain. Can facts about the core cases help us decide the disputed ones? Can we argue outward from what we agree upon to a solution in some of the problem cases?

Your definition of a person should help you decide when the embryo or fetus becomes a person. Here are some typical proposals. You might use one these to develop your own view. Can you suggest why one of these criteria is more appropriate than the others? Can you think of other criteria that have a better justification?

The time of fertilization The time when brain activity can first be detected The time when the embryo/fetus can react to stimuli The time when the embryo/fetus can feel pleasure and pain The time of first felt movement (quickening) The time after which the fetus can live outside its mother The time when the physiological basis of higher brain functions emerges Birth First breath Sometime after birth when self-consciousness, reasoning, and other characteristics of fully developed people emerge.

Donald VanDeVeer has argued that we must be careful in searching for a "point" at which the unborn child becomes a person or a bearer of rights or a being with a new moral status. There may be no such point, but it doesn't follow that an embryo has the same moral status as a late term fetus or an infant.

The search for the decisive point may be a mistake. Recognizing this may require us to rephrase our questions. Instead of looking for a point, perhaps we should be asking what morally relevant features of the fetus appear or change in different periods or phases of pregnancy. And remember, we may be concerned with periods that are separated by weeks or months.