'A foetus is not a person'
- Created by: Former Member
- Created on: 09-04-14 14:28
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- A foetus is not a person
- Jonathan Glover- calling a foetus a person from conception stretches the term beyond normal boundaries
- Mary Anne Warren- it has personhood if:
- Can reason
- Has feelings
- Can communicate
- Is sentient
- Is self-aware
- Has moral agency
- But not all adults have these, and a foetus may display these in later stages?
- She replied, regard the foetus as a potential person, not necessarily with the right to life
- Pope Pius XI- "a human person from the moment of conception"
- Peter singer and Helga Kuhse- quality of life ethic- you have personhood if you're conscious, self-aware, able to reason and be self-sufficient
- New born babies don't have these attributes!
- Catholic Church- it is a person from conception, as there is genetic material present from conception
- Religious sanctity of life ethic- they are people from birth, for if all life was God-given, then God has given life even from this early stage
- Judith Jarvis Thomson- you need to be able to make rational decisions
- The moment of fertilisation seems a logical point to regard as when personhood begins
- It is from conception, as it has all the genetic material
- But so do all the body cells!
- Perhaps it's only a person from birth?
- Perhaps personhood begins when it is viable outside the womb
- Aristotle- 40 days after conception if male, 90 if female
- St Augustine- distinguished between embryo inanimitus (without a soul) and embryo animitus (with a soul)
- It's hard to decide on the basis of whether outside the body or not. One second it's not a person, the next, a head pops out and it is?
- "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you"
- From conception, we have the spark of life God breathed into Adam
- Saint Paul wrote of being chosen in his mother's womb
- From conception, we have the spark of life God breathed into Adam
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