Babies gurgle and coo, but only the self-deluded would think that they’re self-conscious. It would be more of a crime to throw Tickle-Me-Elmo in a dumpster — although he also has no idea of what he’s saying, at least he can talk. But Kevin T. Keit…

Basically, it appears to me, from my perspective, that you’re asserting that only things that can behave morally have moral significance and are worthy of protection. But I’ve yet to see any reasoning behind this. It seems that whether an organism is worthy of protection is a much more complicated question than whether an organism has the capacity to act in a moral way.

Just wondering, have you ever said “bad dog” or “good dog?” Could a computer ever be a “moral person?”

Don’t infants also interfere with a person’s “fundamental autonomy rights?” From what I’ve seen newborn children take more work than unborn children do. Parents have to constantly feed, clothe, and change them. If newborn children are merely the moral equivalent of flags then why shouldn’t parents be allowed to take their lives? Your reasoning on this subject isn’t very convincing to me.

How is a 6 month old infant a moral person while my cat is not? My cat can do so many more things than a 6 month old infant. My cat is aware of himself (he certainly knows he exists) and his environment and acts in his own self-interest (that standard seems lower than your last one). He knows how to shake, he knows how get me to let him out on the porch, he knows he isn’t supposed to jump on the pool table or sit on the heat vents, etc. A 6 month old infant is unlikely to be able to do or know anything of those things.

Yes, capacities. Those who are unconscious don’t have the current capacities to do what your category of moral persons do. Even though when I woke up after my wisdom teeth were removed and I had your capacities. When I was asleep, I did not. When I woke, I regained that capacity which I lost for a time while unconscious. If they don’t have the current capacities as described then how are they currently “persons.” They certainly have the potential capacity to do such things but then again so do the unborn.

That – defining moral status in terms of some quality arbitrarily proclaimed by fiat to be the threshhold – is precisely what my argument doesn’t do; in fact, that’s the whole point of the argument.

As I’ve explained several times, “moral” qualities are defined in terms of what morality itself consists in, independently of who occupies that realm. We know what the word “moral” means, and if we disagree over that we can debate that question without any reference to precisely who falls under its meaning. “Moral” refers to the interactions of certain beings, considered as being either right or wrong for universal, non-arbitrary reasons (and, possibly, to certain moral duties people have to themselves alone, but that is a side issue). By necessity, moral terms and concepts can only be applied to those beings who are capable of being the subject of statements about morality – about right and wrong. We can go further to define “right” and “wrong” in this context, but the basic point is that none of this requires stipulating that any particular type of creature is uniquely subject to moral constraints – in fact, a standard feature of most theories of ethics is that they apply to any creature meeting basic non-arbitrary tests (usually having to do with rational capacity), not just to one species, one race, one religion, or one person. For morality to be universalizable in this way, there must be a standard for determining who falls under its commands and who does not, and that test must be a test for given capacities, not just a category stipulation.

As to what capacities define moral personhood, again it’s obvious, and again I’ve explained repeatedly: they are those capacities that make it possible to be the subject of moral statements, or the agent of morally-directed actions. (You cannot make a moral statement about rocks, because they do not have the capacity of appreciating moral concepts that makes it reasonable say that one is a “good rock” or a “bad rock”. You cannot make moral statements about newborn babies for exactly the same reason: they are simply not capable of comprehending moral concepts, and so cannot be held responsible for acting under them. You cannot make moral statements about severely mentally handicapped people, again for exactly the same reason, but you can apply moral concepts to adults of sound mind and a reasonable comprehension of moral concepts – and then hold them liable for moderating their behavior in keeping with those concepts.)

I’ve offered a two-part scheme of minimal mental capacities (sufficient merely to be aware of one’s own interests as a person) as qualifiers for moral personhood and protection under the moral law, and more advanced capacities (the ability to analyze and act in accordance with moral concepts) for moral agency and liability to moral obligation. In both cases, what defines one’s status is the ability to comprehend, and if necessary respond to, moral concepts. It’s obviously absurd to apply concepts that fundamentally have to do with individuals’ welfare and interactions with others to beings who are incapable of even being aware of their own interests, or of controlling their interactions with others. So we define moral personhood in terms of the ability to comprehend and respond to moral concepts.

When do you think a human being usually attains moral personhood?

I’ve said above that this depends on scientific facts which aren’t yet clear (and upon details of individual moral development that are very hard to monitor). Taking a rough guess, I would expect somewhere between 3 and 6 months post-birth for most infants – the point at which they become aware of themselves as distinct individuals and begin to respond to their environment in a self-interested fashion.

From your earlier comments, I’m guessing you’re not necessarily in favor of infanticide? Why not if the human infant isn’t a moral person, much less a moral agent?

From its not being a moral person follows the fact that it doesn’t have the claims to moral protection that a person has. That’s not the same as saying you can do just anything to it. (Dogs aren’t moral persons, but you can’t mistreat them, either.)

There may be a strong moral reason for treating infants as moral persons even though they’re not: many people have strong attachments to infants (even other people’s), and regard their mistreatment as a horrible act; for this reason, we shouldn’t allow them to be mistreated even though they’re not moral persons. (From this perspective, killing an infant would be similar to desecrating a church or burning a flag: something many people think is a grave trespass even though the physical object in question cannot itself suffer harm.) For another, we may just wish to erect protection for infants as a fail-safe, or to avoid the difficulty of distinguishing those infants who are moral persons from those who are not yet so.

Note, finally, that this argument does not apply with much force to protection of infants in utero, where another person’s most fundamental autonomy rights are at stake.

Another problem I have with your criteria is that it seems that individuals who are unconscious (sleeping, reversible coma, getting their wisdom teeth removed, etc.) wouldn’t be considered moral persons. Being unconscious they don’t have the current ability to “act with moral intent” or “actually experience and participate in the promoting or thwarting of one’s own interests.”

This question occasionally comes up, and it’s not unreasonable, but it’s also easy to answer. As you’ll note, my criteria for moral status were expressed in terms of capacities, not actual practice in the moment. Persons who are sleeping or anaesthetized, but who will wake up unimpaired, have not lost their capacities for moral engagement even though they’re not using at that instant. They certainly still have those capacities – in just the same way that you would say that “so-and-so speaks Spanish” even if they’re asleep or anaesthetized and not actually speaking the language at that time. The reason the criteria are set in terms of capacities and not performance is, simply enough, that we do not always utilize every capacity we have, but that is completely different from not having such capacities at all. One is a “Spanish-speaker” if one can speak Spanish, whether or not one is doing so at the time – but one is not a Spanish-speaker if one has no capacity at all to do so. And so, of two people who appear outwardly indistinguishable (i.e., they’re both not talking), we can still say one is a Spanish-speaker and the other is not, because the one has the necessary capacity to be categorized that way and the other does not. The same goes for moral personhood.

This also explains the moral distinction between someone who is unimpaired but sleeping and someone who is “brain dead” or in a persistent vegetative state. Outwardly they appear similar, but one’s moral capacities are merely lying dormant, and the other’s are non-existent. That’s a huge moral distinction, and it makes a huge practical difference: the one will (presumably) regain consciousness and resume life as a moral person, and the other has no such hope. So it’s perfectly natural to treat them differently, because in terms of fundamental moral capacities they are different, even if in terms of outward physical appearance they are similar. (This ought to make the infamous Terri Schiavo “balloon” video look even dumber than it already did – and deservedly so.)

Did I become a non-person when I was knocked out and then returned to personhood when I emerged from unconsciousness?

I’d be interested to know how your criteria explains this.

You again assert that “morally significant categories” (categories which determine whether an organism should be legally protected) are determined by whether they are self-aware, etc. and provide no basis for this reasoning besides your just so explanation. What I see you basically doing is creating a category “moral personhood” and then asserting that those in the category are worthy of legal protection while those outside aren’t necessarily worthy of the same protection.

It sounds bizarre to you? Well, it sounds bizarre to me and probably 90+% of the public to assert that a newborn human infant isn’t a “person.” Your criteria are arbitrary – you believe them for your own arbitrary reasons (based on what you deem important) while others have different personhood criteria based on their own arbitrary reasons (based on what they deem important). You’ve deemed that some biological achievements have moral significance while others deem other biological achievements as having moral significance. You simply assert that your criteria mean something because they have do with what you consider important. You’re doing the exact same thing you’re accusing prolifers of.

Why do prolifers expect that their arguments will be misunderstood? You’re again assuming faulty motives.

You provide no reasoning for your views on legal protection. You just assert “it seems obvious to me that the only very strong argument for granting legal protections to any beings is that they are moral persons.”

Why is what something is biologically arbitrary? Self-awareness seems much more arbitrary to me. It’s simply a single, hard to pinpoint, accidentally-achieved accomplishment in a long line of mental developments that occur throughout an individual’s life. Sure, you’ve placed special emphasis on it and regard it as significant but it seems wholly insignificant to me when we’re talking about whether an organism should have legal protection or not.

When do you think a human being usually attains moral personhood?

From your earlier comments, I’m guessing you’re not necessarily in favor of infanticide? Why not if the human infant isn’t a moral person, much less a moral agent?

I haven’t done that; I’ve explicitly criticized that and stated that a correct conception of moral personhood must start from moral concepts, and refer to natural facts only to identify particular individuals who fall within those moral concepts.

Simply having a given biological feature does not by itself imply anything; to link a given natural feature or capacity to having moral status requires showing that that capacity is required in order to operate as a moral person. The biological capacity is not by itself of much moral interest – only the fact that it allows one to become a moral person matters. The theoretical moral work in this argument is done by the claim that being a moral person requires a capacity which is defined in moral terms (which capacity happens to exist when certain biological facts obtain).

It really doesn’t seem difficult: there is an obvious moral quality to being someone who can empathize with and appreciate others’ feelings (for instance), while there is no moral significance at all to being someone who can pole-vault 12 feet. Not being a psychopath is a necessary precondition to being a moral agent, in a way that not being a good pole vaulter is not. So some natural capacities or features are morally significant and some are not, but the difference between them is not arbitrary. The difference is precisely that one is a capacity that has to do with morally significant features of the world, and the other is a capacity that has to do with morally irrelevant features of the world.

How do we know that caring about others is morally significant and pole vaulting is not?: because morality has in large part to do with interactions between moral persons. That is part of what “moral” means. This logically requires recognizing other moral persons and responding to them as such. Empathy has a clear relationship to this process; pole vaulting has no relationship to it. So we can perfectly reasonably – and non-arbitrarily – say that empathy is a moral quality and pole vaulting ability is a morally neutral quality.

So we can talk about what capacities or natural features give living creatures moral status, but only if we have identified those capacities as being ones that have moral significance – which we can do by asking whether they are a necessary part of acting as a moral being, or responding to moral concerns that affect oneself, questions that do not admit of arbitrary answers.

How does the fact that an infant gains self-awareness at a certain point after birth determine that the infant is then a “moral person?” You seem to be doing the exact same thing that you’re attacking prolifers for doing.

As I said above, morally-significant qualities are those that are necessarily a part of having a moral life. Self-awareness is one of those qualities – it is a necessary part of having moral interests. Self-awareness is an inescapable preconditon to being capable of suffering from having one’s interests violated or benefiting from having one’s interests promoted. If you are not aware of your own interests and are not aware that your interests are being helped or hindered, you have no moral life, no participation in your own life in respect of its potentially moral qualities.

The biological features that anti-choicers tend to pick out in paying homage to the fetus – having a heartbeat, having fingers and toes, etc. – are irrelevant to having interests and the capacity to have them helped or hindered. (They are irrelevant to all other moral considerations as well.) So they are not relevant to determining moral status (except insofar as they relate to actual biological life or death, but that is only a bare preliminary to moral status). Self-awareness is vital to having any moral life at all, so it is relevant.

True, there might be a difference but you’ve yet to provide (at least from what I’ve seen) any good reason to accept your criteria for “personhood” over anyone else’s. Or for that matter, any good reason to accept the idea that some human beings are worthy of legal protection while other’s aren’t based on nothing but on rather arbitrary biological achievements like self-awareness.

It sounds bizarre on its face to assert that self-awareness is an “arbitrary biological achievement”. At any rate, as I’ve explained more than once now, the choice of which features or capacities grant moral standing is entirely non-arbitrary. The ones that have moral significance are relevant, the ones that do not are not – and there is a non-arbitrary distinction between the two. Anti-choicers just keep choosing the wrong ones, a problem made more complicated by the fact that they never explain what relationship they think there is between the capacities they favor and moral standing – they just obliviously assert the naturalistic fallacy like means something. (“Abortion [is wrong because it] stops a beating heart!” Everybody with that bumper sticker ought to be required to wear a “DUMMY” sign around their neck.)

I still think it is unfair of you to go after prolifers because you assume they’re trying to fool people or “taking advantage of their confusion” when it appears to me that the prolifers are simply trying to share facts about fetal development and some people confuse that with their concept of “personhood.”

Well, I do think it is fair to criticize people for making arguments with the explicit expectation that their words will be misunderstood. I also think that doing so is an implicit admission that your argument is invalid.

Your argument seems circular to me – like this: “If someone is moral (meaning has moral interests, etc.) then they are a moral person. Moral persons deserve protection. Moral persons deserve legal protection because they are moral.” The argument basically seems to boil down to the idea that in order to be a “moral person” (which then entails being worthy of legal protection) you must be a moral actor but I don’t see why having morals and having the ability to act morally is the criteria which makes one worthy of legal protection.

Well, that argument isn’t even circular, it’s just a mishmash of assertions. I don’t know how you got that from anything I said above – I haven’t even discussed legal protections for moral persons very much if at all. At any rate, it seems obvious to me that the only very strong argument for granting legal protections to any beings is that they are moral persons; necessarily that gives them a presumptive claim not to be harmed or molested, and it doesn’t seem so radical that our legal system should recognize that claim. I don’t think that’s really a controversial point, either. The real question is what kinds of beings qualify as moral persons; “human beings” is an arbitrary category that both includes human creatures with no morally-significant features and excludes all non-human creatures no matter how morally engaged they are. Instead we need some sort of category definition that hinges on the actual features that define the category – i.e., we need to agree that “moral beings” are those that have moral qualtiies.

As for being a “moral actor”, I assume you mean by that what I mean by “moral agent” above – someone who is capable of consciously acting on moral beliefs or principles. I have made a distinction between “moral agents” and “moral pesons” – each is a status that obtains on different sets of facts, and implies a different kind of moral standing. “Moral person” is the most-inclusive category: it includes everyone who hast the minimal necessary moral capacities; being a moral person grants you moral claims or moral rights – it obligates all moral agents to respect you as a moral person, recognize your rights or interests, and treat you accordingly. “Moral agent” is a less-inclusive category: it includes moral persons who have not only the minimal moral capacities but also the ability to consciously recognize and act on moral principles; moral agents are subject to the moral obligation to be sure that they do act on those principles and to treat all moral persons with due regard. So, all moral agents must be moral persons, but not all moral persons are moral agents. Specifically, those who are capable of having moral interests, but do not have the mental or psychological ability to act in accordance with moral concepts, are moral persons but not moral agents. They have moral claims to protection – they may not be harmed gratuitously – but do not have moral obligations to others. Who would they be? People self-aware enough to experience goods and harms, but mentally incapacitated enough that they cannot be expected to control their behavior – children, the mentally deranged, and so forth. (Note that this follows almost exactly our actual practice – which is to hold that children, the elderly demented, the psychotic, and others are deserving of protection but are not held legally liable for their behavior.)

So, being a moral agent (or, “actor”) is not a prerequisite to deserving protection on moral or legal grounds; it is a prerequisite to being obligated in one’s behavior on those grounds. Being a moral person is the prerequisite to deserving protection, and that includes a much wider range of individuals.

How does the fact that an infant gains self-awareness at a certain point after birth determine that the infant is then a “moral person?” You seem to be doing the exact same thing that you’re attacking prolifers for doing.

True, there might be a difference but you’ve yet to provide (at least from what I’ve seen) any good reason to accept your criteria for “personhood” over anyone else’s. Or for that matter, any good reason to accept the idea that some human beings are worthy of legal protection while other’s aren’t based on nothing but on rather arbitrary biological achievements like self-awareness.

I still think it is unfair of you to go after prolifers because you assume they’re trying to fool people or “taking advantage of their confusion” when it appears to me that the prolifers are simply trying to share facts about fetal development and some people confuse that with their concept of “personhood.” These pro-choice people wouldn’t be confused if they actually had some solid basis for their “personhood” belief.

I believe there is such thing as morality but I don’t understand why your “moral concepts” (things you think are morally important) are somehow better than the “moral concepts” of the prolifer who thinks “personhood” starts at heart beating or whatever. They both seem wholly arbitrary to me.

Your argument seems circular to me – like this: “If someone is moral (meaning has moral interests, etc.) then they are a moral person. Moral persons deserve protection. Moral persons deserve legal protection because they are moral.” The argument basically seems to boil down to the idea that in order to be a “moral person” (which then entails being worthy of legal protection) you must be a moral actor but I don’t see why having morals and having the ability to act morally is the criteria which makes one worthy of legal protection.

I don’t know when you give “moral personhood” to the infant (30 days, 3 months, etc.) but from my experience with human infants and animals, I find it hard to believe that a human infant has more moral knowledge than numerous animals. Growing up my dog would at times mow down on something my parents left on the kitchen counter. After doing this, she would come into the family room and put her paws on her nose as if to say “I’m guilty.” It seemed to me that she knew she was doing something wrong. My cats also know that they aren’t supposed to sit on the heat vents and will be very careful to stand next to them (not on them) when I’m in the room but if I catch them on them, they make a hasty retreat. Now maybe it was just learned behavior but their behavior seems leaps and bounds ahead of a human infant but then again I don’t know your age limit (which would even probably change with each individual infant because they all develop with at least slightly different timetables).

Because biological – or other scientific – facts are not moral propositions. Believing that any particular fact of nature by itself proves some sort of moral claim (“sexual reproduction requires a male and a female, so homosexual relationships are immoral”) is referred to by philosophers as the “naturalistic fallacy”; it’s a simple category mistake – taking one kind of fact (scientific) as equivalent to a completely different kind of fact (moral). Facts of nature are neither moral nor immoral – they just are. Moral conclusions rest on moral principles – objective facts are often relevant to moral arguments, but facts are not the same as principles, and moral principles determine moral conclusions.

I think prolifers often use facts about fetal development not to prove “personhood” but to help identify what the unborn are biologically. This identification then leads to a position on whether the unborn deserves protection since many people have a difficult time explaining the difference between a human being and a “person.”

That doesn’t mean there is no such difference. At the very least, the moral claim that a biologically human entity does have moral status is no more inevitable – no better grounded on moral principle – than the claim that only entities with certain mental capacities have moral status. In both cases, some explicitly moral principle is required to link the questions of fact with the final moral conclusion. By itself, the statement “this being is human” means nothing in a moral way.

It’s probably true that many people have a hard time seeing that difference, but merely taking advantage of that confusion by deliberately using ambiguous language does not strengthen your position. It’s also true that many people do have an intuitive appreciation of that difference in other circumstances: there is widespread support for terminating treatment for human beings in persistent vegetative state, for anencephalic infants, and possibly in other situations in which mental personhood is compromised. That suggests to me that many people do accept a distinction between mere biological humanity and actual personhood, and that they intuitively define personhood by reference to some sort of (vaguely defined) mental capacities. They tend not to make these distinctions as easily in the case of infants, which evoke an intuitive emotional response, but they have no trouble doing so in other cases.

Does your position really incorporate “moral concepts” or does it incorporate various developmental achievements and then claim those developmental achievements are “moral concepts

That question essentially asks why any particular definition of moral personhood should be accepted – if personhood does not rest on mere biological humanity, why should it rest on self-awareness, or sentience, or rationality, or any other such fact? What makes any such definition better than others, or non-arbitrary?

That’s an important question. To give a satisfying answer, we need a definition of moral personhood that rests on moral concepts, not mere natural facts. (I don’t know why you’re confused about what “moral concepts” means. It means “concepts that relate to morality”. Surely you believe there is such a thing as morality? Surely you believe there are thoughts or ideas about morality, which are different from thoughts or ideas about things that are not morality – for instance, thoughts or ideas about baseball, or acid-base chemistry, or whatever? The concepts embodied in thoughts or ideas about morality are moral concepts.)

Morality arises within the behavior of conscious, deliberate agents. That is, in order to have a moral component at all, a given behavior must be the product of a deliberate act on the part of an individual capable of appreciating and acting on moral constraints. (Accidental acts are not considered morally good or bad, though it is polite to apologize for them when they cause harm. Acts of individuals who cannot be responsible for themselves – young children, the insane, etc. – are also not regarded as morally good or bad, though we may impose rewards or punishments as a training mechanism.) Furthermore, to have moral interests – rights, or values that must be given regard in a moral sense – an individual must be capable of appreciating the fact that they have interests at all, since having your interests thwarted is of no consequence if you cannot experience them or take notice of them.

So, it make sense that moral agents must be individuals who are capable of acting with moral intent – that is, with knowledge that what they do is good or bad, and with capacity to make choices about their actions in response to moral considerations. (Animals can engage in self-interested behavior – they seek things that are “good for them”, such as food or water – but not moral behavior – they do not, for the most part, do things simply because they consciously regard them as right or wrong.) It also makes sense that moral “persons” – individuals who qualify to have their interests taken into account as morally valuable – must be those who are at least capable of knowing that they have interests and caring about whether their interests are fulfilled or not. (This “knowledge” does not have to be of a verbal/symbolic kind. Bentham famously asserted that animals had moral interests because “The question is not, ‘Can they reason?’ nor, ‘Can they talk?’ but rather, ‘Can they suffer?’”. Simply being aware of experiencing good or bad – at even the basic sensory level – was enough for him. Others have set the bar higher.) Traditionally, we have included as moral persons all those who meet the basic-interests test, even if they do not qualify as responsible moral agents – thus, young children are regarded as deserving protection on moral grounds even though they are not held morally responsible for their behavior; the same may be true of animals, the mentally deranged, etc. Exactly what type and degree of mental capacity is necessary for moral personhood is a matter of great debate (see below), the considerations given here at least lay out a reasonable sketch of what a good definition would look like: moral personhood depends on the ability to actually experience and participate in the promoting or thwarting of one’s own interests – to experience and care about good and bad, as a preliminary (hopefully) to developing the ability and will to act from a recognition of the interests of others as well. And note that this type of definition rests on inherently moral concepts – interests, benefits and harms, and will (as a condition of moral agency).

A definition of this kind may be right or wrong, but it is an inherently moral claim – the sort of thing that could be a correct definition of moral personshood – as a mere assertion of biological fact cannot be.

Do any animals fit into your realm of “moral personhood?”

That debate continues.

Non-humans – for the most part – do not behave morally or immorally – they are not moral agents. Animal behavior is thought to be non-moral precisely because we do not think animals have the capacity to think or act with regard to moral concepts. But animals do appear to be capable of experiencing their own interests – they suffer when harmed, and enjoy it when good things happen to them. (I say “appear to” because it is surprisingly hard to tell just what goes on in other individuals’ minds, or whether they have minds – an old philosophical problem. Many mammals appear to clearly express conscious intentionality and strong reactions to stimuli, implying that they are consciously aware of their own interests. But many “lower” animals – worms, insects – also appear to exhibit very clever behavior, and to respond strongly to stimuli, when it is obvious they cannot possibly have an interior mental life or conscious awareness of these things. So are we justified in concluding that mammals have an interior life? Appearance is obviously deceiving in the one case – why are we sure it is reliable in the other?) Some have even claimed that many animals have emotions (though there seems to be a lot of anthropomorphizing going on there.) This all suggests that animals are capable of experiencing their own interests, even if not capable of morally modulating their own behavior. If so, then they ought to qualify for moral protection in the same way children and the mentally non-competent do: they are moral persons even if not moral agents.

Peter Singer, the controversial Utilitarian (follower of Bentham) ethicist, believes that certain animals, specifically primates closely related to humans, have even greater capacities and should be granted a full range of moral rights, including a limited form of legal citizenship. He also – infamously – believes that human infants do not have mental capacities as great as that of adult chimpanzees, for instance, and therefore that grown chimpanzees should have greater claims on moral protection than very young human infants. (In particular, he has claimed that it would be proper to do medical research on human infants in preference to doing it on chimps, and that very young human infants may be killed – as a form of late abortion – while adult chimps may not.) Singer is now involved in a scientific project on a large compound filled with chimpanzees to gather evidence to prove or disprove his contentions about their moral capacities. He also believes that many vertebrates, such as chickens and cows, are capable of experiencing pain even if they do not have sophisticated mental states, and therefore it is wrong to harm them by crowding them into farms or killing them for food; he is a leading figure in the animal-rights movement and became a vegetarian because of these beliefs.

On the other hand, others argue that actual conscious moral concepts are of more value than mere ability to feel pain, and thus that animals are not moral persons. (This often involves arguing that young human infants are not either, though this does not by itself justify infanticide.)

I suspect that the “high-bar” people are right and Singer is wrong, but this is a question of scientific fact that hasn’t yet been resolved.

Many pro-choicers deny the facts of science (at least verbally) because they believe that giving away that the unborn are biological human beings ultimately gives away that they are therefore “moral persons.”

I suspect that most of them are reacting to the common use of these terms as interchangeable by anti-choicers. If not, then their position is confused and they need to straighten it out, but it would help a great deal if the anti- camp would acknowledge that biology and morality are two distinct spheres, and make their language conform.

I think that’s the foundation of whether something deserves legal protection or not. I think prolifers often use facts about fetal development not to prove “personhood” but to help identify what the unborn are biologically. This identification then leads to a position on whether the unborn deserves protection since many people have a difficult time explaining the difference between a human being and a “person.”

Does your position really incorporate “moral concepts” or does it incorporate various developmental achievements and then claim those developmental achievements are “moral concepts (whatever that means)?”

Why are your “moral concepts”/developmental achievements relevant compared to other “moral concepts?”

Do any animals fit into your realm of “moral personhood?”

Pro-choice people deny that the unborn are biologically human beings all the time. You may think they’re doing this because they don’t think unborn human beings are moral persons but it’s often not the case. I will often specifically tell pro-choicers that I’m talking about biology and that many pro-choicers (like yourself) recognize that the unborn are biological human beings but not “persons.” They still won’t accept that the unborn are biological human beings. Here’s a challenge: go to various pro-choice or feminist blogs and declare in the comments section that “Fetuses are biological human beings” and see what response you get. The response I’ve gotten for sharing such things at places like imnotsorrydotnet.blogspot.com or mediagirl.com has not been one of agreement.

Many pro-choicers deny the facts of science (at least verbally) because they believe that giving away that the unborn are biological human beings ultimately gives away that they are therefore “moral persons.”