Word: fetuses
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Applying these considerations to the abortion debate, first let us ask whether we think that the fetus first has the rational capacities necessary to ground the full-blown rights of persons. Plainly it does not. Does the fetus have the capacity to suffer? It may have these capacities, and if it does then it has rights that derive from them. Obviously, the recognition of the possibility of suffering does not give the fetus as many rights as some opponents of abortion, and as our perhaps intuitive distaste for abortions of convenience seem to require. It may be that fetuses, after...
...reasons that may be developed, I have never been impressed by the arguments that the fetus has a potential for human capacities, for rationality and that its rights are therefore grounded on that potential. I think that arguments based on potential cannot convincingly be made to prove only what is plausible, that they inevitably prove too much, vesting rights in say, unfertilized ova. And it is striking that where the capacity for rationality is definitely lost, as in the hopelessly brain-damaged individual there are very few who would assert the full range of human rights. An interesting case...
...suggestion is that in addition to whatever rights might come from the capacity that the fetus has for suffering, it also represents a value. It represents the locus of human striving (the human strivings of others than the fetus) and the instrumentalities of human strivings. The fetus does represent a potential focus of human affections and relationships, of human capacities and the like. These values are, however, the values of presently fully rational beings...
Abortions of convenience and other procedures that treat the fetus too casually deny these extremely important values. Let me make a somewhat brutal sounding analogy, which nevertheless brings out the logical structure of my point. A rare painting, a manuscript, or some other intrinsically valuable product of the human spirit or entity that might speak to the human spirit (the human spirits of presently existing fully rational beings) represents important values. To destroy the manuscript, the painting, is a serious injury to those values. But it does not violate the rights of the entity destroyed. The painting's rights have...
Finally, I recognize there are implications of what I am saying for the rights of newly-born infants which analogously to the fetus, also do not have developed rational capacities. To the extent that the argument really does carry through to them I reluctantly accept its conclusions. If abortion and birth control were unknown in a situation of intense famine, I would reluctantly allow my argument to be extended to a newly-born infant born to a family with many children, all of whom are on the point of starvation...