DocCec <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
In a message dated 98-03-27 14:44:21 EST, you write:
<< Hi Steve - you have added a new time of accrual of 'personhood'!
Offline we had discussed the standards that date 'personhood' from
conception (the East), from the first independent breath (one and only
one of the American Views), but viability in terms of danger in abortion
is a third; and that can be a difficult call, can't it? Turning to both
you and Sue here for your knowledge, and *yoohoo Doc & Jackie and
group*. :) LDMF. >>
"When is a person?" is the real question, and no one can answer it. There are
a plethora of opinions, but opinions are not answers. There's conception,
implantation (shortly after conception but separable from it), brain
development, heartbeat, "quickening" or movement, and viability outside the
womb (a stage which changes as technology advances). I've probably omitted a
few, but that's the general idea.
No one knows. IMO no one will never know. We don't even agree on a good
definition of "person" -- I'm a bit of a Kantian so I tend to go with his idea
that a person can form a resolution re right and wrong that he/she would agree
should govern every person. That not only eliminates fetuses, it does a
number of kids as well. In the Kantian school, BTW, an unborn is either a
"future person" or a "potential person" -- the first gets born, the second
doesn't, and you don't know until one or the other happens. There are also
categories called "person-like" which encompasses those mentally unable to
reach the plateau of forming the imperative, but who in all other attributes
are similar to persons, "former person" which would include the alzheimer's
patient and/or one in a persistent vegetative state (except that we've seen a
few of the latter recover, so...)
The reason it's important is that we (Kantian ethicists) assign rights based
on personhood. E.g., a person has a robust (you can't infringe on it) right
not to be killed for sport. Non-persons do not have that right, although
there may be other very valid reasons for not doing that to them -- society's
interest, parental valuation of the not-yet-person, things like that. In
Kantian terms, those rights are not "robust" but are called rights-sub-two
whereas robust rights are rights-sub-one.
Now, aren't you sorry you asked? All this, and masses more, is from the
course in Philosophical Roots of Bioethics taught by Tris Englehardt for the
Kennedy Institute at Georgetown.
Doc
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