Content area
Full text
Killing another person if that person is a non-aggressor is regarded as a morally terrible action in most moral communities, which have major moral and legal prohibitions and sanctions against such killing. Far fewer moral communities have similar attitudes and prohibitions against killing all living beings and most cultures are willing to kill some living beings for food and for use of their skins and for other benefits such as the advancement of medicine. But what of the human being as it develops from newly fertilised ovum, to pre-embryo, embryo, fetus, new born baby, to unequivocally mature autonomous person with full moral standing including a moral and legal right not to be killed at least if he or she is not an aggressor? When and on what basis during that development does the unequivocally living human being acquire the moral status of a living human person, here used simply as a shorthand for a human being of full moral status (of the sort all readers of this paper uncontroversially ascribe to each other) including a right to life, again here used as a convenient shorthand for the right not to be killed if not an aggressor. Conversely, when, if at all, and why, is it morally justified to kill ("abort") the developing human being? The answers to these questions are not primarily moral answers, though of course they have major moral implications. Overwhelmingly moral communities do not doubt that to kill a person, at least if he or she is not an aggressor, is, as stated above, a morally terrible action. They agree that people should be protected against such killing by acceptance by all moral agents that every person has a moral and legal right to life. What they disagree about is the scope of that obligation-just what sorts of entities are persons in this sense, and why? Conversely what sorts of attributes manifested by any entity would/should ensure that it is acknowledged to be a person and have full moral standing including a right to life? These are primarily metaphysical and/or theological issues rather than directly moral issues, and people of moral integrity can and do come to carefully thought out but widely different conclusions without in any way undermining that moral integrity,...





