Kindle Notes & Highlights
implantation,
clinical pregnancy
born human being
twinning
all of us begin as distinct individuals only after twinning is no longer possible.
Extreme conservatives
not even in the case of rape, fetal indications, or to preserve the life of the pregnant woman.
Moderate conservatives
rape,
threat to her health.
fetal indications,
anencephaly,
trisomy 18
Moderate conservatives think that abortion is not justifiable if the child can have a life worth living—that is, a life that, despite severe impairments, will be of value to the child.
Down syndrome
liberals
base their support of abortion primarily on
rights to bodily self-determination and equality
Throughout most of gestation, the fetus cannot feel or experience anything and is therefore not the kind of being who is owed protection.
Warren.
According to Warren, it is in virtue of certain psychological characteristics that we are persons.
sentience,
self-consci...
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rationality,
moral agency
A conservative might
think that even if being biologically human is not necessary for personhood, it is sufficient.
pain perception highly unlikely much earlier than near the end of the second trimester.
Since the early fetus is not a person, not yet “one of us,” abortion at least in the first trimester is permissible whenever a woman does not want to have a child.
The view that abortion is seriously morally wrong because of the potential of the fetus to become a person is called
“the potentiality principle.”
if a being potentially has the characteristics of a person, then it now has the rights that persons have.
The person view, it seems, does not merely justify abortion, but also infanticide, implying that parents should be permitted to kill unwanted newborns. That conclusion seems completely unacceptable.
S&M implicitly use infanticide as a test -- and Warren's view fails.
what makes killing wrong is that it deprives the one who is killed of
a future of value.
early fetuses can’t feel or think. They do not need to be personlike now in order to have a valuable future.
lying
Between “lying” and truth are other possibilities
perhaps the important question is not
what
am I essentially, or even when did I beg...
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when
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did I acquire the features that endow a being wi...
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when moral agents are deciding how they ought to act, they are morally required to consider the interests of all beings who will be affected by the decision.
Having interests is a necessary condition for having moral status;
Cars are different from pets in this respect.
The interest view links moral standing to interests and interests to sentience.
sentience as the most basic element and sufficient for minimal moral status.
on the interest view, prior to the onset of sentience, fetuses have no moral standing
but
they have great importance and moral value to expectant parents
