In part one of this examination, I showed that the pro-life position is not logically incoherent in considering the unborn to be human beings, both in the genetic sense and the moral sense. In this article, I’ll examine Warren’s criteria for personhood and show how the unborn certainly qualify. 2. Defining the moral community. Warren […]
I recently gave an in-depth critique of one of the most important articles ever written on the abortion issue. I would like to turn my attention now to another popular essay written by Mary Anne Warren called On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion. Whereas Thomson argued that pro-choice people can assume the unborn […]
[Today’s post by Prayson Daniel is part of Secular Pro-Life’s paid blogging program.] Tracking Baruch Brody’s view, brain-life theorists claim that in order to be fully human, a being must possess properties “such that their loss would mean the going out of existence (the death) of a human being” (Brody 1975, 102). The property of […]
In my previous article on Personhood, I explained that what makes us “persons” (if you must use the term) is our inherent nature as rational, moral agents. While I tend not to focus on personhood arguments unless the topic is broached by the other person, I can only see one reason for disqualifying the preborn […]
It’s an uncontroversial fact of science that the preborn conceived of a human male and human female are human beings (biologically) from fertilization. But does this mean that just because they’re human beings we can’t kill them? There are times when it’s almost universally accepted that it’s acceptable to kill a human being, such as […]
In my previous article, I examined the argument against abortion that I consider to be the strongest, the Substance View. This argument, by philosopher Don Marquis, is also a very strong argument and, when used in tandem with the Substance View, offers a very powerful cumulative case against abortion.This argument comes from Marquis’ 1989 article […]
In the never-ending debates over what it means to be a “person” (as distinct from a human being) I’ve seen many people claim that you cannot be a person unless you are viable, i.e. a fetus is not a person until the fetus can live outside the mother’s body. The first counterargument I usually hear […]
Ultrasound: 23 weeks From Stanford Law School’s Supreme Court of California resources: On March 1, 1991, Maria Flores, who was between 23 and 25 weeks pregnant, and her 20-month-old son, Hector, went to a check-cashing store to cash her welfare check. As Flores left the store, defendant pulled a gun from the waistband of his […]
Given the impracticality of claiming a zygote is not a human, abortion proponents will typically explain that, while the zygote may be a human being, it is not a person. What is a person? Depends on who you ask. Some of the most common pro-choice claims are that you are not a person unless you are viable, […]
As part of a series of articles on the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, CNN has the touching story of the Graham family. In July 2005, triplets Preston, Tyson, and Landon were born four months prematurely. Preston died shortly after his birth, but Tyson and Landon survived and were transferred to a children’s hospital in […]
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