ABSTRACT
The lion’s share of the literature treats these questions in this order, the moral status of the embryo being the most important. If we hold the embryo to be a human person, the argument goes, it deserves consideration equal to that given to any other person, its embryonic life being merely a contingent epiphenomenon. Despite so many differences among individuals, every person is endowed with human dignity and human rights. Accordingly, his or her interests deserve equal consideration among the interests of all other persons. Some persons are young; others are old. Some depend on life-support; others depend on charity. Some live in houses, others in wombs. All deserve equal respect and equal consideration. This is, for example, the official doctrine of the Catholic Church and some Kantian and neo-Aristotelian ethicists. They all base their ethics of pregnancy on the proposition that the embryo (during most if not all of its intrauterine life) is a human person. Utilitarians and other ethicists establish their ethics on the opposite assertion, namely that the embryo (at least during part of fetal life) is not a human person, and that our duties to embryos are of a different kind and a different degree from our duties to persons. The interests of embryos rank lower than those of persons. Possibly, we do not owe embryos any duties at all.
