ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the preceding chapters of this book. The book addresses the issue of abortion this paper has predominantly focused on providing a response to Michael Tooley's widely read discussion of the moral status of abortion and infanticide. In challenging Tooley no exception has been made to his understanding of actual persons, and the basis on which they have a right to continued existence. Rather, it has been argued that in the case of human potential persons, only the post-24-week-old foetus has a right to continue to exist, because only the post-24-week-old foetus has an active potential to become a person. Consequently, it is only after this point in foetal development that abortion is prima facie wrong. The argument presented in the book is also incompatible with the conservative position on abortion, which views abortion as an intrinsically wrong act throughout the entirety of a pregnancy.
