Result Filters
Preventing birth
- Author(s):
- Knight, J W
- Callahan, J C
- Title(s):
- Preventing birth / J.W. Knight, J.C. Callahan.
- Series:
- Key Concepts in Critical Theory
- Found In:
- Gender, edited by Carol C. Gould
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Publisher:
- Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, Humanities Press, 1997.
- Description:
- p. 447-455.
-
Language:
- English
- Summary:
- This document, the 46th selection in a book on key critical, theoretical concepts of gender, explores whether public policies that permit elective abortion and elective use of abortifacient birth control technologies are morally justified. The essay opens by outlining the terms of the debate about prenatal moral standing. The use of emotionally "loaded" terms to define the opposing side of the abortion debate is shown to simply beg the question and impede rational discussion. The crucial question in the debate is whether developing human beings must be recognized as persons possessed of moral rights from conception. The next part of the essay explores this question and contends that human life begins long before conception in the form of spermatozoa and ova. The biological claim that a unique human life begins at conception can be granted, but it is a different matter (in fact, a moral claim) to assert that a person emerges at conception. It is indeed possible to assert that the life of a potential person begins at conception without claiming that the human conceptus is a person since the conceptus has none of the characteristics of a person. Thus, we must decide when a conceptus possesses the characteristics that compel us to recognize it as a person. The essay ends by exploring arguments for granting prenatal personhood at various stages including conception, quickening, and birth. The logical wedge argument, which moves backwards through stages of development from recognition of an adult as a person to recognition of a conceptus, is flawed because it requires denial that significant, morally relevant changes occur between conception and birth. Thus, we are again faced with the fact that we must decide when to invest personhood.
- MeSH:
- Abortifacient Agents*
Abortion, Induced*
Ethics*
Models, Theoretical*
Philosophy*
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references.
24 ref.
- Report Number:
- 127284
- Other ID:
- (DNLM)00268714
- NLM ID:
- 101073398 [Book Chapter]