My position, though, is simple: I am uninterested in theorizing about when the embryo becomes "ensouled", or even in pressing any point about a soul, both of which depend on a theological point of view that is not relevant to the secular law. I do not care to speculate about "personhood" either, since the infant has no real personality, but is bombarded with largely unsorted sensory data, and is reflexively reactive, rather than having any self- conception, and yet we widely agree that infanticide is wrong. Once conception occurs, a unique organism exists with the complete genetic code, and it will, uninterrupted, grow into a recognizable infant. Therefore it is a human organism. It may be a potential person, or a potential infant, but it is an actual human being at a particular state of development and dependency.
Additionally, I do not care about sentience as a criterion. I would not say that it was right to kill a comatose patient with any real chance of recovery, even with the most painless methods; I do consider it right to operate on people to help them, even though it causes pain; and therefore, the infliction of pain cannot be the criterion of the rightness of wrongness of an act.
I do think that the matter should be left to state legislatures, and democratically debated, and I accept the likelihood of differences in regulation. I also would favor leniency in the first term, since confusion is understandable at that point.
By the way, I am against the Pill and the IUD because of their abortifacient properties........ |
