Why is a foetus not a person

Other people take the view that life begins at the stage when the foetus could survive outside the womb. As we've seen, there are difficulties with choosing a precise point when the unborn gets the right to live. Although it's uncomfortable to be so imprecise, the right answer may lie in accepting that there are degrees of right to life, and the foetus gets a stronger right to life as it develops. This answer has the value of reflecting the way many people feel about things when they consider abortion: the more developed the foetus, the more unhappy they are about aborting it, and the more weight they give the rights of the foetus in comparison with the rights of the mother.

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Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets CSS if you are able to do so. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving. Ethics guide. When is the foetus 'alive'? On this page When does a foetus get the right to life? The stages of foetal development Vagueness is a virtue Page options Print this page.

When does a foetus get the right to life? Spelling out the problem Everyone agrees that adult human beings have the right to life. A strange idea Unfortunately there's no agreement in medicine, philosophy or theology as to what stage of foetal development should be associated with the right to life.

Moral issues Because of the difficulty of deciding at what stage a foetus becomes a being with the right to life, some people argue that we should always err in favour of an earlier date. It has no head, no heart, no spine, no consciousness. Last week it emerged that scientists at Oregon Health and Science University had successfully modified human embryos to remove genetic mutations that cause heart failure in otherwise healthy young people.

Others demurred. It also facilitates the selection of hair or eye colour, sporting ability or behavioural traits. We need to be worried about the possibility of this new age of eugenics. So, seeming to ignore the positives, she felt the Oregon study could signal a reinvigoration of eugenic-type ideas discredited since the Nazi era. Quite a leap. She did not stop there. Surely people suffering as a result of genetic disability, not to mention their parents, would be among the first to welcome the possible elimination of such conditions.

Bishop Kevin Doran was even more unhappy with the Oregon study. It is simply wrong to describe a fertilised ovum as a human being. A fertilised ovum is not a human being,it is a biological reaction.

It is a collection of biological elements which is no more a human being than my leg, my arm, any of my organs, even my toe nails. A sperm is not a human being, an ovum is not a human being.

Together they do not make up a human being. They become an embryo with a very risky future. Studies indicate that up to 50 per cent of embryos are lost before implantation, and of the remainder up to 20 per cent are lost in miscarriages.

This raises an obvious question. Why is such massive annual loss of millions of human beings throughout the world not marked anywhere in religious or secular ceremony? Indeed it is not so long ago in Ireland , as elsewhere, that miscarriages were disposed of as waste.

It has been the belief of the Catholic Church only since , or for the past years. Up to then the Catholic Church did not believe removal of the foetus was homicide if it took place before quickening — when the child began to move in the womb. In , Pope Gregory XIV determined quickening took place at days of pregnancy, almost 24 weeks — coincidentally the current legal limit on abortion in the UK.

To spell it out, removal of the foetus before then was not considered homicide in church teaching because you were not dealing with a human being but with a foetus without a soul. Maybe she has irregular periods or suffers from an eating disorder that interferes with her menstrual cycle. Or maybe, as Clapman noted, she can't afford the time or money to deal with it. Having a baby is a deeply personal and consequential decision that no one should make lightly, just as no one should lightly have multiple abortions.

And only the person of sound mind faced with that decision should get to make it. Contact: rbasu dmreg. Facebook Twitter Email. Basu: Rhetoric isn't fact and a fetus isn't a 'person' just because state's lawyer says so. Show Caption. Hide Caption.