4 0 5W e i g h i n g fa c t o r scompelling reasons for treating one another as moral equals, with basic
rights that cannot be overridden for narrowly utilitarian reasons. If we could
never trust other persons not to kill us whenever they judged that some net
good might result, social relationships would become immeasurably more
difficult, and the lives of all but the most powerful persons would be greatly
impoverished.
A morally sensitive person will respect all life-forms, and will be careful
to avoid needlessly inflicting pain or death upon sentient beings. However,
she will respect the basic moral rights of other persons as equal to her own, not
just because they are alive and sentient, but also because she can reasonably
hope and demand that they will show her the same respect. Mice and mos-
quitoes are not capable of this kind of moral reciprocity — as least not in
their interactions with human beings. When their interests come into con-
flict with ours, we cannot hope to use moral argument to persuade them to
accept some reasonable compromise. Thus, it is often impossible to accord
them fully equal moral status. Even the Jain religion of India, which regards
the killing of any being as an obstacle to spiritual enlightenment, does not
require the total avoidance of such killing, except in the case of those who
have taken special religious vows....
If the capacity for moral reciprocity is essential to personhood, and if
personhood is the criterion for moral equality, then human fetuses do not
satisfy that criterion. Sentient fetuses are closer to being persons than are
fertilized ova or early fetuses, and may gain some moral status on that
account. However, they are not yet reasoning, self-aware beings, capable
of love, nurturance, and moral reciprocity. These facts lend support to the
view that even late abortion is not quite the equivalent of homicide. On
this basis, we may reasonably conclude that the abortion of sentient fetuses
can sometimes be justified for reasons that could not justify the killing of a
person. For instance, late abortion may sometimes be justified because the
fetus has been found to be severely abnormal, or because the continuation
of the pregnancy threatens the woman’s health, or creates other personal
hardships.
Unfortunately, the discussion cannot end at this point. Personhood is im-
portant as an inclusion criterion for moral equality: any theory which denies
equal moral status to certain persons must be rejected. But personhood seems
somewhat less plausible as an exclusion criterion, since it appears to exclude
infants and mentally handicapped individuals who may lack the mental and
social capacities typical of persons. Furthermore — as opponents of abor-
tion point out — history proves that it is all too easy for dominant groups to
rationalize oppression by claiming, in effect, that the oppressed persons are
not really persons at all, because of some alleged mental or moral deficiency.
In view of these points it may seem wise to adopt the theory that all
sentient human beings have full and equal basic moral rights. (To avoid ‘spe-
ciesism’, we could grant the same moral status to sentient members of any
other species whose normal, mature members we believe to be persons.) On97364_ch19_ptg01_383-422.indd 405 11/15/13 5:45 PM
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