Response to Robert George

I would like to offer a brief response to Robert George. As I see it, the question is whether the capacity to feel and think has moral significance or whether a human organism such as an embryo with no capacity to feel or think has the same moral status as a baby or adult.  An embryo can be characterized as a human being or, alternatively, as a human organism that could develop into a human being. Professor George says in Eduardo’s example that we should imagine that the babies could not feel or that the babies had no relationship to human beings, but that is a part of what those on the other side would argue makes them human. The embryo has not developed to that point.

Professor George says, “[W]e humans possess fundamental worth and dignity by virtue of the kind of substance we are---namely, a rational animal organism---and not in virtue of accidental qualities, such as the stage of development we happen to have reached.” Embryos, of course, are not yet rational. They have no brains. The assertion that they possess dignity regardless of their stage of development is precisely the point in question. It can not be demonstrated by assertion. Perhaps, demonstration, one way or another (without resort to authority) is not possible.

By the way, I do not think concerns about the morality of abortion necessarily rest on an assumption that the fetus is of the same moral status as a baby or an adult. One could argue as the U.S. Bishops do (of course, they agree with Professor George as well) that having an abortion interferes with God’s creative plan. This argument need not depend on the notion that embryos or fetuses have rights (Ronald Dworkin develops this view in Life’s Dominion) or are human beings from the time of conception. On that line of argument, abortion offends against God, not against fetuses or embryos. It could account for why many pro life Catholics might think that abortion is one important issue among many other important issues rather than an overriding issue.