Robby George on Garry Wills

Responding to the Garry Wills argument, about which several of us have posted, Prof. George sends in this:

Wills looks at sonographic images of the child in the womb and sees . . .  something that is admittedly "human life," but clearly not a person[.]  The human fetus is like a human hair, he suggests:  "human" and "living" but not a person.

[What, however,] about the indisputable scientific fact that unlike a human hair a human fetus is a whole living member of the species homo sapiens?  He or she (yes, sex is already determined) is both genetically and functionally distinct from his or her mother (and father); the fetus is not a mere part of a human being (like the hair on a person's head or his hand or liver).  As a matter of biological fact, he or she is nothing less than a human being at a certain stage of development.  Unless denied or deprived of adequate nutrition and a suitable environment (things that any of us need at any developmental stage) he or she will by directing his or her own integral organic functioning develop from the fetal into and through the infant, child, and adolescent stages of a human life and into adulthood (unless killed by violence, accident, or disease).

When Wills looks at those sonographic images, he sees movement but not agency.  From this he rushes to draw the inference:  "It's not a person!"  But somebody else got to that inference first.  That somebody is Peter Singer, who (unlike Wills) is prepared to mention its implications.  If agency is what makes a human being or other creature a person, then human infants aren't persons any more than human fetuses are.  They may legitimately be killed because they are unwanted, or because the parents would like to dismantle them to procure transplantable vital organs.  And, of course, severely retarded individuals are not persons any more than fetuses or infants are; nor are people suffering from dementias.  These "human non-persons" are all fair game for the euthanasiasts and those who are prepared to treat them as subpersonal collections of harvestable organs.