Potential human, potential rights

Potential human, potential rights

A potential human being

Ultrasound

Some people say that the foetus has the right to life because it is a 'potential human being'.

The 'potential human being' argument gives the right to life to the unborn from the very earliest stage of development - the moment when the egg is fertilised.

This argument renders irrelevant any concerns about what sort of being the foetus is at any particular stage of its development.

The foetus is a potential human being, but...

There is no doubt that a fertilised egg is a potential human being since, if the pregnancy runs its full course, it will be born as a human baby; the question is whether being a potential human being gives the foetus any rights.

Potential versus actual

As a general rule we don't think that potential properties are the same as actual properties, or that potential rights are the same as actual rights. Children are potential adults, but that doesn't give them the same rights or obligations as adults.

Potential beings don't have the same rights as actual beings

Generally we do differentiate between actual and potential beings, and we distinguish between their rights, too. Many of the rights of a potential person are only potential rights - they only become actual rights when the person becomes an actual person.

So, for example, a 10-year-old is a potential voter, and has the potential right to vote, but he or she doesn't get the actual right to vote until he or she reaches her or his 18th birthday and becomes eligible to vote. And another example: the heir to the throne is a potential king, but he doesn't have the rights of a king until the present monarch dies.

The newborn argument

One of the strongest arguments for giving the full rights of person to the foetus because it is a potential person flows from the status of a new born baby.

At birth a new born baby possesses so few of the characteristics required for 'moral personhood' that its right to life can't be based on it being a 'moral person'.

Nonetheless, everyone does accept that it has a right to life - even those who follow the 'moral person' line of thought.

(Actually not everyone does accept the newborn has a right to life: some ethicists argue that abortion and infanticide are both morally permissible because 'moral personhood' and the right to life are acquired only some time after birth, but this is an uncommon position.)

This right to life seems to flow from the potential that the newborn has to become a 'moral person', and this in turn seems to support the argument that a potential 'moral person' has the right to life.