[WikiEN-l] NPOV: Fetus personhood

Wed Jul 27 22:37:35 UTC 2005

steve v wrote:

>Question: Is it POV to say that a fetus is a "human
>life," and by terminology, thus entitled to universal
>"human rights" and societal "personhood" status?
>  
>
This is a pretty complex question to sum up easily, and there's a huge 
body of writing on it from all sides (not just political advocates 
either; there's a huge body of literature in applied-ethics philosophy 
journals).  Some opinions agree that it's a "human life" but argue that 
"human rights" is a misnomer and ought to be "personhood rights", and 
not granted automatically to humans but only to persons; others dispute 
that a fetus is "human" in the sense that the term is generally meant, 
and instead will only grant it is "of the species homo sapiens" or 
something similar.  There is a whole *other* body of literature on what 
exactly "personhood" is and means, and once you've established that, 
still another body of literature on what sort of ethics ought to apply 
to people who have been deemed "persons" in the relevant sense (fifty 
flavors of utilitarians, Kantians, and all the rest).

Basically there's nothing Wikipedia can say about this subject that has 
a consensus anywhere, other than some very basic medical facts like "a 
fetus is genetically of the species homo sapiens".  There is, however, a 
lot of stuff other people say about it that would be nice to summarize.

-Mark