PHIL 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Sentience, Fetus
Document Summary
Conception (1-2nd week) - when the baby is conceived. Quickening (4-6th month) - the woman feels fetal movements in uterus. Viability (21 weeks) - the fetus can survive outside of mother"s womb. Sentience (26-32 weeks) - being able to feel pain/pleasure. Abortion is morally permissible at any stage! In some cases, even infanticide is morally permissible. Personhood theory - able to determine whether abortion is right/wrong depending on whether the fetus is a person or not. Warren says the fetus is not a person. Cognition - person in moral sense; obtain individual rights. Warren says it is not necessary to have all 5 traits. Sufficient to have first 2 properties: consciousness and reasoning. Failure to have any means you are not a person. The moral community consists of all and only people, rather than all and only human beings. Uses people and human beings in different ways. Uses people in the moral sense obtains moral rights.
