Invoking Embryonic Development and the Notion of “Personhood” to Justify Early Abortion: A Curious Argument

Porter Jean Moral Action and Christian Ethics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

This discussion occurs on pages 118-125 of Dr. Porter's essay.

Donceel Joseph “Immediate Animation and Delayed Hominization,” Theological Studies 31(1970): 76–105.

Geron Ethics Advisory Board “Research with Human Embryonic Stem Cells: Ethical Considerations,” Hastings Center report (March-April, 1999): 32.

McCartney James J. Unborn Persons: Pope John Paul II and the Abortion Debate, (New York: Peter Lang, 1987).

McCartney, op cit. pp. 120-125, as well as the epilogue, pp. 135-139.

Hauerwas Stanley “Must a Patient be a Person to be a Patient? Or, My Uncle Charlie is not much of a Person but He is Still My Uncle Charlie,” in Truthfulness and Tragedy with Bondi Richard , and Burrell David B. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977): 127–132.

MacIntyre makes this point in many of his essays, most recently, “The Recovery of Moral Agency,” Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Volume 28, n. 4, 1999, reprinted in The Best Christian Writing 2000, edited by John Wilson and Philip Yancey (New York: Harper Collins, 2000): 111-137. A more extensive conversation occurs in MacIntyre's Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy, and Tradition, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990).

Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on Abortion, November 18, 1974, footnote 19, “The present Declaration deliberately leaves untouched the question of the moment when the spiritual soul is infused. The tradition is not unanimous in its answer and authors hold different views: some think animation occurs in the first moment of life, others that it occurs only after implantation… the moral position taken here on abortion does not depend on the answer to that question…