The Morality of Killing Human Embryos

Stolberg S. G. , “Controversy Reignites Over Stem Cells and Clones,” New York Times, December 18, 2001, at F1.

Green R. M. , The Human Embryo Research Debates (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001): at 28.

Id., at 29.

See also Robertson J. A. , Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994): at 251, note 13: “…recent studies suggest that a new genome is not expressed until the four- to eight-cell stage of development.” See Braude Bolton , and Moore , “Human Gene Expression First Occurs Between the Four and Eight-Cell Stages of Preimplantation Development,” Nature 332 (1988): at 459, 460.

Warren M. , “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion,” The Monist 57, no. 1, (1973): 43–61. Warren's views have changed since 1973, and her current views on moral status are given in her book, Moral Status. Nevertheless, her earlier article is an excellent statement of the person view, a view that many people continue to hold.

I develop the interest view in chapter 1 of my book, Life Before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos and Fetuses (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

Feinberg J. , “The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations,” in Blackstone William T. , ed., Philosophy & Environmental Crisis (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1974).

Feinberg J. , Harm to Others (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984): at 34.

Boonin D. , A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003): at 102.

Id., at 102–103, citing Nagel T. , “What is it Like to be a Bat?” in Nagel T. , Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979): at 166.

Some philosophers apparently reject the idea that harming involves the setting back or thwarting of a being's interests. See, for example, Harman E. , “The Potentiality Problem,” Philosophical Studies 114 (2003): 173–198. Harman thinks that it is obvious that beings without moral status can be harmed, and gives the following example: The deprivation of light harms a weed. However, the reason why I maintain that a weed is not harmed when it is killed is not that weeds lack moral status. Rather, it is that I agree with Feinberg that harming involves the setting back or thwarting of interests. Since weeds (or prize orchids, for that matter) do not have interests, they cannot be harmed, though they can be killed. To show that this is wrong, one would need to give an alternate account of harming, something Harman does not do.

Marquis D. , “Why Abortion is Immoral,” The Journal of Philosophy 86, no. 4 (1989): 183–202, at 189–190.

Id., at 191.

In Life Before Birth, I argued that sentience was unlikely until well into the second trimester. “Pain perception requires more than brain waves. It involves the development of neural pathways and particular cortical and subcortical centers, as well as neuro-chemical systems associated with pain transmission. In light of this, it seems extremely unlikely that a first-trimester fetus could be sentient,” Steinbock B. , supra note 6, at 189. This is consistent with moral recent findings of researchers on fetal pain. Vivette Glover and Nicholas Fisk write, “To experience anything, including pain, the subject needs to be conscious, and current evidence suggests that this involves activity in the cerebral cortex and possibly the thalamus. We do not know for sure when or even if the fetus becomes conscious. However, temporary thalamocortical connections start to form at about 17 weeks and become established from 26 weeks. It seems very likely that a fetus can feel pain from that stage.” Glover V. and Fisk N. , British Medical Journal 313 (1996): 796. For this reason, Glover and Fisk suggest that more attention should be paid to pain relief during labor and delivery for the baby as well as the mother, and that safe methods of administering analgesia to the fetus in late terminations (after 20 weeks) should be developed. At the same time, in an interview with the BBC, Dr. Glover stressed that it is incredibly unlikely that a first-trimester fetus can feel pain because there is no linking to the brain at all. Editor, “Abortion Causes Foetal Pain,” BBC News, at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/900848.stm> (last visited December 6, 2005).

Boonin D. , A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003): at 65–66.

Marquis D. , “Abortion Revisited,” in Steinbock B. , ed., The Oxford Handbook of Bioethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

Boonin , supra note 15, at 70.

Id., at 76.

Marquis , supra note 16.

Marquis D. , “Justifying the Rights of Pregnancy: The Interest View,” Review of Bonnie Steinbock, “Life Before Birth,” Criminal Justice Ethics 13, no. 1 (1994): 67–81, at 72.

McMahan J. , The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002): at 4.

Or as early as 17 weeks, if Glover and Fisk are right, supra note 14.

DeGrazia D. , “Identity, Killing, and the Boundaries of Our Existence,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, no. 4 (2003): 413–442, at 427.

Boonin , supra note 15, at xiv.

Jaenisch R. , “Human Cloning – The Science and Ethics of Nuclear Transplantation,” New England Journal of Medicine 351, no. 27 (2004): 2787–2791.

Marquis D. , supra note 12, at 186.

See Steinbock B. , “Respect for Human Embryos,” in Lauritzen P. , ed., Cloning and the Future of Human Embryo Research (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). See also Steinbock B. , “Moral Status, Moral Value, and Human Embryos: Implications for Stem Cell Research,” in Steinbock B. , ed., The Oxford Handbook of Bioethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).