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Modern science shows us that embryos and foetuses develop gradually, incrementally, and in stages. Embryology also tells us that foetal sentience and consciousness require a sophisticated network of highly interconnected components (nerve cells). The thalamo-cortical complex that provides consciousness with its highly elaborate content, begins to be in place only between the 24th and the 28th week of gestation. This means that prior to the 24th week, the foetus is just growing living flesh that besides feeling nothing, is not even aware of its existence. It is basically a body with only the potential of becoming a person with a subjective awareness and interests. Moreover, the ability to think about oneself as an object of perception only develops gradually in the years after birth. Indeed, reflective self-awareness only emerges between 15 and 18 months after birth.
Faced with these scientific facts, and being told that rights only apply to persons with interests, and that only persons with subjective experience can have a personal identity and can be harmed, some pro-life and anti-choice people retort that by aborting embryos and foetuses, even if at their present stage of development they are not yet sentient and conscious beings (persons), would still deny them the opportunity to become persons. According to them, this is wrong. In other words, what they are saying is that potential persons have the right to become actual persons. Let us see where according rights to potential persons takes us by examining a few hypothetical cases involving two potential persons whom I shall call Potential Adam and Potential Eve.
Let us consider our first case. A couple is planning on having a child. They engage in unprotected intercourse with the intent to conceive. Potential Adam and Potential Eve thus immediately enter the picture (as do millions of other Potential persons whom we will disregard for simplicity and brevity). Unprotected intercourse brings with it the possibility of conceiving either of them. During intercourse, the man changes his mind about wanting to be a father yet and pulls out in time. Conception therefore does not occur. Potential Adam and Potential Eve are denied existence forever. Are Potential Adam and Potential Eve thus wronged?
In our second case, a couple engage in unprotected intercourse. They conceive Potential Adam. Had they had intercourse a few minutes later, Potential Eve would have been conceived instead. By having intercourse at that exact time, did they wrong Potential Eve by forever denying her the opportunity to exist? And would they have wronged Potential Adam if they had chosen to have intercourse a few minutes later?
Let us now consider case three. A doctor tells a couple that the woman has a condition that if left untreated, would produce blind children. The doctor tells the couple that if the woman conceives now, the child will be born blind. However, if the woman takes medication for a whole year, her medical condition will be cured, and any child born after successfully undergoing a year of treatment will not be born blind. The woman chooses not to take the medication and eventually conceives and gives birth to blind Adam. Waiting one year to conceive while taking medication would have made Potential Eve an actual seeing Eve. Did this woman wrong Potential seeing Eve by actualising Potential blind Adam instead? And did she wrong Potential Adam by conceiving him instead when she knew he would be born blind and could have chosen to conceive a seeing Potential Eve instead?
In this last case, many people’s intuition would tell them that she should have waited and taken the medication, to give birth to a seeing child instead of a blind one. However, most people would also say that for Potential Adam, life as a blind person would be preferable to no life at all. This would imply that the mother has not wronged Potential Adam, who could not have been conceived otherwise. And the few who would disagree and say that no life at all is preferable to being born blind would have to also believe that we are morally compelled to abort embryos and foetuses that we know will be born blind. Few would agree with this conclusion, be they pro-life or pro-choice.
Given the above examples, how are they relevantly different from a case where a couple conceive Potential Adam or Potential Eve and have an abortion before either of the Potential persons becomes an Actual person? How can one rationally claim that Potential persons have the right to become Actual persons given the above examples? To insist that potentiality matters and be logically consistent, one would have to extend potentiality to even before conception. And keep in mind that a long chain of actions and decisions will determine if and which Potential person would become an Actual person. If potentiality and not personhood mattered, it would logically have to extend to even before conception, leading us to the non-identity problem, examples of which I have given above. According the right to exist to Potential persons would lead us to the absurd conclusion that no matter what we do up to the point of conceiving (if not even beyond that) we would unavoidably wrong millions of Potential persons, considering that each male ejaculation contains millions of sperm, each of which would be a Potential person.
At this point, pro-lifers will object that conceived beings have their unique DNA that gradually builds a living being and eventually produces a brain that gives that living body both sentience and consciousness. This objection, apart from failing to answer the issue of potentiality, faces a few problems of its own. First, it is a scientific fact that even sperm has DNA. DNA may be construed as just a “code” that builds a body. DNA by itself does not make one a person, otherwise we would have to consider sperm as persons and if we follow the pro-life view, we would be morally compelled to remain celibate our whole lives, otherwise we would “murder” millions of sperm each time we engage in sexual activity. Moreover, if it were DNA that made one a person with rights, would identical twins who share the same DNA be each considered half a person, or even both be considered the same person? This would be absurd.
And if it were having a separate body that made you a person (as pro-lifers argue in respect of foetuses having a separate body from the woman whose uterus they occupy), would dicephalic parapagus twins (where two heads are joined to one torso) be considered one person or two? The interests view that I hold which only recognises rights in persons who have unique mental experiences and therefore have unique interests, would conclude that they are two persons. And the science supports this fact. Pro-lifers who hold that having a unique DNA and a unique body is enough to be accorded rights and make one a person would be in a quandary on how to answer the question, just as they would if they accord rights to Potential persons and then attempt to address the hypothetical cases I have given above. Only actual persons have actual rights. Potential persons can only have potential rights. Potential rights are not actual rights. They are literally only a figment of one’s imagination.
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First published on Facebook on 4 January 2023.
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