I agree with everything Richard Heck says, but let me add more, recycling points I've made before in responding to other questions about abortion. Consider the following "gradualist" view: As the humanzygote/embryo/foetus slowly develops, its death slowly becomes a more serious matter.At the very beginning, its death is of little consequence; as time goeson, its death is a matter it becomes appropriate to be gradually more concernedabout. Now, note that this view seems to be the one that most of us in fact do take about the natural death of human zygotes/embryos/foetuses. After all, very few of us areworried by the fact that a very high proportion of conceptions quite spontaneouslyabort: we don't campaign for medical research to reduce that rate (and opponents of abortion don't campaign for all women to take drugs to suppress natural early abortion). Compare: we do think it is a matter for moral concern that there arehigh levels of infant mortality in some countries, and campaign and give...

Let's agree that, from the moment of conception, we have a living thing -- and, if the parents are human, this living thing belongs to no other species than homo sapiens . So what? That fact doesn't in itself determine the moral status of the product of conception. Here's one possible view: as the human zygote/embryo/foetus develops, its death becomes a more serious matter. At the very beginning, its death is of little consequence; as time goes on its death is a matter it becomes appropriate to be more concerned about. In fact, that view seems to be exactly the one most of us take about the natural death of human zygotes/embryos/foetuses. After all, few of us are worried by the fact that a high proportion of conceptions spontaneously abort: few of us are scandalized if a woman who finds she is pregnant by mistake in a test one week after conception is pleased when she discovers that the pregnancy has naturally terminated a few days later. Similarly for accidental death: suppose a woman...

I wonder what you mean when you say that "many people attempt to devalue the controversy "? I suppose that it is true that a lot of people are not at all tempted by either "end of the field" -- if that means holding at one end that abortion is tantamount to murder, or holding at the other end that even very late abortions are morally insignificant. Many people think that the moral status of an zygote/embryo/foetus increases as time goes by -- the natural or unnatural death of the immediate product of conception is of little or no consequence, the natural or unnatural death of a foetus near term a matter of very serious concern, with a sliding scale in between. If you take this "gradualist" view -- a rather attractive one, I think -- the loud controversy between extremists at either end will indeed seem wrongheaded: it's not that the gradualist ignores the controversy, or merely ducks out from taking sides, rather she thinks that there is a third option. I've written a bit more about that...

If someone says of a (human) foetus that it is not human, then presumably they are not making a biological remark. They are not foolishly assigning it to the wrong species! Rather, they are expressing -- not in a very happy way -- a moral view. The claim is that a foetus. at least at sufficiently early stages in its development, doesn't have the same moral status as a developed human being (a fully-fledged person). Now, given the gradual biological development, it would -- as the question implies -- seem intolerable to suppose that there is, somewhere along the line between conception and birth and beyond, a point where there is a sudden jump from having no moral standing to having the standing of a full person. The natural view is that there is a corresponding increase in moral standing as you go along. And indeed, that seems to be what almost everyone actually thinks when considering the natural death of embryos and foetuses. A high percentage of conceptions (over 25%) result in...

There is more relevant discussion in response to Question 2107 , where I remark on the moral differences between early fetuses and newborn infants that we seem to make in our thinking about the natural or accidental death of fetuses as against babies.

Allen Stairs rightly queries the claim that the foetus is already a new person: killing an early foetus is not straightforwardly killing a person -- it is at most killing something that would otherwise become a person. Still, you might be tempted to say -- indeed, many people do say -- killing a potential person is as bad as killing a fully-fledged person. Well, I disagree. But just asserting a disagreement is hardly very interesting. So what sort of grounds could I give to support my position? What sort of grounds could you give for yours? At this point, we might be tempted to bandy about very general principles about the morality of killing or the "right to life" which are supposed to settle things one way or the other. Now this might help. But more likely, it will just shift the debate from a clash of intuitions about abortion to a clash of intuitions about these more general principles about killing and we will find ourselves going around in circles. What to do? Well, I...

Just one comment, not really on the main thrust of Allen's response, but on his remark "Some people see the death of a fetus -- even a very early-stage fetus -- as the moral equivalent of the death of a full-fledged person such as you or I." I think it is much more accurate to say that some people, when discussing abortion, proclaim that they see the death of a very early-stage fetus (we ought to say "embryo") as the moral equivalent of the death of a full-fledged person. But though some might proclaim that, very few indeed seem actually to believe it. And that is revealed by the fact that very few indeed think of the natural death of an embryo as the moral equivalent of the natural death of a full-fledged person (or indeed, of a neonate). While the natural miscarriage in the very early weeks of a pregnancy may, for some, be a misfortune, very few people regard it as the moral equivalent of the death of a newly born baby (for example, if a woman is rather cheerfully relieved to...