In "Human Personhood Begins at Conception", Peter Kreeft argues that all human beings - all members of the species Homo sapiens - have a right to life from the moment of conception. I will show that his support for this claim is exceedingly weak.

1. Persons and human beings. According to Kreeft, pro-choicers claim that "person" is a narrower subset of "human being", so that (necessarily) all persons are human beings. This is incorrect: pro-choicers can certainly recognise that there may exist beings - intelligent aliens, for example - who have a right to life but are not human beings. To recognise this does not, of course, commit us to the claim that all human beings are persons.

2. Defining personhood. "Person", according to Kreeft, is correctly defined as "[a being] with a natural, inherent capacity for performing personal acts". Personal acts are the complex functions distinctive of normal human adults: reasoning, speaking, loving, and so on. X has a natural, inherent capacity for performing personal acts if and only if X is "the kind of thing that grows into [i.e., develops] the ability to perform personal acts"; in other words, X is a being that, under the right conditions, would at some stage in its development perform personal acts on account of its nature (which I assume is its genetic code or something similar). It is not clear, I think, that all human beings satisfy this description (consider severely congenitally disabled ones); so Kreeft's claim that all human beings are persons lacks support. Still, it is plausible that almost all human beings satisfy the description. So, if the definition is correct, then almost all human beings - including almost all foetuses - have a right to life.

But is the definition correct? I think not. A being might perform personal acts, and thus be a person, even though it lacks a "natural, inherent capacity" (NIC) for performing personal acts. Take dogs, for instance: as Kreeft would grant, they do not have an NIC for performing personal acts. Suppose, however, that certain puppies can be subjected to "cognitive therapy": an intensive regime of accelerated learning, occupying nearly every waking hour of the puppy's life, combined with drugs to enhance the neural connections in the puppy's brain. After a few years of therapy, the puppies gain the cognitive and emotional capacities of a five-year-old child. Plainly any being that has such capacities is a person. So these dogs, after undergoing the therapy, would have a right to life. Yet their capacity for performing personal acts is not "natural" or "inherent": it is not based in their genetic code, but on intensive human intervention, and thus is both unnatural and extrinsic. Since some persons - these dogs - lack an NIC for performing personal acts, "person" cannot be defined as "one with a natural, inherent capacity for performing personal acts". (The dog example is due to Jeff McMahan; see his article "Killing and Equality" in the journal Utilitas, 1995.)

Of course, all this shows is that having an NIC for performing personal acts is not necessary for having a right to life. Kreeft might claim that having such an NIC is nevertheless sufficient for having a right to life. In that case, however, he would need to explain why "X has an NIC for performing personal acts" is supposed to entail "X has a right to life". Why, in other words, is the foetus's potentiality supposed to matter? Kreeft offers no guidance here.

3. Human beings and souls. "[H]uman souls", says Kreeft, "inhabit human bodies". All human beings "have a human biological body and a human spiritual soul": they are "subjects, souls, 'I's,' made in the image of God". Since all beings made in the image of God have a right to life, all human beings have a right to life.

The problem here is that Kreeft does not explain what a soul is, why foetuses are supposed to have them, or why having one is supposed to confer a right to life. Until he elaborates, all we have here is a series of unsupported assertions.

4. Fully-programmed individuality. The zygote has a right to life, Kreeft says, because within it "is an already fully programmed individuality, from sex and aging to eye color and aversion to spinach. The personhood of the person is already there, like the tuliphood of the tulip bulb." This is a false analogy, for tuliphood is a purely biological category whereas personhood is a moral category. Plainly nothing in the zygote's "fully programmed individuality" entails that it has a right to life.

5. Personhood cannot develop gradually. Kreeft argues that the right to life must develop abruptly, at conception: "if personhood is only a developing, gradual thing, then we are never fully persons [i.e., we never have a right to life], because we continue to grow, at least intellectually and emotionally and spiritually...No other line than conception can be drawn between prepersonhood and personhood."

This is false. Pro-choicers can hold that the moral status of the foetus - the moral objection to killing it - increases over time, but that, when the foetus crosses a certain threshold (e.g., when it becomes at least minimally rational and autonomous, or when it reaches the point where it would be seriously harmed by death), it gains a right to life. The foetus - by then no longer a foetus - would retain a right to life so long as it remains above the threshold. There is nothing incoherent in this sort of view.

What is plausible, I think, is that no sharp line can be drawn after conception. If we draw the line after conception, there will inevitably be borderline cases where it is indeterminate whether a being has crossed the relevant threshold, hence indeterminate whether it has a right to life. I do not see this as a problem, however, for virtually any interesting concept will leave a range of borderline cases: consider the concept of what is "reasonable", "just", "intelligent", "red", "adult", "senile", and so on.

Kreeft places great store in the alleged fact that "I am the same being from conception on" - that "I was once in my mother's womb." I say "alleged" because the claim that I was once a foetus is controversial, a minority view in recent discussions of personal identity. Still, assuming I was once a foetus, the pro-choicer can hold that I lacked a right to life at that time, so that killing me would not have violated my rights. Even given that I began to exist at conception, it does not follow that my right to life began at conception.

6. There are no potential persons. Pro-choicers generally claim that the foetus is an actual human being but merely a potential person. This is false, Kreeft says: "There are no 'potential persons' any more than there are potential apes. All persons are actual, as all apes are actual."

This is incorrect. The puppies mentioned earlier - the ones that could be subjected to "cognitive therapy" - would plainly count as potential persons (i.e., beings that might themselves one day be persons), even though they are not yet actual persons. The notion of "potential person" is perfectly coherent.

7. Pro-choice makes personhood unclear. Kreeft writes:

Such questions as the following are not clearly answerable [for pro-choicers]: Which features count as proof of personhood? Why? ...[H]ow much of each feature is necessary for personhood? ...Also, all the performance-qualifications adduced for personhood are difficult to measure objectively and with certainty. Kreeft is partially right here, I think: these questions cannot be ignored. Should we say that the foetus gains a right to life when it attains a minimal level of rationality? A moderate level? What about minimal rationality and moderate autonomy? Moderate rationality and moderate autonomy? And so on.

Difficult as they are, such questions provide no good objection to pro-choice; for pro-lifers face the very same difficulty. Kreeft holds that having a "natural, inherent capacity for performing personal acts" is sufficient for having a right to life; personal acts include "speaking", "reasoning", "loving", being "moral", and so on. Yet suppose, first, that one has an NIC for reasoning and loving, but not for speaking. Is this sufficient to give one a right to life? What about an NIC for speaking and reasoning, but not loving - is that sufficient? Second, all personal acts exist in different levels of complexity. If one has an NIC for only the simplest reasoning and loving, does this give one a right to life? What about an NIC for slightly more complex reasoning and loving? Or slightly more complex than that? Third, how do we measure each NIC "objectively and with certainty"?

Pro-lifers, in short, are no better off when it comes to specifying (1) which personal acts one must have an NIC for, in order for this NIC to "count", (2) how much of each personal act one must have an NIC for, in order for this NIC to "count", and (3) how we are to measure each NIC "objectively and with certainty".

8. The "quadrilemma". There are, Kreeft says, "only four possibilities" concerning the foetus and our knowledge of it. (1) If the foetus is not a person, and we know it is not a person, then killing it is permissible. But "no one has ever proved with certainty that a fetus is not a person"; so we do not know the foetus is not a person. (2) If the foetus is a person, and we know it is a person, then killing it is murder, and seriously wrong. (3) If the foetus is a person, and we do not know it is a person, then killing it is manslaughter, and seriously wrong. (4) If the foetus is not a person, and we do not know it is not a person, then killing it is still criminal negligence, and seriously wrong. So, whichever of (2)-(4) is true, killing the foetus - as in abortion - is seriously wrong.

The fallacy in this argument is the assumption that we must "prove with certainty" that the foetus is not a person in order to know it is not a person. There are many things we know and yet have not proved with certainty. Suppose I, an honest person, tell you that I visited the art gallery today (though you were not with me at the time). You believe me, and your belief turns out to be correct. In that case you surely know that I visited the art gallery today, even though you have not proved this with certainty (because you weren't there). Similarly, that gravity has always worked in the past does not prove with certainty that it will work in future. So I have not proved with certainty that this pen will drop to the ground when I release it. Yet surely I know that it will do so. Also, I have not proved with certainty that the person I saw yesterday was my sister (as opposed to her long-lost identical twin who was impersonating her, or an exact replica placed there by aliens); yet I surely do know that this person was my sister. In general, knowing that something is true does not require proving with certainty that it is true; it only requires having good reasons for thinking it is true.

The fact that nobody has ever "proved with certainty that a foetus is not a person" is thus not enough to eliminate possibility (1). What is required, to eliminate (1), is the claim that we do not even have good reasons for thinking that the foetus is not a person. The latter claim is required for the "quadrilemma" to work. And yet, to make that claim is to beg the question: it is to assume the very thing pro-choicers deny - namely, that we lack good reasons for thinking the foetus is not a person. The "quadrilemma" cannot, therefore, avoid begging the question; and so it is worthless.

9. Further comments on personhood. Can pro-choicers offer a satisfactory definition of personhood? I believe they can, though I can here offer only a sketch.

There are two sufficient sources of the right to life. The first is the right to autonomy: if a being has the developed capacity to make decisions about its own life and death, then it has the right not to have such decisions forced upon it. Killing such a being is seriously wrong because it forces upon that being the decision that it should die (which in turn involves forcing upon it a decision about how every aspect of its life is to go - or rather, not go). Similarly, if a being has plans for its own future, then killing it would interfere with those plans, which is fundamentally unjust. Such a being therefore has a right to life.

The second source of the right to life is the harm of death. We have a duty to avoid harming others, so anyone who would be seriously harmed by death has a right not to be killed. Death, in turn, can be a serious harm in two ways. First - and this again involves plans for the future - if a being has plans for its own future, then death would frustrate (or ensure the non-fulfilment) of those plans, which is a serious harm.

Second, death can be a serious harm because it deprives the victim of a highly valuable future: a future containing conscious goods like thinking, pleasure, perception, self-awareness, social interactions, and so on. Note, however, that one has no reason to care about - hence one is not seriously harmed by being deprived of - a valuable future that will be attained by a being who bears no psychological resemblance to oneself. There must, rather, be some degree of psychological connectedness - some direct connections or continuations of memory, belief, desire, skills and/or developed psychological capacities - between oneself (as one is right now) and the being that will later attain the valuable future. In short, a being would now be seriously harmed by being deprived of a highly valuable future only if there is at least a moderate degree of psychological connectedness between the being as it is now and the being as it will be when it attains that future. It is also plausible that a being would now be seriously harmed by being deprived of a highly valuable future only if that future is either natural (it is the biological nature of the being to attain such a future) or desired (the being desires to attain it).

Joining these conditions together, being B has a right to life if and only if (1) B has the developed capacity to make decisions about B's own life and death, (2) B has plans for B's own future, or (3) B has a highly valuable future - natural or desired - to which B is at least moderately psychologically connected.

Since early foetuses satisfy none of (1)-(3), they lack a right to life on this account. Late-term foetuses and neonates may have a right to life, depending on how we define "moderate" psychological connectedness. If these beings are not sufficiently connected to their futures as to be seriously harmed by death, they lack a right to life and may be killed for non-trivial reasons. This, I realise, is counterintuitive to some people; but no more so, I submit, than pro-life's implication that brainless zygotes have a right to life.

Note two things about this account of the right to life. First, it is based on reason: it is supported by a plausible rationale about the sources of the right to life. It is not based on "prejudice" or "self-interest", as Kreeft thinks pro-choice accounts of personhood will "inevitably be".

Second, the account does not involve Kreeft's so-called "Functionalism: defining a person by his or her functioning or behavior". On my account, one need not perform personal acts in order to have a right to life: one need only have a highly valuable future to which one is at least moderately psychologically connected. Human beings certainly have such a future well before they perform complex personal acts. Hence the claim that Functionalism is "the root pro-choice error" is entirely misguided.

10. Conclusion. Kreeft's case for foetal personhood is rationally unpersuasive.
 

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Copyright © Dean Stretton 2002.
Last update: 1 March 2002.

1. Introduction.

In his series "Answering The Arguments For Abortion Rights", pro-life philosopher Francis Beckwith argues that "both sound philosophical and scientific reasoning clearly establish the full humanness [i.e., personhood] of the unborn from the moment of conception". In arguing for this conclusion, he offers a critique of various "decisive moment" theories -- that is, theories which claim that personhood begins at a specific point during or after pregnancy. Some, for example, have claimed that personhood begins at implantation, sentience, viability, or the beginning of brain functioning; and Beckwith offers what I take to be a sound critique of these views.

The most plausible pro-choice position (in my view, at least) claims that the foetus is not a person because it does not satisfy one or more necessary criteria of personhood. For example, Michael Tooley argues that the foetus cannot have a right to life because there is no time at which it "possesses the concept of a continuing self or mental substance" (Tooley, 196). Beckwith argues that the assumptions behind such criteria of personhood arguments are "significantly flawed", hence that "no personhood criteria theory can succeed in supporting the abortion-rights position". Since I believe that Tooley’s position (or something like it) is essentially correct, I will offer some critical comments on Beckwith’s critique.

2. Beckwith's critique is logically flawed.

According to Beckwith, the assumption behind the criteria of personhood argument "is that only an entity that functions in a certain way ... is a person with a full right to life". In response to this claim, he points out that functioning as a person is not necessary to being a person: "when a person is asleep, unconscious, or temporarily comatose ... he (or she) is not functioning as a person", though he or she certainly is a person. And on this basis, Beckwith concludes that "defining personhood strictly in terms of function is inadequate". In other words, one cannot say ‘X is a person if and only if X functions as a person’.

So far, so good for Beckwith. How is the pro-choicer to regroup? As Beckwith points out, the pro-choicer can argue that there is a false analogy between comatose patients and foetuses: whereas comatose patients "at one time in their existence functioned as persons", foetuses did not. And, the pro-choicer may continue, it is this disjunctive property of either presently functioning or having functioned in the past that is both necessary and sufficient for personhood. Call this the revised pro-choice theory. (On this view, personhood comes into existence when personal function arises; for that is when the disjunctive property is first satisfied.)

Beckwith thinks this revised theory is demonstrably flawed:
 

[T]o claim that a person can be functional, become nonfunctional, and then return to a state of function [as in the case of reversibly comatose patients] is to assume that there is some underlying personal unity to this individual that allows us to say that the person who has returned to functional capacity is the same person who was functional prior to being in a nonfunctional state. But this would mean that [personal] function is a sufficient but not a necessary condition for personhood. Consequently, it does not make sense to say that a person comes into existence when [personal] function arises.

I take the conclusion here to be that all theories stating that personhood arises when personal function arises are incorrect. If this conclusion is correct, it is certainly significant. Both the initial and revised pro-choice theories entail that ‘a person comes into existence when personal function arises’. So if all such theories are false, then the initial and revised pro-choice theories are false -- in which case, pro-choice is in very bad shape.

However, there is a serious defect in Beckwith’s argument: the conclusion simply does not follow from the premises. When Beckwith points out that functioning as a person is not necessary to being a person, what he shows -- and all he shows -- is that the initial pro-choice theory is incorrect. In other words, he has refuted one particular theory that "say[s] that a person comes into existence when personal function arises". He has not refuted all such theories, and in particular he has not refuted the revised pro-choice theory, which is the crucial thing. For in general terms, given a proposition of the form ‘p is not a necessary condition for q’, it does not follow that ‘(p or r) is not a necessary condition for q’. In other words, given that ‘present functioning is not a necessary condition for personhood’ (which is what he has shown), it does not follow that ‘present-or-past functioning is not a necessary condition for personhood’ (which is what he needs to show).

Indeed, to show that the disjunctive property of present-or-past functioning is not necessary for personhood, Beckwith would have to show that there is some entity, E, such that the statements ‘E is a person’, ‘E never functioned as a person’, and ‘E is not now functioning as a person’ are all true. But this he has not done. Consequently, he has not refuted the revised pro-choice theory, and so for all we know it does "make sense to say that a person comes into existence when [personal] function arises".

3. Beckwith's critique supports the pro-choice position.

Beckwith motivates his critique of the initial pro-choice theory with the following analogy:
 

          [W]hen the Boston Celtics' Larry Bird is kissing his wife, does he cease to be a basketball player because he is not functioning as one? Of course not. He does not become a basketball player when he functions as a basketball player, but rather, he functions as a basketball player because he is a basketball player.

The analogy is a good one, but it supports the pro-choice position. For let me ask you this: could Larry Bird be a basketball player if there is no time at which he ever functioned as one? Clearly not. But then, if (as Beckwith seems to think) being a person is analogous to being a basketball player, it would likewise be true that X cannot be a person unless there is some time at which X functioned as one. And in that case, foetuses are not persons. Thus the analogy is self-defeating when used to support the pro-life position.

4. There is prima-facie reason to reject the pro-life position.

Along similar lines, the pro-lifer will surely admit that there is no such thing as a murderer who never murdered, a thief who never thieved, a sinner who never sinned, or a moral person who never acted morally. Why, then, does he want to make an exception for the foetus, and claim that there is such a thing as a person who never functioned as a person? The fact that membership of a given moral category is seldom (if ever) granted on the basis of a potentiality gives us prima-facie reason to reject the pro-life position. Thus even if pro-life cannot be directly refuted, there is still good reason to reject it.

Of course, the preceding argument is inductive, and could be counterbalanced by giving an argument for the claim that the foetus’s potential is morally relevant. Beckwith offers such an argument by comparing human infants to calves. In terms of present capacities, human infants "are rather unimpressive in comparison to the calves". Thus "if [the infants’] rights are grounded in current capacities alone, the calves should enjoy at least the same moral status as the [infants], and probably higher status." However, calves have a lesser moral status than foetuses. For example, we do not find it disturbing that calves are sold to butchers; but "if human infants were sold to butchers", we would find this "deeply disturbing". Indeed, this practice would involve "violating the [infants’] ... rights". It follows that an infant’s potential must grant it rights -- in which case the foetus, which has a similar potential, must also have these rights.

What can be said for this argument? As far as I am concerned, it begs the question. I do not accept that infants, particularly newborns, have a higher moral status than calves.[*] By assuming otherwise, Beckwith has begged the question against positions such as Tooley’s. Also, while the practice of selling human infants to butchers does seem repulsive (i.e., distasteful), I do not grant that any rights would thereby be violated. Again, Beckwith has begged the question by assuming otherwise.

[*] Note added December 2001: This requires qualification. I accept here that if all else is equal then killing an infant is no more wrong than killing a calf. All else is usually not equal, however: in most cases the infant's parents (or potential adoptive parents) want very much for the infant to live; the same is not true of calves. Hence killing the infant would still be far more wrong than killing the calf -- though the wrongness derives not so much from what the killing does to the infant as from what it does to the parents (namely, it violates their desire that the child be kept alive). This was the view I accepted when I wrote this critique; it is the view shared by Mary Ann Warren and Peter Singer. I now think it is mistaken, however. Human infants plausibly do have a higher moral status than calves: if all else is equal then killing an infant is more wrong than killing a calf. The basis for this view -- which I cannot explain in detail here -- is that, because most infants have a highly valuable future to which they are psychologically connected to at least a moderate degree, most infants would be seriously harmed by death and thus have a right to life; the same is not true of calves (or foetuses). In other words, potentiality matters, but only when accompanied by psychological connectedness. See my article "The Deprivation Argument Against Abortion".

In response, it may be asked how I can consistently maintain that a practice is repulsive while nevertheless maintaining that it does not involve a violation of rights. In fact, there is nothing unusual in this scenario. Many people find the thought of eating certain foods, or engaging in certain sexual activities, quite repulsive. But it does not follow that they believe, or ought to believe, that rights are being violated when people eat those foods or engage in those activities. The fact that a practice is repulsive to a person, or even to a large number of people, is not evidence for that practice being intrinsically wrong.

5. Conclusions.

I must conclude that Beckwith fails to provide any positive support for the pro-life doctrine; that there is prima-facie reason to reject this doctrine; and that Beckwith’s contention that "no personhood criteria theory can succeed in supporting the abortion-rights position" is simply not true. In short, the criteria of personhood argument remains unanswered.
 

Unless otherwise noted, quotations in double quotation marks, and indented quotations, are from Beckwith’s essay, which may be found at the Pro-Life Advocate site, or at ChristianAnswers.net. Italics are his in all cases.

The Tooley quotation is from his essay "In Defense of Abortion and Infanticide", reprinted in The Abortion Controversy: A Reader, edited by Louis P. Pojman and Francis J. Beckwith, Jones & Bartlett, 1994,  PP 186-211.

Works Critiqued:

• Peter Kreeft’s essay   "Human Personhood Begins at Conception",  which appeared in the Christian Journal of Biblical Ethics in Medicine, Winter 1990, at page 11.

• Francis Beckwith's series "Answering The Arguments for Abortion Rights"

• This critique is Copyright (c) Dean Stretton 1997.  Without limiting the rights under this copyright, and except as under the official guidelines of fair use, no part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the explicit prior consent of its author.