A while back Dave made a pretty good chart:”The Mindful Mission(Political Parties on Pro-life issues)”:http://www.brendoman.com/hippydave/2005/03/23/pro_life showing the pro-life stance of three parties. I agree with most of his assessments of what stance is pro-life, excepting a couple therefrom. They were euthanasia, war, and poverty.

I want to use two of these areas to highlight what I consider pro-life.

What do I consider the guiding principle behind being pro-life? I can tell you what it is not. Pro-life is not simply being against death in any form or context. People die. It is a natural aspect of the human condition. I do not look upon old age as an evil, even though it brings one close to death.

Instead, it is the freedom to choose that makes our lives valuable. It is why slavery is evil. It is why totalitarism is evil. Freedom is why we shudder when we place ourselves in Kira Argounova’s:”Wikipedia(We the Living)”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_The_Living or Winston Smith’s:”Wikipedia(1984)”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four shoes.

When I apply this concept of freedom giving life its value to the common pro-life issues I am forced two conclusions; abortion is morally impermissible and euthanasia is morally permissible. The killing of an infant takes away all possible choices that person could every have. Euthanasia on the other hand is the supreme enactment of choice. It is the choice whether to continue to make choices. Surely to rob a person of that is morally impermissible.

So while an anti-abortion and a pro-euthanasia stance might seem morally inconsistent to some, it is still possible.

This is mainly a re-hash of part of a discussion over at the Mindful Mission about whether or not a man can be a feminist:”The Mindful Mission(Male Feminists)”:http://www.mindfulmission.com/index.php/2005/08/12/male_feminists. A lady by the name of Pippin had objected :”Pippin - Men can’t be Feminists(Mindful Mission - Male Feminists)”:http://www.brendoman.com/hippydave/2005/08/12/male_feminists#c17480 :”Pippin - Forced Sacrifice(Mindful Mission - Male Feminists)”:http://www.brendoman.com/hippydave/2005/08/12/male_feminists#c17484 :”Pippin - The Imposition of Morality on Others(Mindful Mission - Male Feminists)”:http://www.brendoman.com/hippydave/2005/08/12/male_feminists#c17488 :”Pippin - Equality of the Sexes in the Responsibility of Child Creation(Mindful Mission - Male Feminists)”:http://www.brendoman.com/hippydave/2005/08/12/male_feminists#c17490 to my belief that I agree with feminists on many issues, but reject the permissibility of all abortions.

When I talk about being feminist, I am speaking about holding males and females as equals and living that out. If anyone has questions about how I live that out, please refer them to my wife of three years. She will tell you if my practice in the issue meets my ideals. My wife and I use birth control. We have lost a child in the early stages of pregnancy. WE know what it is like.

Before I address her objections, I must note that when I said “the full and unrestricted right to have an abortion” I meant allowing for abortion in each and every single case. I left the my position open for some or no abortions being legal.

I want to denote the two positions on abortion as pro-abortion and anti-abortion. This minimizes the biases that the terms pro-life and pro-choice inherently contain. Who can say that they are the opposite of pro-life, that is, pro-death / anti-life? The very terms beg the question about the issue.

The objections that Pippin raised can be summarized as follows:

Objections:

1. Men cannot have an opinion on whether or not abortion is right or wrong because they do not experience pregnancy or birth.
2. I am not sure if Pippin is maintaining that a fetus has a prima facie right to life or not. That is a huge step in this process. I’ll try to establish that they do even if for argument’s sake.
3. Women should have the same sexual freedom men do. Allowing for unfettered abortions would restore this inequality.
4. Abortions are morally permissible because to have a woman be responsible pregnancies resulting from all willful sexual acts would be exercising control over the woman.

As I am still waiting for Pippin’s response, there is a chance that I am getting into a straw man here.

Response:

1. Because I cannot physically have a baby does not mean that I cannot determine if an action is wrong for “the other” to do. This is the classic mistake of postmodernism. It might make one unaware of certain points that make the determination hazier, but does not invalidate the determination… That is, unless one is a relativist. If the reasoning is the sound and valid, the conclusion stands no matter who makes the argument. If otherwise, then we would be guilty of a hasty generalization.

   Also, what about the anti-abortion women? There are plenty of anti-abortion women running around. The argument falls flat against objections from women who have the same experiences as you, the ones that the lack of supposedly invalidate my objections.

2. If the fetus has no right to life, as Marry Ann Warren believes, then of course Pippin is correct. The rights of the mother would then outweigh the rights of the fetus. If, however, the fetus has a right to life and the mother has a right to life, then that changes the whole shape of the argument. Judith Jarvis Thompson has argued:”Judith Jarvis Thompson(A Defense of Abortion)”:http://unsoundargument.com/ethics/a-defense-of-abortion-judith-jarvis-thomson that even if we assume for the moment that the fetus has a right to life, a pro-abortion position can still be maintained (My notes on her article are not completely entered into that post, please bear with me).

   She argues that when the mother has taken reasonable precaution against the pregnancy, i.e. cases of rape, incest or failed birth control, she is not morally responsible for the life of the fetus, i.e. an abortion would be morally permissible. Whiles Judith Jarvis Thompson just assumes that the fetus is a person for the sake of the argument, I would argue:”The Unsound Argument(An Objective View of Personhood)”:http://unsoundargument.com/papers/objective-view-of-personhood/ that a fetus is a person in the objective sense, even though it is not a person in the subjective sense.
   I do want to note that even a strong pro-abortion proponent like JJT maintains that abortions solely out of convenience are still morally wrong. (given that a fetus has some sort of a right of existence)

3. I agree that there is an inequality in the view that women are unduly responsible for the consequences of their willful sexual acts compared to men. However, I do not think the solution is to kill the fetus. Instead, we should raise the sexual responsibility of the men to the woman. Make men as responsible for the child as the woman is. Don’t punish the baby for the man’s actions. I think that there is a false dilemma in the reasoning of objection 3) because there is another option, besides a) allowing for abortion or b) having the unjust inequality persist, that is not considered in your argument. I might be wrong on the false dilemma though; perhaps Pippin has considered it and is only listing her conclusions.
4. I think I covered this in objection 3), that it is not a case of exercising control or one party and not another if all parties involved are treated the same. Case in point: If I say to you, don’t steal, and I hold myself to that maxim, I avoid the problem all together. The issue is not controlling behavior, it is about finding a universal ethical maxim.

With all of this being said I have not begun to argue about if and when abortions are morally permissible, I have only tried to deal with the objections that Pippin brought up.

Traditionally, the search for personhood has centered on trying to stake out who holds moral responsibility for her actions. The search for a comprehensive notion of personhood often has a deeper goal: to discover who has a right to life. As Michael Tooley puts it, �What properties must something have to be a person, i.e., to have a right to life?”:”(Tooley, Michael. �Abortion and Infanticide.� P. 43.)”: A common definition of personhood is the moral community requirement. If X is morally responsible for the actions of X, then X is a member of the moral community. If X is a member of the moral community, then X is a person. However, from an intuitional standpoint, the moral community requirement runs into several serious problems. This paper seeks to explore these problems and present an alternate view that more readily accounts for our intuitions on who has a right to life. This alternate view claims that the moral community theory has, at its center, a faulty view of personhood; one that does not properly distinguish between moral subjects and moral objects. Instead, one should view moral objectivity and moral subjectivity each as two different criteria for two distinct types of personhood.

The Moral Community Requirement

Mary Anne Warren in her work, �The Moral and Legal Status of Abortion� puts forth the moral community requirement for personhood. Her position is that a fetus is not a person and therefore does not have a right to life. In order for her to say what a person is not, she presents the minimum requirements for what a person must be like. Any being that does not meet these necessary requirements is not a person. She, like most careful scholars, is quick to point out that humanity is not what is being discussed. Humanity only signifies the genetic homogeny of the human race; there is no reason to suspect that persons are limited to humans. Conversely, it has yet to be convincingly shown that being human grandfathers one into the class of persons. This opens the hypothetical door for advanced computer programs, alien life and any other being that meets her to be named requirements. Warren is quick to establish the premise that personhood is synonymous with membership in the moral community. She explicitly states that �the moral community consists of all and only people��:”(Warren, Mary Anne. �On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion.� P. 177.)”: (emphasis added.) The moral community is then defined as �the set of beings with full and equal moral rights.�:”(Warren, Mary Anne. �On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion.� P. 176.)”: She finds it useful to imagine an alien culture and try to build the minimum requirements that members of that race would need to be persons. She gives a list of five minimum requirements of personhood. The following is her admittedly �rough� list of possible criteria: consciousness, namely, the ability to feel pain, reasoning, self-motivated behavior, the ability or the capacity to communicate, and the presence of self-concepts and self awareness.:”(Warren, Mary Anne. �On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion.� P. 178.)”: Warren is not giving a hard criterion into which persons fall, she is only saying that any being that does not have any of these characteristics is not a person. Warren is only seeking to justify the claim that a fetus is not a person, not give comprehensive criteria for personhood. What is important to note is the moral community/personhood conjunction that Warren outlines. H. J. McCloskey, in his work, �The Right to Life�, argues a more concrete definition of what a person is. He maintains that only autonomous beings may have rights,:”(McCloskey, H. J.. �The Right to Life.� P. 414.)”: the main right being in question is the right to life.:”(McCloskey, H. J.. �The Right to Life.� P. 416.)”: One that has the ability to freely choose his moral actions is a person under this view. Such a person would also by definition be considered a member of the moral community, a denotation of both the right to life and moral responsibility for his actions. The argument in its positive formulation is as follows:

1. All and only moral subjects are persons
2. X is a moral subject.
C. Therefore, X is a person.

In this view if a person is not a member of this moral community at time₁, then it is not a person at time₁, even though it will be a person at time₂ or was a person at time₀. The being�s rights are tied to its immediate membership in the moral community. A strict formulation of this view is echoed by the above mentioned Tooley in �Abortion and Infanticide�. He argues that, �An organism possesses a serious right to life only if it possesses the concept of a self as a continuing subject of experiences� and believes that it is itself such a continuing entity.� He calls this the self-consciousness requirement. A beings status in the moral community is tied to its ability to make moral judgments. Hence, if a being is temporarily removed from the moral community, i.e. falls asleep, it should then loose its right to life. For at time₁ it would not be able to make moral judgments even though at time₀ and at time₂ it was and will be able to make moral judgments. However such a view strikes one as being absurd, due to the fact that the capacity to make moral judgments is still there even though it is not presently being exercised in the case of the sleeping person. This paper will only consider the less strict version, that moral community members must have merely the capacity to make moral judgments.

Problems with the Moral Community Requirement

Intuitionally, this position runs into problems. As stated above, a person must be able to make moral judgments. Consider the following three beings: a health woman of forty-five years, a twelve year old boy, and a three month old baby. What do one�s intuitions tell us about each being having a right to life? Most would say that each have a clear right to life. Compare the intuitional results with the results dictated by the moral community requirement. Clearly, the woman of forty five years of age would be able to make moral judgments as would the young boy. Under the moral community requirement, they would receive a right to life. Now, consider the three month old child. It is clear that it cannot make moral judgments, and therefore does not have a right to life. Nevertheless, it seems from an intuitional standpoint that for one to kill the three month old child would be barbaric. Some would even claim that the killing of the baby would be worse than the killing of the boy or the woman. This impasse demonstrates the inadequacy of the moral community requirement for defining who has a right to life.

The problem with the moral community position is that it entangles the concepts of moral objectivity and moral subjectivity. For one to be a moral subject is for one to make moral judgments. A moral object, on the other hand is the object of moral considerations, such as the right to life. Moral objects that have a right to life are considered persons in the objective sense, or persons_O. It might be the case that not all moral objects have the right to life. All moral subjects, on the other hand, are persons in the subjective sense, or personsS. There is a very important distinction between these two concepts, personsS and persons_O, one that is not often presented in the personhood debate. So far the personhood debate has centered on demonstrating that all persons_S have a right to life. Anyone that maintains the moral community requirement for persons_O must maintain that the only beings that have to respect rights were the only ones that have rights that to be protected. Speculation on how to discern whether or not a being is a person_O centered on how to tell if the being was capable of making moral judgments since there was not a distinction between persons_S and persons_O. If it was the case that the being could make moral judgments, then obviously it is a person_O. Since it was a person_O, it must therefore, also has a right to life. The argument, in its negative structure, can be formalized in its basic form as follows:

1. All moral subjects are person_O.
2. X is not a moral subject.
C. Therefore, X is not a person_O.

There is not been a sufficient justification for the assumption that all persons_O are persons_S. The distinction between being a moral object and being a moral subject is quite a substantial one from an ontological standpoint. To illustrate this point, consider and analogy of the visual subject/object relationship and the moral subject/object relationship. Imagine for a moment, a well developed cow. Like all cows, it is able to move, hear, see, and eat. While exercising these traits, the cow happens upon a stalk of corn. The cow sees the corn, but the corn is unable to see the cow. The cow is an example of a visual subject and visual object. As such, it is able to see and be seen. The corn, on the other hand is merely a visual object. It is only able to be seen, it cannot see. This example demonstrates that visual subjectivity and visual objectivity are not one and the same. Likewise is true for moral objectivity and moral subjectivity. The ability to be seen is held in the visual object, not the visual subject. Switching to the other side of the analogy, the right to life is a property of the moral object, not the moral subject. All visual subjects are visual objects, while not all visual objects are visual subjects. This also is applicable to the two types of persons, persons_O and persons_S.

At this point is important to make a few observations. The terms person_S and person_O merely coincide accidentally in the sharing of the root �person.� They do not relate directly; they differ ontologically. As such, there are different requirements for each denotation. Each points to entirely different qualities of a being. Since moral subjectivity and moral objectivity differ ontologically, then it follows that the rights and duties associated with each also differ, as well as there being different methods for their discovery. The moral community membership requirement provides sufficient justification for distinguishing beings of the class persons_S. However, criteria for persons_O have not been sufficiently explored. Following from the intuitional exploration above for the refutation of the moral community requirement as a comprehensive personhood criteria, intuitions of what beings have the right to life will be explored to attempt to uncover possible person_O criteria.

Intuitions, Reasons and Moral Principles

One needs to be careful with intuitions, as they can easily play tricks on reason. One may appeal to them, but then one must be able to test them with reason to ascertain their validity. For example, in the �Owl and the Pussycat�, the reader is calls up intuitions about owls, orangutans, and cats. Then the author demonstrates that the intuitions about the personhood of these creatures are really just simple phenomenological and psychological effects tied to the resemblance of eyes similar to our own.:”(Larvor, Brendan. �The Owl and the Pussycat.� P. 263.)”: A seemingly basic intuition can be demonstrated to be false. Similarly, when analyzing related personhood topics, one may allow his intuitions to be his guide, but the intuitions must able to be double checked for validity.

Moral Objectivity

With the above principles in mind: 1) that there is a significant difference between being a moral object and a moral subject, and 2) that intuitions can point the way, but must be backed up by reason; one can make progress in determining criteria for persons_O. What can intuitions about objective personhood reveal? From an intuitional standpoint, the qualifications for person_O are not nearly as clear as those for persons_S. On the topic of moral subjectivity our intuitions are quite clear. When one pictures a visual subject, or an audible subject, one pictures something that can see or hear. Likewise, when one pictures a moral subject, one sees in their minds eye a being that has the capability to make moral judgments. The next step is to ask what is required to make moral judgments. Here, the classical argument for discovering the requirements of personhood, such as McCloskey�s become extremely valuable.

What about moral objects? The principle quality of a person in the objective sense is its right to life. Therefore, one�s intuitions on the topic are activated by asking, �Who has the right to life?� When the answer to the question is yes, the being in question is a moral object. It is hoped that the exploration of these intuitions will aid in smoking out the underlying cause that gives rise to a being having a right to life. Recall the three subjects from earlier, the healthy woman of forty-five years, the twelve year old boy, and the three month old baby. Begin by asking of each subject, �Is it morally permissible to arbitrarily kill it?� As before, with the woman and the young boy one is clearly able to answer, �No.� So far the previous possible moral objects have been undisputed moral subjects, who, are by their virtue of being able to make moral determinations, are objects of moral considerations. Consider the being that is not a moral subject. Is it morally wrong to arbitrarily kill a baby of three months? Once again, most will exclaim, �No,� with considerable fervor. Curiously, a healthy number of people will consider the killing of the three month old baby a worse offense than the killing of the forty-five year old woman. Now, reduce the age of the subject even more. Is the killing of a two week old fetus morally wrong? Here the symmetry of intuitions breaks down. Some will give their �yays� and others their �nays.� After almost universal agreement on the previous examples, what could cause such a break down? There seems, from a personS standpoint, no ontological difference between the newborn and the fetus. Larvor, in �The Owl and the Pussycat,� suggests that this breakdown in intuition has psychological roots. Persons whose intuitions say the fetus is not a personO more than likely have a psychological reaction to the dissimilarity between fetuses and adults. Conversely, persons whose intuitions claim the opposite are having a psychological reaction to the similarity of fetuses to adults. Having identified this breakdown of intuition, which intuition is the correct one? Which one stands up to reason? The answer lies in our intuitions about the baby of three months.

Marquis, in �Why Abortion is Immoral,� asks that instead of debating what is and is not a person; one should consider why killing is wrong. That is, in a subjective sense. His conclusion is that killing is wrong because it robs the being of all future choices. He also notes that taking away all possible future choices takes away all possible rights, since the exercise of rights depends of the choice to enable or disable the right. Therefore, to kill a creature and thus rob him of all future choice and exercise of rights is the worst possible harm one can inflict on the creature. In Marquis�s analysis, the fact that a being has a future like ours entitles it to a right to life. In the case of the newborn, it is morally wrong to kill it because she will have future choices that significantly like ours that will be robed from her. Just as the moral community argument laid out a method of determining who is a person_S, Marquis has laid out a method of determining the moral objectivity of a person. This principle explains why the life of a newborn is morally significant even though it is not a person in the subjective sense.

Marquis does not say what it is about a future like ours that makes it morally significant. viii The moral considerability of having a future like ours is merely a consequent of what lies behind Marquis� curtain. What might lie behind this curtain? If one borrows a page from the moral subjectivity argument and say that the ability to make moral choices is what makes a future like ours valuable, then the pieces fall into place. The argument can be given as follows:

1. A future has value if the subject will have the ability to make moral determinations.
2. X, in its future will have the ability to make moral determinations.
C1. Therefore, X�s future has value.
1. Subjects with valuable futures are persons_O.
2. X�s future is valuable.
C2. Therefore, X is person_O.
1. PersonsO have a right to life.
2. X is a person_O.
C3. Therefore, X has a right to life.

In this view, the status of the person from a temporal standpoint is largely ignored. It is not clear whether or not this applies backward in time as it does forward in time. For instance, this argument does not cover being that were at time1 moral subjects, and are at time2, not moral subjects. While it is clear that if they still have the potential to revert back to moral subjects, such as a rehabilitating stroke victim, they would fall into the potential category. What is not clear is if past persons, such as beings in an invariable vegetative state retain their right to life. A good consequence of the view is that if X is a moral agent, or will have the ability to become moral agent, then X’s life is worth moral consideration. This view is helpful because it explains why the life of a young child should be protected. This argument is a type of potentiality argument for personhood. However, it does not fall prey to the criticisms that its cousins do. Just as Marquis� argument sidestepped the standard potential personhood criticism by applying the same principle to current persons and to potential persons alike, so does this formulation.

Conclusion

When one makes the proper distinction between personhood in its subjective sense and personhood in its objective sense the prior inhibitions to the personhood debate fall away. The distinction clears up the intuitional problem of why a baby has a right to life even though it is not a member of the moral community. Using the above criteria for determining persons_O clearly confirms intuitions about the right to life of babies and even gives clear criterion for the right to life of a fetus. Interestingly enough, this argument renders the concept of personhood in the subjective sense irrelevant in the right to life debate. While the concept of personhood in the subjective sense is applicable in other areas of ethics, such as agency, it is not needed at all in the right to life debate for all persons_S are also persons_O in the above view. All that is necessary is to determine if the being is a person in the objective sense.

Link to PDF

Don Marquis, in Why Abortion is Immoral, attempts to give an alternate approach to the abortion debate. Prior arguments about the morality of abortion have centered on whether or not the fetus is a person. This approach assumes that only persons have rights. The protection of one�s life is a right. Thus it would seem to follow that the only beings who have a right to life are persons. Consequently, if a fetus is a person they would have a right to life and conversely, if a fetus is not a person, it does not have a right to life.

Marquis takes a look at the flaws in this approach, noting the problems that each side has. The standard anti-abortionist principle is that it is always prima facie wrong to take a human life. A fetus is a human; therefore it is wrong to kill a fetus. This stance, however, also demands that a cancer culture has a right to life:”(Marquis, Don. Why Abortion is Immoral. The Right Thing to Do. P.109)”:. Such a stance is absurd. The standard pro-abortionist principle is that it is prima facie wrong to take the life of persons, i.e. rational agents:”(Marquis, abid)”:. A fetus is not a rational agent, thus it is not wrong to kill it. This view, however, must allow for the killing of all non-rational agents, such as babies and severely retarded. This natural application of the standard pro-abortionist view, like its opposition, leads to moral absurdities.
Instead of attempting to discern the personhood of the fetus, Marquis notes that we are not ultimately asking if the fetus is a person, but rather, if it is morally permissible to kill the fetus. He then says that he knows for sure that it is wrong to kill him. He seeks to find out why and then apply that principle to the case of the fetus. His argument is as follows:

1.I value my future
2.To rob me of what I value is wrong
C.It is wrong to rob me of my future
1.Killing me robs me of my future
2.It is wrong to rob me of my future
C.It is wrong to kill me.
1.I value my futures
2.X will value its future
C. X has a future similar to mine.
1.X has a futures similar to mine.
2.It is wrong to kill me.
3.My intuitions say that it is wrong to kill X
C. It is wrong to kill beings with futures similar to mine.
1.It is wrong to kill beings with a future similar to mine.
2.A fetus has a future similar to mine
C.It is wrong to kill a fetus

The problem for Marquis is his transition from the specific to the general. He is attempting to take a reason of why it is wrong to kill him specifically, create a general rule, and then apply that rule to beings that are different than him. In the third section of the argument, he states that it is wrong to kill beings with a future similar to his. His reasons for this are that it is wrong to kill him and that his intuitions say that it is also wrong to kill X, Y and Z. Restated, this argument can be presented as follows:

1.X and Y share trait H
2.It is wrong to do action A both X and Y
C. Therefore, it is wrong to do A to beings with trait H

However, this does not follow. It may be that having trait H is a purely accidental correlation to the moral impermeability of action A. Consider the following: person A’s hair is stripped. person A’s cat is striped. It is wrong to burn both person A’s hair and person A’s cat. Therefore, one should not burn things that are striped. It does not follow that just because two things share two similar traits, that similar morality of actions done to the two things are a result of that trait. Continuing from the case above, imagine I owned a sheet of striped paper. It would then follow that it was morally impermissible to burn my sheet of striped paper because it was striped. That is, of course, absurd. The moral impermissibility of burning the first two items is their belonging within the set of items that belongs to person A, not their stripedness. The same holds for Marquis’ transfer of the moral impermeability of killing myself, X, and the fetus. The moral impermissibility of the killing of those items does not lie within the future valuing of their futures, but within their belonging to a certain set of beings, namely that set of beings with a right to life. Marquis is on the right path, but his argument went astray in his over generalization of an accidental trait into a general principle. The outcome of futures is merely an accidental quality of the type of beings the generator of the future is. While the futures of two beings may be similar, there is no reason to suspect that the similarity is what determines the worth of a being’s life.

The only way for Marquis to make his argument work is to fully argue for the distinction between moral objects and moral subjects. Moral subjects are the classical products of personhood theory, i.e. the rational agents that have the ability to make moral judgments. Moral objects, on the other hand, are the beings that have rights to be protected, in other words, they are the objects that moral subject must respect. Marquis needs to take this subject/object distinction and inject it into the personhood debate. He wants to steer clear of this, but without a full commitment, his view does not work. In discussing the implications of his theory, he brushes against what might save his theory. In talking about animals that might have futures similar to adult humans, he says the following, �Whether some animals do have the same right to life as human beings depends on adding to the account of the wrongness of killing some additional account of just what it is about my future or the futureness of other adult human beings which makes it wrong to kill us:”(Marquis, abid. p. 111)”:.� This �additional account� is the creation of a the moral object subsection of personhood. When he is able to create this criteria he will be able to correct his argument.

What might this �additional account� be? One needs to be able to speak of the beings on an ontological basis, not an accidental one. The only ontological property that the being would need in order to have a future value of it’s future is to, at some point in its natural development, have the ability to hold valuations of things. That is, to be a person in the subject sense. Such a view would be able to steer clear Marquis’ current problems. If this approach was taken, his argument would be as follows:

1.Moral objects are beings who, at sometime in their natural temporal existence have the ability to make moral choices.
2.X has the ability at some point in its natural temporal existence to make moral choices
C.Therefore X is a moral object.
1.All moral objects have a right to life
2.X is a moral object.
C.X has a right to life.

This approach yields the same results as his argument, such as the explanation of why infants have a right to life even though they are not persons in the subjective sense. However, it does not fall prey to his current objections.