The thing about moral status<\/em> is, if you believe in morality at all, that it is not a matter of choice or grant or convention, but of recognition. If you hear anyone talk about conferring or granting moral status, you know they are deeply confused about what morality and moral status are. The very idea of human rights and status is of someone who matters whether we like it or not, and even when no one is thinking about them; and matters, whether we like it or not, as at bottom an equal<\/em>, because like us in nature as a substantial kind of being.<\/em>
\n—
\nAbout the moral status of the fetus, it\u2019s clear, I suggest, beyond doubt, after forty years of intense philosophical discussion, that there\u2019s no credible halfway house between, on the one hand, acknowledging that whether we like it or not the fetus\u2014indeed the embryonic baby from the outset\u2014has the same radical equality of nature that we all have despite myriad differences, and on the other hand joining Peter and Jeffrey in denying two things: (1) denying that the primary question is one of fact\u2014shared nature as beings all having or capable of developing (given only food and protection) rational characteristics and activities, and (2) denying equality or ethical or moral entitlement to rights such as life until some time after birth (and here I think Reiman\u2019s position will prove more stably defensible than Peter\u2019s in making that years after birth; but of course neither of them can limit their denial of human equality to conditions of infancy; the denial extends to various sorts of disablement and decay). And each of them goes wrong from the outset in making \u201cmoral status\u201d the fundamental predicate in the discussion, instead of predicates of the form \u201cperson,\u201d \u201crational nature,\u201d \u201ckind of being.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the American Catholic blog. Look at the clear thinking going on, the direct challenge to secularists and others working to establish the culture of death. Then compare this to our preoccupation with global warming and other dubious fads, the confusion (as the essay below states) between morality and moral status in our didactic discourse, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[1463,11,1465,1464,141,8],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8102"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8102"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8115,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8102\/revisions\/8115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}