"Personhood" Argument
Does the human fetus qualify as a person or not?
In the eyes of many abortion rights advocates, this question may seem settled, or trivial and irrelevant to the pro-choice position. But to pro-lifers, fetal personhood is one of the most prominent issues in the abortion debate. Pro-lifers tend to claim that the human fetus is a person, or the issue isn’t settled enough on the pro-choice side to justify abortion-choice policy.
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Some pro-lifers treat personhood like it is the consummate issue in the abortion debate, to where the ethics of abortion rise and fall entirely on the issue of fetal personhood. In that view, if the fetal human isn’t a person, then abortion is justified. But if it’s a person, then abortion is wrong.
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Others claim that even if we didn’t know whether the fetus was a person (in the relevant sense of “personhood”), abortion-choice advocates would still have more to prove before abortion would be justified. Nevertheless, the personhood argument remains the most popular argument among pro-lifers, and a primary target of attack for pro-choicers. It’s well worth investigating whether the fetal human is a person or not, and seeing whether a sound pro-life argument can be built on that premise.
Explicit Personhood
Example 1:
Right to Life Argument
Premise 1:
If fetal humans are persons, they have a right to life.
Premise 2:
Fetal humans are persons.
Conclusion:
Therefore, fetal humans have a right to life.
In this formulation, personhood isn’t implied or smuggled in with a synonym. Instead personhood is noted outright. But there’s a drawback to this argument. It doesn’t clarify how the “right to life” applies to abortion, ex., showing that the “right to life” is greater than the mother’s autonomy rights.
Implied Personhood
Example 2:
Life Training Institute Argument
Premise 1:
It is wrong to kill innocent human beings.
Premise 2:
Abortion kills innocent human beings.
Conclusion:
Therefore, the abortion is wrong.
Popularized by Life Training Institute, this brand of the personhood argument is something of a “launching pad” for additional evidence and argument, intended to show that fetal humans are rights-bearing persons. Additionally, this argument-form tends to treat “human being” as a synonym of “person.”
Two Broad Senses of “Personhood”
Philosophers have long debated what exactly is “personhood.” In other words, “What constitutes a ‘person’?” This is a long-standing, abstract, debate that overlaps with an even deeper question of “what does it mean to be human.” It also overlaps with the philosophy of biology in that some animals (might) have gradations of personhood. Plus it overlaps with philosophy of religion and theology regarding the nature of angels, god, or other spiritual beings who might be immaterial persons.
Philosophical Personhood
George E. Koronaios, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Some typical answers from philosophers include: "Persons are ‘rational animals,'" or ""Persons are composed of mind, will, and emotions,'” or "People are defined by consciousness, intelligence, creative ability," etc. Others would even argue that every person is a God or an extension of God (deification), or everything is one single conscious being - so there's only one actual "person" (pantheism). Since philosophers have argued over this definition for thousands of years, without any consensus, it's a little problematic to base our legal policy on such disputed territory (ex., for or against abortion).
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There seems to be a useful, working sense of “human personhood” as “any individual member of the human species; i.e., a human being.” And this works in most cases, but, of course, abortion-choice advocates do not, generally, grant that sense of personhood. Nevertheless, that sense of the term doesn’t require much philosophical precision even if there are still some blurry lines at the borders of humanity, for example, when it comes to embryos, brain-dead and comatose people, or genetic hybrids (such as a mouse cultivated to grow human ears, etc.).
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There’s no looming consensus on this issue. The experts disagree. As such, it would be
problematic to base any social or legal policy on such an abstract and contentious idea
philosophical personhood.
Legal Personhood
As a legal matter, the question becomes: “what constitutes a legal-rights bearing person?” This is a question of what concern should the government have in securing the rights the parties involved in an abortion. If the mother and child are both persons, then the Governmental duty to secure the rights of legal persons would apply to both mother and child. But if fetal humans are somehow not human enough to qualify for human rights, then they would not qualify even provisionally as persons. And the government would have no preemptive duty to secure the rights of children in utero.
Previously, under Roe v. Wade (1973-2022), fetal personhood was answered in the negative: children-in-utero are not legal persons. With the Dobbs decision (2022), Roe was overturned, and the question of fetal personhood was left open, again, at the federal levels. States can incorporate “fetal personhood” into their law code, but the federal government, as of March 2025 does not have a formal statement affirming or denying fetal personhood.
Legal personhood is not entirely irrelevant to philosophical personhood, but they aren’t identical either. It could be that a person exists but without any means governing bodies to acknowledge, defend, or enforce their human rights.
Strengths
1. It’s Simple:
This argument is straightforward. It does not require a graduate-level education in philosophy of mind, bioethics, anatomy and physiology, fetology and embryology, etc. to understand. As long as people have a working sense of what “person” is, this argument can be fairly easy to understand.
2. Popular:
This is perhaps the most widely used argument among pro-lifers. It’s a staple in pro-life apologetics training at Life Training Institute and Equal Rights Institute.
3. Legal Weight:
Since personhood is a legally weighted concept, this manner of argumentation helps the morality of the abortion debate translate into legal and policy categories.
4. One-and-Done:
If fetal personhood is established then, arguably, the pro-life case wins. It’s easier and more efficient to appeal to just one argument, instead of a set of arguments in a cumulative case approach.
5. Humanitarian Appeal:
The central premise, that we should not kill innocent human beings (persons) is very appealing on humanitarian grounds since human life is normally treated with a measure of sanctity (i.e., legally protected; morally special; immeasurably valuable). This presumptive ban on killing innocent human beings is readily granted in almost every other context (medical hospitals, mental health clinics, schools, civilian populations in war zones, corporate America, government).
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6. Intuitive:
It’s also pretty intuitive, given it’s humanitarian appeal. Namely, people want to care for and protect defenseless human beings as they are part of our kind, our species, our young. This intuitive aspect applies even negatively, for example, when abortion-choice advocates object to calling the child-in-utero a “baby” but in the course of discussion unwittingly call it a baby, a human being. And, at least for later stage pregnancy (say 12-42 weeks), the child-in-utero “looks” human-shaped, to where most everyone who hasn’t been deeply indoctrinated in pro-choice posturing would admit that that’s a baby.
7. Effective:
While no argument in these sorts of debates is “100%” effective, the personhood argument has been used enough, and with enough success, to where it’s earned a place as one of the leading pro-life arguments. It’s simplicity, it’s humanitarian appeal, and intuitive force have made it a reasonably effective argument, at least in the hands of capable many trained pro-life advocates.
Weaknesses
1. Personhood Might Not Be Enough:
Pro-choicers have a batch of arguments that allow for fetal personhood, but argue, nevertheless the right of bodily autonomy still favors abortion-choice policy. The flagship example is Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “Violinist Argument.” Similar arguments revolve around organ donation and blood donation. They contend that even if forced blood donation, organ donation, or organ-sharing were able to save a person’s life, it’s still wrong to force someone to lend/donate/sacrifice their body to save someone else’s life. None of these pro-choice arguments, however, involve active killing — which is what abortion is — so they are weak analogies for abortion. In that regard, these Pro-choice Personhood arguments might not work. Nevertheless, pro-choicers can argue that — with some plausibility — that fetal personhood isn’t enough to discredit abortion-choice.
2. Semantic Debate:
In practice, the personhood debate often descends into a nuanced debate about what exactly is required for personhood. This isn’t a lost cause for pro-lifers (See below), but it can be distracting and burdensome, especially since all the time spent haggling over definitions is time not spent exposing the brutality, horror, and injustice of the abortion industry.
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3. Personhood Might not be Necessary:
It’s not clear that human rights require something more than biological humanity before an individual can qualify for human rights. In that regard, human rights are commonly understood to be based in one’s humanity, even if the “personhood” debate were never solved. The pro-choicer still has the burden of proving that fetal humans aren’t human enough to qualify for human rights, even if the personhood argument was never brought into the conversation.
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4. Philosophical Problems:
Personhood, ultimately, is a philosophical category not a biological/scientific category. Yet philosophers have debated personhood for centuries with no established consensus/solution to the problem. What exactly constitutes human “personhood”? Some say it’s mind, will, and emotion. Some say a body is required. Others say a soul/spirit is sufficient. Some say sentience is required, others say sentience doesn’t have to manifest but can be unrealized “potency.” Opening this philosophical door is a tactical risk for pro-lifers since it allows the abortion debate to get bogged down in an age-old, unresolved, dispute about what exactly is required for personhood.
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5. Overuse:
The personhood debate is so widely known, pro-choice defenses are often
well-prepared against it. When pro-lifers have dozens of pro-life arguments to choose from, they often limit themselves, unnecessarily, by using just this one tool from their tool bag. As a result, the abortion debate often gets stale, entrenched, and loses persuasive power -— just as repeated jokes fail to amuse, repeated overly familiar arguments fail to persuade.
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6. Misuse:
Some pro-lifers use the personhood argument in a cavalier and foolhardy way saying things like, “If abortion is wrong only if it kills an innocent person,” or “if abortion doesn’t kill a person then it’s okay.” In other words, they bank the whole pro-life case on the personhood debate, sacrificing dozens of other arguments and lines of evidence in the process. In reality, abortion could be wrong for any number of reasons besides just the wrongful killing of a person. It could be death-profiteering, sexist, racist, cruel and unusual, harmful, theft, moral vice, anti-humanitarian, child abuse, animal abuse. Even if abortion were theoretically justified, it could be so fraught with practical constraints that it isn’t fit for public policy.
The Groundwork for Personhood
Potential Biological Markers for when “personhood” begins
Conception/Fertilization:
When the mother’s and father’s DNA first join. The scientific consensus agrees that humanity begins at this point, even if onset “personhood” remains disputed. This view is the least palatable to pro-choice advocates, yet scientifically it makes great sense. The distinct human being has already begun at this point, and so it’s the same being that we would later call a “person.”
Gastrulation:
The embryo reshapes from a little circle into a three-layered, indented ball. This reshaping happens because cells are differentiating into different cell-types so they can grow into specific organs and body parts. At this stage, the embryo is no longer able to "twin." It can't divide into two (or more) human beings. If twinning is going to happen, it must happen before the gastrula stage.
Implantation:
When the embryo implants on the uterine wall. This is where it will stay for the rest of the pregnancy. This definition might be useful for prenatal medicine, since the survival rate improves drastically after this point. Natural abortions are much more common before implantation than after; however, it could be that human persons have a high mortality rate prior to implantation. Also, the Shahbazi study, performed on thawed IVF embryos, demonstrated that even without implantation the embryos knew what they needed to do to live and tried to live, even in the absence of the proper environment, implying that they meet every known definition of life. (https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/01/17222/)
Blood/Heartbeat:
The circulatory system has begun to function, including a heartbeat. This
threshold is often used because we think about our lives ending when our heart stops beating and draw the erroneous conclusion that the opposite must be true, that our lives begin when our heart starts beating; however, identifying legal personhood at this point, is somewhat arbitrary, with the possible exception that survival statistics might improve after this point. The potential and Capacities of the child, however, are unchanged before and after this point. Hence this milestone does not clearly differentiate one kind of being from another; instead it is the same being at two different stages of development. If it was a human being after, then this marker fails to show that it lacked “human-being-status” beforehand.
Pain:
The nervous system is sufficiently developed to where the child-in-utero can feel pain. This point is difficult to quantify, however, because pain is a subjective sensation that defies objective quantification or observation even with adults, much less with children-in-utero. Plus, it’s not clear exactly what level of development in the nervous system would qualify.
Brainwaves:
Human beings are distinguished from the rest of the animal kingdom, in large part, by their prefrontal cortex and higher reasoning abilities, including consciousness, higher order cognition, and goal-directed behavior (as opposed to mindless instincts). As such, the first appearance of brainwaves is thought, by some, to be the point at which distinct person status begins for a developing human. Any attempt to use brain function as the boundary between person and nonperson is tricky because our brains are not finished forming our sense of personhood or autonomy until long after birth. Thus, this is a philosophical question rather than a scientific one.
Viability:
The child-in-utero can survive outside of the womb. This definition, however, is relativistic since it depends on medical technology and that is changing all the time. Plus, its nature hasn’t necessarily changed just because its relational dependence is different. Also, its nature is a different matter from its neediness/dependence. All of us lack viability outside of the environment for which our developmental stage is suited.
Breath/Birth:
The fetus is now born, is outside of the womb, and can breathe (supposing it is healthy). This point makes some sense for legal and civil matters, since the child is now a physically and locationally distinct individual, publicly accessible, having a birth certificate, citizenship status and so on. However, this point is fairly arbitrary at least when compared to a fetus at the same gestational stage but which is in-utero. Its nature and substance are the same in-utero versus ex-utero. It seems odd/arbitrary for the same child to be protected against illegal infanticide but could have been legally killed through abortion 1 minute earlier.
Legal History
Legal/juridical personhood has been decided in Roe v. Wade: the child-in-utero does not qualify as a legal person (1973) before Roe was overturned in the Dobbs decision (2022), leaving the issue undecided at the federal/constitutional level. The Roe ruling was based on several factors.
(1) No US state, at the time, had a ban on all abortions. Instead, the norm was for exceptions in the case of fetal deformity, rape, incest, and mortally dangerous pregnancies. Yet, such exceptions presuppose the “potential human” is not a rights bearing person.
(2) Disputations and contradictions in historic literature. The Blackmun decision considered religion and history to argue that history was quite friendly to abortion. Ex., it was once thought that human life begins at quickening, hence killing fetuses before then does not kill a person. Also, religion often defined life at the fusion of “soul” and body, again, thought to occur at the quickening. However, we do not use historical understandings as a standard in most cases because as our understanding of science and the world has improved, we realize these historical understandings were based on limited or faulty knowledge. We should not use history in this way.
(3) Denying the conception definition of onset Human life. (VII)—admits relation (if not identity) of human life and personhood. The consistent reference in the Blackmun decision is “potential human.”
(4) Asserting “strong support” that life does not begin till birth (IX, B). This follows the notion that child-law presupposes birth before, for example, rights of inheritance, state protection, or citizenship can qualify.
But, personhood could abide in spite of that legal decision if the child-in-utero is a person. In that way “person” would be a physical, metaphysical, or ethical fact regardless of its legal standing.
Defending Personhood
Personal Continuity over time:
a. You were once a single-celled organism, but that means a single celled organism was a “you” and not merely an “it.”
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b. You were never a sperm or an egg, since those gametes were a different organism from the zygote thus they were substantially and genetically different from you.
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c. Personal continuity over time is the usual default when people look at a kindergarten picture of “themselves.”
d. Denying personal continuity leads to the odd conclusion that the entity identified as you died at some point & was replaced by something else. After some of these transfers “you” came to exist w/o organic continuity between you and the other things previously thought to be “you.”For example, murder has no statute of limitations legally. At no point in time does one become an entirely different person from the person who committed the crime.
Latent personhood:
a. The fetus has all the capacities of personhood, even if they aren’t yet expressed.
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b. Its capacities are natural and organic, as opposed to artificial/induced (such as with induced pluripotent adult stem cells/cloning).
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c. Attributes of personhood vary by degree and expression in adults, so one need not have them all nor have them fully expressed to be a person. One’s personhood could be unexpressed, or partly expressed without any loss of personhood.
Known persons fail to manifest some commonly accepted features of personhood, yet we acknowledge that they are still persons:
a. Comatose patients and sleepers lack consciousness
b. Paralyzed people lack full bodily autonomy
c. Deformed people lack the normal physical appearance of human persons.
One’s developmental stage isn’t sufficient evidence to broadly/universally disqualify less-developed human beings as persons:
a. Newborns/toddlers/adolescents aren’t disqualified from “personhood” status even if they’re less developed than adults.
b. If personhood isn’t strictly contingent on the developmental stage, by itself, then the development stage isn’t itself sufficient to disqualify an entity from personhood. Something else must be added such as a particular attribute or lack thereof which disqualifies an entity from personhood.
Burden of Proof favors personhood—life deserves the benefit of the doubt as long as there’s reasonable doubt:
a. Supposing personhood isn’t discredited beyond a reasonable doubt but a known human life still depends on whether to judge it a person or not, then the ethical burden of proof leans against abortion for supposing that we can/should be allowed to kill what may turn out to be a person.
b. if we did not give life the benefit of the doubt then we run the risk of (permitting the) killing of an innocent person.
c. The broiling popular debate about “fetal personhood” shows that this matter remains unsettled at the level where the widest spectrum of opinions (informed or not) are found.
d. Neither is there a settled conclusion in philosophy or ethics regarding what qualifies as a person.
e. Matters of life and death merit a reasonably high degree of certainty, i.e., “beyond a reasonable doubt” before concluding that we are ethically permitted to kill the living individual in question.
f. In philosophy it’s increasingly popular to identify consciousness w/ lots of things not otherwise thought to be persons. Panentheism, pantheism, and panpsychism are coming back. These assert consciousness as an innate/normal property of matter. Ex., Hartshorne, Plotinus, Sallie McFague, Whitehead, Process Philosophy/Theology, Bergson, William James, Ramanuja’s school of Hinduism, Schelling.
g. Even Bertrand Russell, avowed atheist, showed settled sympathy for panpsychism saying, “My own feeling is that there is not a sharp line, but a difference of degree [between mind and matter]; an oyster is less mental than a man, but not wholly un-mental” (Outline of Philosophy, 1927, pg. 209), and “we cannot, on this ground [of memory], erect an absolute barrier between mind and matter. ... [I]nanimate matter, to some slight extent, shows analogous behavior” (Ibid., 306). And, “It]the events that happen in our minds are part of the course of nature, and we do not know that the events which happen elsewhere are of a totally different kind. The physical world...is perhaps less rigidly determined by causal laws than it was thought to be; one might, more or less fancifully, attribute even to the atom a kind of limited free will” (Ibid., 311). Russell goes so far as to assert that memory applies to all physical objects and systems (Portraits from Memory 1956, pgs. 153-5).
h. RvW, Blackmun Opinion, IX., B refuses to speculate on when life begins, saying “Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”
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1.1 Blackmun concedes the issue isn’t resolved—this suffices shows the pro-choice position
hasn’t disposed of its burden of proof.
1.2 It also shows that the courts conclusion on fetal personhood was intentionally uninformed by the best science of the time, and the vindicated conclusions of science since then (i.e., human life begins at conception).
1.3 It also implies that Blackmun and the majority justices acknowledged a critical association between fetal personhood and human life. The rest of the opinion consistently treats the fetus as only “potential” life.​
Common Coinage:
a. The fetus is literally categorized as homo sapiens, normally and often called a “baby,” a “child” and a “human being” all of which are consistent with and predicted by the “fetal personhood” position.
b. If pro-choicers were consistent in denying fetal personhood, they’d have to conclude that even when a pregnant woman plans to keep “the baby,” it’s not really a baby in the sense of a rights-bearing person. Or worse, they’d have to conclude that the child-in-utero cannot have personhood unless someone else gives it to them, by wanting them, loving them, choosing to let them live, etc.
c. If, however, the mother can decide whether or not the child-in-utero is a person or not, depending on whether she plans to keep the “baby” or not, that is a radically different view of human rights. In this pro-choice perspective, “human personhood” is not a built-in property rooted in one’s own humanity. Rather it’s more like a right of passage, or an honorific title, bestowed by a governing body (like one’s parents, a family, a community, or the state or federal government). And if human rights can be given out like a privilege, it can be rescinded too. The ‘basis’ for that “human right” is ultimately outside of the individual’s control. They live by the mercy of the governing body who can retract their rights whenever it serves their purposes.
d. That position runs contrary to the normal course of humanitarianism and human rights, where human rights are thought to be inherent, built-in, and intrinsic. That means every human being has built-in dignity and value regardless of what anyone else might say or feel about them. If a parent refuses to love their child, or doesn’t want them, the child still has inherent dignity and worth, and the parent’s poor character can never retract or degrade the inherent dignity of that child, or detract from his or her human rights.
The fetus has a “future like ours” which is what we would expect if it is a person, since all human persons share in a comparably human and personal future.
The Roe v. Wade (RvW) decision suggests close identity if not strict identity between “human being” and “Personhood.”
a. The RvW abstains even from biological certainty, despite the consensus agreement on the
conception definition of life. “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins” and they are “not in a position to speculate as to the answer.” (Blackmun 1973: IX, B)
b. Were they able to distinguish person and human clearly, they could have conceded the human status of the fetus for the sake of argument and maintained non-personhood. It’s unclear why they spend many pages arguing against its humanity if that’s not closely identified w/ personhood.
c. The RvW decision bases its non-personhood argument heavily on the phrase “potential human.” But this phrase is scientifically outdated, misleading, and wrong. Without this supporting pillar, however, it’s not clear that the Roe decision could have stood in the first place.
The Evidence Against Fetal Personhood Isn’t Adequate
“Legal personhood has already been denied in Roe v. Wade and that case indicates well-informed scrutiny.”
a. But legal personhood should not rule over ethical, metaphysical, and philosophical personhood. Rather it should be subordinate to and informed by whatever the facts may be. That is, the law should be informed by reality at least as much as reality should be informed by the vindications of law.
b. Legality isn’t morality, laws can be ethically unjust or evil. For all the good of our legal system, it’s imperfect. It has been wrong before and will be wrong again. This may be another case of legal error.
c. Legality isn’t reality. Laws can reflect errors in judgment, false claims, or bad science (as Roe v. Wade does in its “potential human” characterization of the fetus).
d. Given the poor science of the Roe v. Wade decision, its decision to treat children-in-utero as non-persons is likewise scientifically misinformed. The ruling of Roe v. Wade, therefore, is suspect.
“The fetus is physically very different from a birthed child.”
a. But personhood allows different expressions so long as the necessary conditions of personhood are met.
b. It hasn’t been shown that only some stages of development qualify for human personhood. It’s not like the being in question is ever a non-human, but at some later stage becomes a human.
c. Differences vary in evidential force, depending on whether human persons (after birth) can lack those attributes. But we can no more conclude that tall humans have more personhood than short people, then we can conclude young humans are less persons than older humans.
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d. If a human adult lacked brain waves, that individual may be dead, but even then he/she would be a dead person having lost the ability to think. Meanwhile, the fetus has the latent ability for brain waves but is denied that future by the abortionist.
“The pro-life position has failed to prove that it is a person.”
a. But the burden of proof is on the pro-choice side to show that it’s not a person.
b. The pro-life position has shown, though imperfectly, that the fetus should be considered a person. Just because the conclusion is disputed doesn’t necessarily mean it’s logically incomplete, evidentially inadequate, or unsatisfying to objective and reasonable onlookers. The evidences given above suggest the fetal human is a human being and should be considered a person.
“The ’Reasonable Doubt’ criterion fails by disanalogy, for example, it’s legal/ethical to kill a potentially thieving intruder even if you have reasonable doubt about whether they are a mortal threat or not, and even about whether they are ‘intruders’ or instead a mistaken bystander who took a wrong turn.”
a. But, abortion is rarely ever a matter of self-defense but of convenience.
b. A thieving intruder has willful intent, the child-in-utero does not.
c. The thief had no natural invitation into the house, the child was naturally invited in-utero.
d. The homeowner-thief relation doesn’t carry the same ethical duties that mother-child relations do.
e. A child-in-utero has no choice in the matter, was forced into existence, and placed — by no choice of their own — in the womb. That’s not an “intruder” so much as a kidnapping victim.
“’Reasonable Doubt’ criterion fails by disanalogy: it’s legal/ethical to kill in war even with reasonable doubt.”
a. But the war context changes everything. War is categorically separate from peacetime settings because it suspends practical access to many civilized ideals that we otherwise acknowledge as good, true, and right.
b. Even the “war on women” isn’t literally a war when it comes to abortion access in the U.S.
