When Is the Human a Person? With Alisa Childers
- Abortion Museum
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Science can help answer an important biological question: When does a new human life begin? But another question often sits at the center of the abortion debate: When does that human become a person?
In this video, author and apologist Alisa Childers examines the distinction frequently made between being biologically human and possessing moral personhood. She argues that separating these two concepts creates serious philosophical and ethical problems—and that every human being should be recognized as a person from conception.
This article summarizes the beliefs and arguments expressed by Alisa Childers in the accompanying video and do not necessarily reflect those of the Abortion Museum. However, we do post content from both sides of the issue in order to foster intelligent discourse.
The Difference Between Being Human and Being a Person
Childers begins by arguing that conception produces a distinct human organism with its own genetic identity. In her view, the modern abortion debate has therefore moved beyond whether the unborn are biologically human. Instead, it often centers on when that human life should be considered a person with rights.
This is not merely a scientific question. According to Childers, it is an ethical question because it asks which human beings deserve protection and why.
To understand how people approach this issue, she draws upon ideas associated with Francis Schaeffer and Nancy Pearcey. She explains that modern culture often divides truth into two categories.
The first category includes publicly accessible facts, such as science, evidence, and logic. The second includes personal values, preferences, religious beliefs, and moral opinions. This division is sometimes called the fact-value split.
Under this framework, the humanity of the unborn may be treated as an objective biological fact, while personhood is treated as a subjective value judgment. A person may acknowledge that an embryo or fetus is human while still claiming that it does not yet possess the moral status of a person.
Childers believes this separation is mistaken.
Can Morality Be Merely a Matter of Opinion?
Childers argues that treating morality as a private preference ultimately causes moral disagreements to be settled by power rather than truth.
She illustrates this with the example of someone stronger taking another person’s phone. The stronger person may have the physical power to claim the phone, but that power does not make the act morally right.
In the same way, Childers argues that a person’s influence, strength, legal authority, or social status cannot determine what is morally true. She believes there must be a moral standard beyond individual preferences and competing claims.
This also affects the common statement that society should not “legislate morality.” In Childers’s view, every law reflects a moral judgment about what people should or should not be permitted to do. Laws against assault, theft, and murder all restrict what people may do with their bodies because their actions affect other human beings.
For that reason, she does not believe the phrase “my body, my choice” resolves the abortion debate. She argues that the unborn child is not simply part of the mother’s body but is a distinct human organism with a different genetic identity.
The Problem With Personhood Theory
According to Childers, personhood theory separates biological humanity from moral value.
Under this theory, being human is a scientific fact, but being recognized as a person depends on additional characteristics or abilities. Those characteristics might include consciousness, independence, development, location, or the ability to survive outside the womb.
Childers believes this approach is dangerous because human rights should arise from being human—not from meeting a changing set of qualifications.
She also warns that denying personhood to certain human beings has historically been used to justify mistreatment and exclusion. In her view, human dignity becomes unstable when society is allowed to decide that some human beings count as persons while others do not.
Examining the SLED Argument
Childers uses the SLED argument to examine several differences between unborn and born human beings. SLED stands for:
Size
Level of development
Environment
Degree of dependency
She argues that none of these differences determines whether someone is a person.
Size
An unborn child is smaller than an adult, but Childers argues that physical size does not determine human value.
A three-year-old is smaller than a thirty-year-old, yet the younger person is not less human or less deserving of protection. If size determined personhood, shorter people would possess less value than taller people.
Childers therefore concludes that size cannot provide a consistent standard for recognizing personhood.
Level of Development
An unborn child is less physically and cognitively developed than an adult. However, Childers notes that human development continues long after birth.
A toddler is less developed than an adult, but that does not make the toddler less of a person. People also develop at different rates and possess different abilities throughout their lives.
In Childers’s view, differences in development may describe what a human being can currently do, but they do not determine what that human being is.
Environment
Some people connect personhood with birth, making a distinction between the human being inside the womb and the same human being outside it.
Childers questions why a change in location should create a change in moral status. Traveling through the birth canal changes a child’s environment, but she argues that it does not transform the child into a different kind of being.
She compares this to people occupying different physical locations. A person flying in an airplane does not possess a different degree of personhood from someone standing on the ground. In the same way, Childers believes location inside or outside the womb cannot determine whether a human is a person.
Degree of Dependency
Dependency is often considered one of the stronger arguments against recognizing unborn children as persons. An unborn child depends directly on the mother’s body for nourishment, protection, and continued development.
Childers responds that dependency does not end at birth. Newborns remain deeply dependent upon adults for food, shelter, and care. People with serious illnesses or disabilities may rely upon medications, medical technology, caregivers, or emergency assistance.
In the video, Childers mentions her stepson’s dependence on insulin to manage Type 1 diabetes. His reliance on medication and assistance does not diminish his personhood or value.
Because all people depend upon others in different ways and at different stages of life, she argues that dependency cannot be the defining measure of personhood.
Personhood From Conception
After examining the proposed distinctions between human life and personhood, Childers concludes that no later point can be identified consistently.
Size changes gradually. Development is continuous. Environment can change within moments. Dependency exists both before and after birth. None of these characteristics, she argues, explains how or when a biologically human organism becomes a person.
Childers therefore believes the most reasonable conclusion is that humanity and personhood begin together. From the moment a new human organism comes into existence at conception, she argues, that human should also be recognized as a person with inherent value.
Her position is ultimately grounded in the belief that human rights belong to every human being—not because of size, ability, independence, development, or location, but simply because each one is human.
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