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issues: abortion - 2

•        Over 50% of new pregnancies never reach uterine implantation. In such cases,
the woman may never have known she was pregnant. 1
•        16% of known pregnancies end in fetal loss or spontaneous abortion
(miscarriage)
•        22% ended in elective abortion 2
•        Does the reality of spontaneous abortion allow for the practice of elective
abortion?
•        “All elective abortions involve the volitional destruction of a developing human
life” 3
•        This raises a central question in the abortion dialogue: What is the status of the
fetus regarding personhood? Are they a Human Being? Are they a Human Person?

1. Potentiality Principle
•        This view seeks to integrate Biblical, scientific and experiential evidence
together.
•        This stance opposes abortion, but does not embrace full-personhood for the
developing life.
•        “Both potential and actual person have a right to life”. 4
•        A potential person is an entity that “will naturally and in due course develop into
a person, but is not yet a person”. 5
•        “If respect is owed to beings because they are in a certain state, it is owed to
whatever, by its nature, develops into that state”.

2. Actuality Principle
•        Being and personhood are distinctions.
•        Personhood consists of a number of unique human functions, which can be
summarized as a “developed capacity for conscious self-reflective intelligence” 6
•        “Embryos and fetuses are among several types of human beings that lack such
personhood capacities; others include those in a persistent vegetative state, newborns,
the irreversibly comatose and the grossly retarded.” 7
•        It is argued that while the lives of all human beings deserve a measure of
respect, they do not have the same status as fully human persons and thus should be
treated as having fewer rights.

3. Essentialism, The Full Personhood Principle, or The Species Principle
•        “Abortion at any stage is a form of murder because it kills a member of the of
the human species, one of that class of creatures called human persons, endowed by
its Creator with immeasurable worth regardless of the developmental status of his
particular functions or capacities.” 8
•        This view attributes the maximum moral status to developing human life
•        Prevents there from being any gap developing between the concepts of human
being and human person.
•        
Discuss the following statements
•        Better to err on the side of caution. Better to attribute too much personhood to
the developing life than too little.
•        Both full personhood and potential personhood view are held by Christians.
Christian principles demand the welcoming, protection and nurturing of human life.
•        How has your study of the Biblical material in part 1 led you to interact with the
views listed above?
•        Which view(s) do you oppose?
•        What view(s) line up with Biblical principles?

Notes
1. Harvey, John Collins. “Distinctly Human”. Commonweal, February 8, 2002, pp.11-13
2. U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract 2000, table 103.
3. Stassen, Glenn and Gushie, David. Kingdom Ethics. Downers Grove, IL: IVP,2003 p.
221
4. Wennberg, p.37
5. Ibid. 38
6. Wennburg, Robert N. “The Right To Life: Three Theories.” In Readings in Christian
Ethics, 2:36-45. Edited by David Clark and Robert Rakestraw. Gtand Rapids, Michigan:
Baker, 1996
7. Stassen and Gushie, p.222
8. Stassen and Gushie, p.221.