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Articles

Which Beings Should Be Given Rights?

Peter Lloyd asks whether embryos can be hurt.

There are in circulation irreconcilable beliefs about which beings should be deemed to have moral rights, and what those rights should be. For instance, I believe that a pregnant woman should be allowed to abort her foetus if she so wishes, but others think this violates a foetal right to live and should be prohibited. People haggle over moral conflicts like this all the time, but how often is anyone persuaded to change their beliefs radically? Anti-abortionists and pro-choicers remain fixedly in their camps, no matter how many debates they engage in.

This is not so much because people are bloody-minded. Rather, there is no objective means of settling disputes over fundamental moral principles.

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