Article Text
Abstract
Recently, I argued that subjects inside of artificial wombs—termed ‘gestatelings’ by Romanis—share the same legal and moral status as newborns (neonates). Gestatelings, on my view, are persons in both a legal and moral sense. Kingma challenges these claims. Specifically, Kingma argues that my previous argument is invalid, as it equivocates on the term ‘newborn’. Kingma concludes that questions about the legal and moral status of gestatelings remain ‘unanswered’. I am grateful to Kingma for raising potential concerns with the view I have presented. In this essay, however, I argue that (most) of Kingma’s objections are unpersuasive. First, my original argument does not equivocate on terms like ‘newborn’ or ‘neonate’. The terms denote human beings that have been born recently; that is what matters to the argument. Charges of equivocation, I suspect, rest on a confusion between the denotation and connotations of ‘newborn’ (or ‘neonate’). Next, I show that, contra Kingma, it is clear that—under current law in the USA and UK—gestatelings would count as legal persons. Moral personhood is more difficult. On that subject, Kingma’s criticisms have merit. In response, however, I show that my original claim—that gestatelings should count as moral persons—remains true on several (common) philosophical accounts of personhood. Regarding those accounts that imply gestatelings are not moral persons, I argue that advocates face a troubling dilemma. I conclude that regardless of which view of moral personhood one adopts, questions about the moral status of gestatelings are not ‘unanswered’.
- embryos and fetuses
- ethics
- moral status
- newborns and minors
- reproductive medicine
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Contributors NC is the sole author of this essay.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Conventional revolution: the ethical implications of the natural progress of neonatal intensive care to artificial wombs
- Clinicians’ criteria for fetal moral status: viability and relationality, not sentience
- Abortion and Ectogenesis: Moral Compromise
- Moral uncertainty and the farming of human-pig chimeras
- Subjects of ectogenesis: are ‘gestatelings’ fetuses, newborns or neither?
- Artificial womb technology and the significance of birth: why gestatelings are not newborns (or fetuses)
- Genetic enhancement, post-persons and moral status: a reply to Buchanan
- Artificial womb technology and the frontiers of human reproduction: conceptual differences and potential implications
- In defence of gestatelings: response to Colgrove
- Are those who subscribe to the view that early embryos are persons irrational and inconsistent? A reply to Brock