TY - JOUR T1 - Response to commentaries on ‘Expressivism at the beginning and end of life’ JF - Journal of Medical Ethics JO - J Med Ethics SP - 553 LP - 553 DO - 10.1136/medethics-2020-106686 VL - 46 IS - 8 AU - Philip Reed Y1 - 2020/08/01 UR - http://jme.bmj.com/content/46/8/553.abstract N2 - I appreciate all of the commentaries for their careful and thoughtful engagement with my article. Because of limited space, I can only focus on some criticisms and cannot develop my responses as fully as I would like. This is probably best for the reader anyway.John Keown worries about the ‘dualism’ of the third objection against expressivism. By this I think he means that critics of the expressivist argument at the beginning of life view a certain class of human beings as ‘non-persons’ and therefore not worthy of protection (‘dualism’ thus refers to two classes of human beings). Obviously, a pro-life stance will take issue with classifying the unborn as non-persons, as defenders of selective abortion and other biotechnologies do, but I did not think it relevant to get into the weeds on this issue. Keown claims that the worrisome dualism views those with intellectual disabilities, whether ‘newborns or adults’, as non-persons who lack a right not to be killed. However, I do not think defenders of either selective abortion or assisted suicide are committed to this. Many would insist (whether they are justified in doing this is another matter) that once you are born, you are a person and therefore cannot … ER -