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Innocence Beyond Moral Agency: A Response to Nobis and Dudley

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(Image generated by ChatGPT) In their 2021 award-winning Salon opinion piece, " Why the Case Against Abortion Is Weak, Ethically Speaking ," Nathan Nobis and Jonathan Dudley argue that most abortions are not morally wrong. In doing so, they critique a common argument against abortion, sometimes called the "humanity argument," which claims that abortion is morally wrong because it kills fetuses that are "innocent human beings with the right to life." This post responds to one of their objections to the humanity argument: the claim that fetuses can’t be innocent. (The objection is also discussed here , here , and here .) Nobis and Dudley argue that fetuses can't be innocent because “calling fetuses ‘innocent’ assumes that they are persons: ‘innocence’ implies the potential for guilt, and that’s only true of persons...[and]...fetuses are not persons..., since they...lack consciousness-enabling brains.” Simply put, Nobis and Dudley contend that embryos a...
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Responses to Sections 1, 2, and 3 of Nathan Nobis's "Are Embryos 'Babies' and Children'?"

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The American Journal of Bioethics Blog recently published a post by Nathan Nobis entitled " Are Embryos 'Babies' and Children'? " The following responds to sections, 1, 2, and 3. Response to Section 1 In section 1, Nobis argues for two claims. First, he argues that people might use words like ‘baby’ and ‘child’ as non-literal terms of endearment for embryos and early fetuses. Second, he argues that pro-abortion activists don’t have to agree with anti-abortion activists who say that words like ‘baby’ and ‘child’ should be used literally for embryos and early fetuses. The argument for the first claim— people might use words like ‘baby’ and ‘child’ as non-literal terms of endearment for embryos and early fetuses —is that people use terms like ‘bean,’ ‘bun,’ and ‘bunny’ as non-literal terms of endearment for embryos and early fetuses. So, they might also use ‘baby’ and ‘child’ as non-literal terms of endearment for embryos and early fetuses. This is good as far as it ...
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