Neuromaturation and the Moral Status of Human Fetal Life

Fetal personhood: an intrinsic property or a matter of multiple attributions? JL HE QUESTION "When does human life begin? " has become the well-known and controversial encapsulation of a central issue in the conflict over abortion-the moral status of embryonic/fetal life. From one perspective the question as put is thought to frame the issue adequately. In this view personhood is a matter of natural objectivity; we are simply presented with the fact of full humanness or personhood-an intrinsic and scientifically discoverable property emerging during the course of a continuous ontogenetic process. However, there is a problem with this notion of intrinsic personhood, and it is deciding which of several dif-ferent suggested properties is the one "real " answer to when a particular and per-sonal human life has begun. Is it possession of the unique human genome achieved after fertilization, loss of embryonic ability to twin (i.e. developmental individuality) roughly two weeks later, appearance of fetal motility at six to seven weeks of gestation, emergence of unmistakably human form a few weeks later still, first awareness, or birth? In deciding, one must give reasons for one'