Membership Has Its Privileges? Life, Personhood, and Potential in Discussions about Reproductive Choice

Jonathan F Will

doi:10.1111/jlme.12252

Membership Has Its Privileges? Life, Personhood, and Potential in Discussions about Reproductive Choice

J Law Med Ethics. 2015 Summer;43(2):358-62. doi: 10.1111/jlme.12252.

Author

Jonathan F Will¹

Affiliation

¹ Associate Professor of Law, the Associate Dean for Faculty Development, and the founding director of the Bioethics & Health Law Center at Mississippi College School of Law. He also sits on the affiliate faculty of the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. His recent scholarship focuses on the implications of the nationwide Personhood Movement, which seeks to attach the protections of legal personhood at the earliest stages of biological development.

PMID: 26242958
DOI: 10.1111/jlme.12252

Abstract

As Professor Dov Fox points out in his essay, reference to "potential life" in American abortion jurisprudence is both indeterminate and underspecified. This commentary highlights that use of the phrase "potential life" by courts also obscures the fact that a position has been taken that biological life is not the equivalent of legal personhood. Worse, the position has been imposed on those who do not share it without offering reasons to justify its imposition in terms that those who oppose it can reasonably be expected to endorse.

Publication types

Comment

MeSH terms

Abortion, Induced
Abortion, Legal
Beginning of Human Life*
Fetus
Humans
Jurisprudence
Life
Personhood*
Pregnant Women