The answers rest upon broader assumptions about the purpose, the telos, of human existence in general. How does a society that regards abortion as legitimate understand the humanity of the woman involved? Indeed, how does it understand humanity in general? These questions are pertinent to the moral discussion because the issue of abortion cannot be reduced to the narrow question of the status of the child in the womb. Yet our fundamental disagreements over abortion involve additional questions. This makes intuitive sense, because the answer to these questions determines whether abortion is merely a medical procedure or a form of homicide. Is the embryo a human being? Is there a meaningful distinction between a human being and a person? Parsing such questions is critical to determining abortion’s morality. When discussing abortion, our debate over what it means to be human or to be a person tends to focus on the baby in the womb. Today, such a simple answer would not pass muster, for the question of what it means to be human is itself contested. Her answer was a resounding yes, because women and men share a common humanity. Sayers posed in the title of a famous and witty essay.
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