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Ethical and Policy Developments 
and features, and that instead we must recognize each mem- 
ber of our species from his or her earliest days as a human be- 
ing deserving of dignified treatment. They contend that a hu- 
man embryo already has the biological potential needed to en- 
able the exercise, at a later stage of development, of certain 
functions. Sentience and sensation come in later in the process 
of development, but their seeds are there right from the begin- 
ning. And the fact that an embryo cannot develop outside the 
body is not an argument for leaving it outside the body. There 
is, they argue, no clear place to draw a line after the earliest 
formation of the organism, and so there can be no stark divi- 
sion between the moral standing of nascent human life and 
that of more mature individuals.®® 
2. The Case for Meaningful Discontinuity and Developing Moral 
Status. 
Many other observers, however, argue that some biologi- 
cally and morally significant discontinuities do in fact present 
themselves in the course of early human development. These 
arguments generally do not simply hinge on biological descrip- 
tions — which are, in the absence of analysis, largely devoid of 
obvious moral significance — ^but instead begin from some im- 
plicit or explicit claim regarding the importance of a particular 
feature, capacity, form, or function (or the progressive accumu- 
lation of these) in defining a developing organism as meaning- 
fully a member of the human race.* Not simply groimded in bi- 
ology, they appeal also to a moral or even metaphysical claim 
about the meaning of humanity.®® They suggest that the devel- 
oping human organism might become (at once or progres- 
sively) deserving of protection as it becomes able to feel pain, 
or to exhibit neural activity, or rudimentary features of con- 
sciousness, or some elements of the human form, or the capac- 
ity to function independently— or as it progressively exhibits 
more and more of these or other criteria. Until that time, many 
argue, a developing human deserves some respect because of 
what it might become, but not protection on par (or nearly so) 
’ Also, several traditional religious views of the embryo (among some Jews 
and some Muslims, for instance) have attributed humanity to the embryo 
only after a particular point in its development, for example the 40*** day. 
PRE -PUBLICATION VERSION 
