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communication for a woman aborting a “formed” fetus, but not for an “un-
formed” fetus. These rules of penance suggest a belief that fetuses acquire
greater levels of moral status as they progress developmentally. in fact, in
the late sixteenth century, Catholic theologian Thomas sanchez argued
that the developing embryo goes through graded levels of moral status (in
D. Jones 2001). only in 1869 did the Catholic Church remove the distinc-
tion between “formed” and “unformed” fetuses and prescribe excommu-
nication for aborting a fetus at any stage of development.
A strongly voiced primary criterion for personhood can mask under-
lying pluralistic thinking. for example, the 1999 southern Baptist Con-
vention passed a resolution declaring that “protectable human life begins
at fertilization,” presumably reflecting the belief that an immortal, God-
given soul is present at that time. But in the same document that declares
opposition to the use of human blastocysts to obtain esCs and describes
human embryos as “the most vulnerable members of the human commu-
nity,” the convention reminds its denomination that abortion can be sanc-
tioned “to save the physical life of the mother” (southern Baptist Conven-
tion 1999). The latter position reveals pluralistic thinking since it implies
that the moral status of the mother is greater than that of the fetus. The
document does not detail why the mother is given greater consideration,
but one might assume that it is because she has accumulated more hall-
marks of personhood, such as rationality and a life narrative, than has the
fetus.
(3) Potential personhood.
Assigning personhood to an early embryo does
not require belief that it has a God-given soul. one can simply declare that
an embryo has the potential to develop into a person and that this biological
potential alone entitles it to the moral status of personhood. some bio-
ethicists speak of “latent potential” versus “active potential,” giving greater
moral status to the latter. for example, an unfertilized egg and a nearby
sperm cell have only latent potential to give rise to a person, compared to
the active potential of a fertilized egg to do the same.
The problem with distinguishing between latent and active potentials
is that the line between them is necessarily arbitrary. for example, one
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