Philosopher Mike Almeida offers an interesting argument at Prosblogion against the way our society currently regards the unborn child . It goes like this:
Case 1: Consider a possible world which is similar to ours except for the rate at which our counterparts develop into persons. Otherwise, the rate of biological development is not much different, the human counterparts are born on average nine months after conception too. But they are conscious, thinking, and reasoning at a much higher level, much sooner. They are, in short, persons much sooner in something like the textbook sense of 'person'. Suppose they are textbook persons within a week of conception. Here's what's not credible: it is permissible to terminate a textbook person so long as you do so before a week has elapsed. It is just not credible that, on day 5.99999 the being has no particular value, but on day 6 it has great value.
By "textbook person" I take Almeida to mean something like, "A living human being with the capacity to engage in acts of intellect, emotion, and will."
Case 2: But suppose you don't find that incredible. Consider a world in which it takes 30 seconds to develop into a textbook person. It's not credible that I had no moral value .00002 seconds ago, and now I have great moral value. The moral difference in you is negligible over .002 seconds.
Case 3: If you find it incredible that it is permissible to terminate the would-be textbook person in case (1) or case (2), then you should find it incredible that it is permissible to terminate an actual would-be textbook person. Even if you suppose that the predicate 'being a person' is vague, it is true that, at some level of vagueness, a being moves from not definitely all the way up a textbook person to definitely all the way up textbook person in an instant. In an instant, the being moves from being the sort of thing that has hardly any value to the kind of thing that you cannot terminate with doing an extreme moral wrong. But it cannot be true that the natural properties you acquire in a single instant are sufficient to make that great of a moral difference.
Of course, current law (Roe v. Wade) assumes that this is exactly what happens. At some point in the child's development it suddenly acquires the status of a person with the right to life. The child may be aborted before that point but not after. As Almeida's thought experiment makes clear, however, the current law is based on very dubious logic.
RLC