Virtue Ethics and Abortion Arguments

Distinguish a human organism, a psychological subject, a moral patient, and a legal person.

Reconstruct in premise-and-conclusion form the argument that moral subjecthood begins only with an organized capacity for consciousness.

Distinguish numerical identity over time from the properties or capacities that may ground moral status.

Evaluate whether dependence of mental activity on the brain entails that the mind, rather than the living human organism, is the persisting subject.

Use matter, form, first actuality, and second actuality to explain the unity and development of a living human being.

Distinguish an intrinsic developmental capacity from mere passive potential, and apply that distinction to prenatal development.

Construct a hylomorphic argument that the prenatal human organism is numerically identical with the later conscious human being.

Explain how human flourishing, natural capacities, and the unity of a human life ground moral consideration in Aristotelian virtue ethics.

Derive a focused argument against elective abortion from human identity, the good of life, justice, and the virtues governing parental responsibility.

Answer the objection that interests, sentience, or consciousness—not organismic identity—are necessary for morally significant harm.

Assess how bodily autonomy limits the obligations of pregnancy without assuming either fetal personhood or abortion’s permissibility.

Explain why moral wrongness does not by itself establish that conduct should be legally prohibited.

Describe the nationwide constitutional baseline after Dobbs, including the roles of state authority, federal power, and unresolved constitutional questions.

Construct a prudential common-good argument for legal protection of prenatal human life that addresses equality, pluralism, enforcement costs, and difficult cases.