least in academia. It is conceded that human beings exist at fertilization. But it is argued that legal protection should extend only to “persons” who have attributes or functions far more developed than that of the embryonic human being.7 The human embryo clearly cannot exercise the rational mental functions that pro-abortion philosophers claim endow a human being with the status of personhood (and so, in their view, human rights). But then neither does an infant or a comatose patient, both of whom