The origins of professional ethical codes and oaths are explored. Their legitimacy and usefulness within the profession are questioned and an alternative ethical source is suggested. This source relies on a commonly shared, naturally knowable set of principles known as common morality.

Moral rights feature prominently and are relied on substantially in debates in bioethics. Conceptually, however, duties can perform the logical work of rights, but not vice versa, and reference to rights is therefore inessential. Normatively, rights, like duties, depend on more basic moral values or principles, and attempts to establish the logical priority of rights over duties or the reverse are misguided. In practical decision making, however, an analysis in terms of duties is more fruitful than one based on rights. (...) A right may function as a proxy term for a consequentialist rule, or for a deontological constraint, but does not thereby enrich these concepts. Rights may also help in a purely expressive sense and may assist an initial focusing on a moral conflict. However, their role in bioethics discourse is more one of convenience than of necessity. Moreover, unless rights are firmly founded on fundamental moral values, their use encourages rhetoric rather than argument. (shrink)

The study attempts to determine whether or not human fetuses have moral status. Three broad categories of answers to the question were analyzed. The arguments developed by Michael Tooley in Abortion and Infanticide are assessed as representative of the liberal view. Those of L. W. Sumner in Abortion and Moral Theory stand as moderate claims and in the position defended by William May in "Abortion and Man's Moral Being" represents a conservative position. The work of other authors is drawn upon (...) to help analyze the central arguments and to provide alternate interpretations. Among these are Jane English, Judith Thomson, Christina Hoff Sommers, Ronald Green, Joseph Donceel, Lawrence Becker, and Gareth Matthews. ;Though each of the three principal authors is found to present potentially forceful arguments, none of them is thought to provide a fully convincing account of the moral status of fetuses. Important difficulties stem from the use of particular theories of rights and from inadequate treatment of the concept of potentiality. ;The study arrives at two conclusions. The first is that arguments for or against the moral status of fetuses are grounded in more basic, conflicting moral theories about rights or moral behavior. Thus the question of the moral status of fetuses is not likely to receive a universally acceptable answer before moral philosophers come to agreement on basic moral principles. ;The second is that the discussions above have nonetheless yielded two important considerations which together form the basis of a tenable position on the moral status of fetuses. I suggest that an argument can be developed from two claims. One is a conservative claim that an embryo or fetus is the same entity as a later human being. The other is a moral principle discussed by Michael Tooley, viz. that where an entity will at some time in its life have rights, it is wrong to affect it so that the entity will be incapable of exercising those rights when the time comes. The argument supports the conclusion that, from the period of the embryo on, there is an entity that merits our moral consideration. (shrink)