Beginning of human personhood
The beginning of human personhood is the moment when a human is first recognized as a person. There are differences of opinion as to the precise time when human personhood begins and the nature of that status. The issue arises in a number of fields including science, religion, philosophy, and law, and is most acute in debates relating to abortion, stem cell research, reproductive rights, and fetal rights.
Traditionally, the concept of personhood has entailed the concept of soul, a metaphysical concept referring to a non-corporeal or extra-corporeal dimension of human being. In modernity, the concepts of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, personhood, mind, and self have come to encompass a number of aspects of human being previously considered to be characteristics of the soul.[1][2] With regard to the beginning of human personhood, one historical question has been when the soul enter the body. In modern terms, the question could be put instead at what point the developing individual develop personhood or selfhood.[3]
Related issues attached to the question of the beginning of human personhood include both the legal status, bodily integrity, and subjectivity of mothers,[4] as well as the philosophical concept of "natality", i.e. "the distinctively human capacity to initiate a new beginning", which a new human life embodies.[5]
