What is the value of a human baby?

would be that a human fetus and even a human newborn, therefore has no greater moral status than a fetal or newborn chimp or chicken. A contrary view is that the value of a human fetus is that it will become a baby, then a child, then an adult: a person who will be loved and valued. Although a mother may love her fetus and mourn if she loses that fetus, she is mourning for the child and hence the person that fetus would have become. The human fetus has moral significance because of what the fetus will become, not what it is. Unless we invoke this concept of potential, 2 we are forced to agree with Singer that a human fetus has no more intrinsic value than a fetus of any non-human animal at a similar stage of development. The argument from potential identifies the human fetus as special because of what it will become, not what it is at present. The extreme view of this is that it is always wrong to kill a fetus, because a human fetus is a potential person and, as it is wrong to kill a person, so it is wrong to kill a potential person. The concept of potential is not without problems; one example being uncertainty about the outcome of a pregnancy. The potential of a fetus to become a person will vary depending on the stage of fetal development. A very early embryo has quite a high chance of failing to become a person because of failure to implant or spontaneous abortion. In contrast, a fetus near term will almost certainly survive to become a person. Thus, there are degrees of potential, depending on the probability of the outcome, a concept of potential which Buckle refers to as potency . 3 THE CONSERVATIVE POSITION