Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 59

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

51 

Opinion of the Court 

be entitled to legal protection until it acquires the charac-
teristics that they regard as defining what it means to be a
“person.”  Among the characteristics that have been offered
as essential attributes of “personhood” are sentience, self-
awareness,  the  ability  to  reason,  or  some  combination 
thereof.50    By  this  logic,  it  would  be  an  open  question
whether even born individuals, including young children or
those afflicted with certain developmental or medical con-
ditions, merit protection as “persons.”  But even if one takes 
the view that “personhood” begins when a certain attribute 
or combination of attributes is acquired, it is very hard to
see why viability should mark the point where “personhood” 
begins.

The  most  obvious  problem  with  any  such  argument  is
that  viability  is  heavily  dependent  on  factors  that  have 
nothing to do with the characteristics of a fetus.  One is the 

—————— 

50 See, e.g., P. Singer, Rethinking Life & Death 218 (1994) (defining a 
person as “a being with awareness of her or his own existence over time,
and the capacity to have wants and plans for the future”); B. Steinbock, 
Life Before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos and Fetuses 
9–13 (1992) (arguing that “the possession of interests is both necessary 
and  sufficient  for  moral  status”  and  that  the  “capacity  for  conscious 
awareness is a necessary condition for the possession of interests” (em-
phasis deleted)); M. Warren, On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion, 
57 The Monist 1, 5 (1973) (arguing that, to qualify as a person, a being 
must have at least one of five traits that are “central to the concept of 
personhood”: (1) “consciousness (of objects and events external and/or in-
ternal to the being), and in particular the capacity to feel pain”; (2) “rea-
soning (the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex prob-
lems)”; 
is  relatively 
independent of either genetic or direct external control)”; (4) “the capac-
ity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite vari-
ety of types”; and (5) “the presence of self-concepts, and self-awareness, 
either individual or racial, or both” (emphasis deleted)); M. Tooley, Abor-
tion  &  Infanticide,  2  Philosophy  &  Pub.  Affairs  37,  49  (Autumn  1972)
(arguing that “having a right to life presupposes that one is capable of 
desiring to continue existing as a subject of experiences and other mental
states”). 

(3)  “self-motivated  activity 

(activity  which