  Some accept that the human embryo is a human being but argue that the human embryo does not have the moral status requisite for a right to life. There is reason to think that species membership is not the property that determines a being’s moral status. We have all been presented with the relevant thought experiments, courtesy of Disney, Orwell, Kafka, and countless science fiction works. The results seem clear: we regard mice, pigs, insects, aliens, and so on, as having the moral status of persons in those possible worlds in which they exhibit the psychological and cognitive traits that we normally associate with mature human beings. This suggests that it is some higher-order mental capacity (or capacities) that grounds the right to life. While there is no consensus about the capacities that are necessary for the right to life, some of the capacities that have been proposed include reasoning, self-awareness, and agency (Kuhse &amp; Singer 1992, Tooley 1983, Warren 1973).