Autonomy  Individual autonomy is an idea that is generally understood to refer to the capacity to be one's own person, to live one's life according to reasons and motives that are taken as one's own and not the product of manipulative or distorting external forces.

Rights  A right is the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled or a thing to which one has a just claim.  Human rights refers to the concept of human beings as having universal rights, or status, regardless of legal jurisdiction, and likewise other localizing factors, such as ethnicity and nationality.  Inalienable rights (or unalienable rights) refers to a set of absolute rights that are endowed by God, not awarded by any human power and not capable of being repudiated or transfered to another power. The phrase is most famously used in the United States Declaration of Independence, where "unalienable rights" are said to include "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."  Civil rights are the protections and privileges of personal liberty given to all citizens by law.  Contractual rights are those based on laws agreed upon between persons for whom those laws are valid.

Rights  Legal a right is the legal or moral entitlement to do or refrain from doing something  Moral  Positive oblige others in some way  Negative free oneself from obligation or coercion

Rights  Rights entail duties.  A right-holder has control over the incidence of the duty  Rights protect freedom.

Beings, Human Beings and Persons  Ultimate question in Medical Ethics (or any ethics): What makes human life valuable? Why is it more valuable than other forms of life?  Save a person rather than a dog if we can only save one

Beings, Human Beings and Persons  Day-to-day decisions taken in medical practice presuppose answers to those questions Abortion could only be permissible in cases where there is no danger to mother and foetus is normal on the assumption that it is somehow less valuable than adults and lacks rights afforded to them. Are mentally or physically handicapped less valuable than others?- then anyone who considers detection of abnormality in a foetus is grounds for abortion must accept they believe the person to be less worth saving or less entitled to life.

Beings, Human Beings and Persons  Similar considerations occur at the other end of the spectrum  Should we continue to devote resources and resuscitation of the aged of terminally ill, or those in a coma, or PVS etc?  If we divert resource allocation to more ‘worthwhile’ cases are we treating those lives as less valuable than those we choose to help?

So what is a person?  Human being? Are all humans persons?  Active Personal Identity? Sense of self  Conscious mind? Does that exclude some humans? (babies and dementia)  Are there degrees of personhood? D. Parfit