"An ethics of permission, however, can extend only to those who are capable of giving or refusing permission. Thus secular bioethics has a bias in favor of “persons,” where “person” is understood in terms of this prior notion of permission: persons are all and only those beings capable of entering into, or refusing to enter into agreement with others. One obvious consequence of this is that there can be no secular restraints on the morality of abortion: embryos and fetuses cannot enter into agreements, and so are left unprotected from those who would do them harm. The unborn are radically outside of the secular moral community."