A Critique of John T. Noonan's an Almost Absolute Value in History

The topic of abortion is heavily debated. One of the major controversies surrounding abortion is whether or not the embryo is a human life and able to receive the same rights as any other human. Is the embryo mentally developed enough to be considered as a human life? It is medically proven that after conception, the human brain takes many months to develop, so the “personhood” of a fetus cannot begin until about the seventh month.

There are many factors that are taken into consideration when determining if abortion is morally permissible, or wrong including; sentience of the fetus, the fetuses right to life, the difference between adult human beings and fetuses, the autonomy of the pregnant woman, and the legality of abortion. Don Marquis argues that abortion is always morally wrong, excluding cases in which the woman is threatened by pregnancy, or abortion after rape, because fetuses have a valuable future. Mary Anne Warren contends that late term abortions are morally permissible because birth is the most significant event for a fetus, and a woman’s autonomy should never be suspended.

In On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion, Mary Anne Warren discusses a few arguments against abortion, namely bringing into play whether the fetus is actually a person, or “not a member of the moral community”. She

John Noonan begins his essay by rejecting several answers to the questions of when does life begin, he uses a word that the courts specifically did not use which is viability. Another is ensoulment. He uses what he called Catholic theology to answer that question plainly stating that if you are conceived by human parents then you are human. He reviewed the weakness of arguments about abortion to leave his position as the only one that made sense.

Science tells us that from the moment of fertilization, a fetus is a human. Despite this, however, there is a swarm of controversy surrounding question, when does a fetus become a human? Many people believe that once a baby is conceived, it is considered a living human being. Many of these people believe that whether or not a fetus is a human is chiefly a scientific question. “The question as to when a human being begins is strictly a scientific question, and should be answered by human embryologists - not by philosophers, bioethicists, theologians, politicians, x-ray technicians, movie stars or obstetricians and gynecologists” (Irving). While Irving has a valid point in saying that whether or not a fetus is a human is a question mainly for

The debate about abortion focuses on two issues; 1.) Whether the human fetus has the right to life, and, if so, 2.) Whether the rights of the mother override the rights of the fetus. The two ethicists who present strong arguments for their position, and who I am further going to discuss are that of Don Marquis and Judith Thomson. Marquis' "Future Like Ours" (FLO) theory represents his main argument, whereas, Thomson uses analogies to influence the reader of her point of view. Each argument contains strengths and weaknesses, and the point of this paper is to show you that Marquis presents a more sound argument against abortion than Thomson presents for it. An in depth overview of both arguments will be

While the history component is important in understanding the future of abortion in the United States, an examination of the varying ideological arguments is paramount as well.

When an embryo should be considered an actual human has a variety of answers, “some have sought to reject that the early human embryo is a human being, according to one view, the cells that comprise the early embryo are a bundle of homogeneous cells that exist in the same membrane but do not form a human organism because the cells do not function in a coordinated way to regulate and preserve a single life”.(Siegel)

These arguments are doubtful because women in the contemporary society have different opportunities to plan the birth of the child. Contemporary methods of contraception give women good chances to plan their future pregnancy and to avoid undesirable pregnancy. Some specialists believe that abortion contradicts to the American Constitution, which guarantees the right for life to all citizens of the country. According to the latest research life of the child starts after fertilization and this way abortion becomes a murder of the human creature. There are debates about the time which should be considered the start of the human life. Till recent time the most common opinion was that the birth of the child is a start of human life. At the present moment more and more people turn to the opinion that human life starts earlier than the child is born. Specialists believe that the process of fertilization give a beginning to new life. This way during the abortion human creatures are killed and this can be regarded as a crime.

Abortion is one of the most controversial topics of all times. The definition most people associate with abortion is the termination of unwanted pregnancy. In their essay, “The Wrong of Abortion”, Patrick Lee and Robert P. George argue that intentional abortion is unjust and therefore objectively immoral no matter the circumstances. Also, they argue that “the burden of carrying the baby is significantly less than the harm the baby would suffer by being killed; the mother and father have a special responsibility to the child; it follows that intentional abortion (even in few cases where the baby’s death is an unintended but foreseen side effect) is unjust ” (24).

Based on the view that the fetus is already a small baby, some extreme anti-abortionists would maintain that abortion is impermissible even to save the mothers life. The rationale behind this view would be that the child is innocent, and killing the child would be active, on the other hand, letting the mother die would be passive. This introduces two new concepts, the first being the mother’s rights in competition to those of the fetus and the second being the question of innocence and how we would define this (Langley).

However, there is no clear scientific evidence that determines the emergence of these characteristics, and therefore he suggests that abortion becomes morally wrong after the earliest point at which it can feel, which is at 18 weeks (Singer, Taking Life: Humans, 137) . Therefore, from weeks 0-18, it is considered morally permissible to have an abortion, whereas it isn’t from weeks 18-40. Although utilitarian notions can provide a clear criterion for the permissibility of abortion, this argument involves ambiguous notions that are not fully understood, and it would therefore be unwise to accept it.

Noonan, Jr., "An Almost Absolute Value in History," in The Morality of Abortion, ed. John T. Noonan, Jr. (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).

Abortion is always argued with different cases and play a main role in medical ethics (blackwell.,p291).It is evidently reasonable for some to argue that in moral situation, abortion is a murder and it should be illegal, while others may claim that abortion is woman’s right when concerning on autonomy ( The abortion debate in Australia). Opponents of making abortion legal claim that abortion is a kind of murder on extend of moral situation. It is always regarded as a sin to kill a person who is no aggressor in most moral communities (new ethics 1). Fetus is a biologically human as it is not just a part of the mothers, such as a lung or a kidney. On the contrary, it is obvious that fetus is human due to he or she has genetic code of human and human parents as well (abortion myth p5). Moreover, it has potentiality to be a person with primary moral worth (text book p210-211). As Gillion (new ethics) pointed out, every person has his right to life, especially he is not an aggressor. This point is also been pointed by (Rebecca and john,Blackwell p204), “embryos has a right to life” .The fetus is innocent and

“it is said that to draw a line, to choose a point in this development and say ‘before this point the thing is not a person, after this point it is a person’ is to make an arbitrary choice… It is concluded that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. But this conclusion does not follow. Similar things might be said about the development of an acorn into an oak tree, and it does not follow that acorns are oak trees” (Thompson 1971).