Five Characteristics Of Warren's Basic Criteria For Personhood

The next position that Noonan (2012) disputes is that humanity is defined by experience. Someone has to have lived and formed memories to be considered human. He disputes this belief in several ways, with varying successfulness. His first argument is that an embryo feels and reacts at eight weeks gestation (p. 470). This argument is strong in supporting abortion bans after 8 weeks or 10 weeks (when the embryo is considered a fetus). It is not as strong in supporting abortion bans altogether, which is his argument. It does not support Noonan’s theory that an embryo becomes “human” at the moment of conception. Few could argue that a blastocyst (the bundle of cells that will form the embryo) is having experiences.

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.

This is clearly very sketchy, because infants and mentally or physically challenged people are still referred to and thought of as “people”, or “members of the moral community”, despite a lack of many of these traits.

Just like Egnor and Fisher, many pro-life advocates feel passionately about their stance and some like Oliver Lindor fear ‘If personhood can be removed from preborn lives, what’s to stop us from removing it from others?” (Lindor, 2015). They feel as though a baby, a human life, is formed the second a sperm and ovum merge. On the other hand, feminists such as Marianna Karakoulaki contest this idea. She cites that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has a clause which states “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. She puts emphasis on the fact that the clause says “born” not conceived. This issue is currently and will continue to be important to many people.

Warren criteria of personhood is cognitive. According to Warren, beings must have the following to be persons: Consciousness (of objects and events external and/or internal to the being), and the capacity to feel pain; Reasoning (the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems), and self motivated activity, and communication. She further argued that if 1.If X fails to meet all five conditions on personhood, then X is not a person. 2.The fetus fails to meet all five conditions on personhood. Therefore 3. The fetus is not a person.

Her argument does not specify if the same reasoning can be applied to fetuses. Not specifying which certain traits are needed to be classified as a person opens up questions for critics saying that it is not wrong for infanticide because an infant is not more of a person than a fetus according to her arguments. Although her response about this is that infanticide is not just because it deprives the infants from people that care about them and can find happiness along their side. A person might want to raise these infants and the reason why they should be put into orphanages. In the end Warren’s argument is contradicting that infanticide is morally wrong because it deprives form having

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

Mary Anne Warren’s argument on the legal status of abortion stands on a concrete understanding and realization of an individual’s personhood. Now Mary Anne Warren’s unyielding argument on the basis of personhood is that, “If we assume that an entity is a person just because it happens to belong to our favored biological classification, we stand convicted of speciesism, close cousin to racism. There are properties that do qualify an entity as a person, but simply being human is not one of them” (124). To first be able to argue why the abortion of a fetus is permissible she needs to give a clear distinction of what can be established a decisive factor of personhood. To distinguish a line between a fetus and a human and if abortion is to be morally permissible there needs to be an understanding of when this cut off between the two officially happens. In an example of the potential personhood and a right to life Mary Ann Warren uses a hypothetical scenario of a space explorer who lands on an unknown plant. While on this plant he encounters a race of aliens. Now since he is on another plant in the presence of these alien beings how should he act towards these beings. He must first determine if they have the capability of morality or if it is acceptable to consume these aliens for food. To determine if these aliens are in fact part of a moral personhood maybe he can notice works of art, forms of tools, and communication. However, even without evidence of these things they could

It has the full potential of becoming a person. In that sentence is the distinction. A person has the right to live and to be treated with equal consideration among the rest of the population. A fetus, although undeniably a human, is not a person, and therefore does not have those rights. A single cell amoeba is extremely similar to a human zygote, it also has a unique set of DNA, uses oxygen for energy that allows its cells divide and grow just the same as a human zygote; but it would be absurd for someone to defend the life of this amoeba because it has a right to live. To refer to a fetus as a person that deserves rights is a blatant category mistake. A fetus is not a person in the same right as you and I, it is a bundle of human cells with the potential of becoming a person.

In Mary Anne Warren’s “The Abortion Issue,” children are not persons in the empirical sense. Warren believes that prior to a certain point in a pregnancy, the child does not have “the capacity to understand” the ramifications of what an abortion would be, therefore the abortion does not infringe upon the rights of the unborn fetus. She states that: “…in the ways that matter from a moral point of view, human fetuses are very unlike human persons, particularly in their early months of development”(152). In essence, personhood as defined by Warren can only come after the first trimester. Before that time, the fetus does not have the sentience that would make it a person. Warren’s main criteria for

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)

Even if a fetus is defined as a human being because it has a potential life, if the fetus does not yet aspire to live. It is impossible to argue that the fetus values its future yet, so why should it have a right to it?

opposite claim; that the unborn child, because it is a developing human being, possesses a moral status

“On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion”, an essay written by Mary Anne Warren, defend abortion in any stage of a woman’s pregnancy (pg 468). Warren argues that the potential to become a human being is not the same as being human and deserving the same right to life (pg. 468-472). This essay asserts that in order to be human, one must possess five particular traits (pg. 470). These trait are consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, the ability to communicate, and awareness of oneself (pg. 470). Warren claims that since a fetus has not yet acquired all of the traits, then that fetus is not human and therefore does not have the right to life (pg. 470).

Scientist, Doctors, the Bible (History), Senate and Pro-choice / Planned Parenthood all agree that an embryo is a person from the moment of