Mary Anne Warren Abortion Summary

Marquis then goes on to disassociate the ‘desire account’ as an influential element of his debate. It is pro-choice belief that takes into account it is someone’s desire to keep living that makes it wrong to kill a person as it interferes with their direct wishes. Once again when relating this view to abortion there is an obvious logical flaw. A fetus does not have the capability to be self aware let alone able to express a desire for the continuation of its life. Dose this make the action morally permissible? If so then Marquis elaborates this idea relating it individuals in circumstances where they either do not desire the continuation of their life or they are unable to express such a desire for instance in a coma. He concedes that it is still deemed wrong to kill them even though there would be no expressed desire for life at the time of the killing. Because the argument is broad it cannot be practically applied in the case of abortion.

Warren’s Basic Criteria for Personhood is a list of five different characteristics that a person should have. If you do not fulfil them, you should not be considered a person. As I explain all five characteristics, ask yourself if an infant has all, if any, of these characteristics. The first criterion is consciousness, and in particular, the ability to feel pain (Warren 5). The second is reasoning: you must have the ability to solve new and complex problems (Warren 5). Third, you must have self-motivated activity: an activity that is independent of either genetic or direct external control (Warren 5). The fourth, having the capacity to communicate, on indefinitely many topics (Warren 5). Finally, having the presence of self-concepts and self-awareness (Warren 5). This begs the question: should an infant be considered a person?

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

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.

Mary Anne Warren (p.195-196) points out the exceptional circumstances of pregnancy; where one human is entirely biologically reliant on another and where it is impossible for complete personhood rights to not be in conflict between the foetus and the mother. Consider the following case. A mother and an expecting mother both express an intent to kill their child or unborn child respectively. Services are available to take the postnatal children from their mother without affecting her body. Yet to protect the foetus, one would have to imprison the mother until birth, or worse, force a caesarean on her. Warren (193) points out that forced caesareans are not merely a hypothetical

3. If a life is valued based off the future possible contributions then a fetus’s life is more valuable than the mothers’.

Mary Anne Warren argues in the position that abortion is morally permissible because the fetus is not a person therefore has no rights and not considered immoral to be killed. I shall argue that Warren’s argument in invalid since the claims of argument cannot be proven.

Lastly, Marquis offers an analogy, the analogy with animals. He goes to show that humans are not the only living things that can suffer. That the suffering of non-human animals is wrong, and thus inflicting pain, whether it is towards a person or non-person is wrong. To deprive someone of a future value is a misfortune no matter whom the deprivation in inflicted on. This analogous argument goes to show that abortion is wrong by taking the same form of this argument for that causing pain and suffering to non-human animals is wrong.

In his essay Why Abortion is Immoral Don Marquis attempts to argue that abortion is almost always wrong except for a few special circumstances such as when the life of the mother is being threatened by the pregnancy. In his thesis Marquis asserts that abortion is in the same moral category as killing an innocent adult human being and the ethics of abortion is solvable. The strongest argument that Marquis presents to defend his thesis is the claim that what makes killing wrong is the loss of the victim’s future. In this paper, I will argue that this argument fails because aborting a fetus is not in the same moral category as killing an innocent adult human being.

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

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

Mary Anne Warren is one of the top advocates for keeping abortion legal without any restrictions on it. She states that the morality of abortion is dependent on the moral status of the baby, not simply on the rights of the mother. She criticizes those who defend abortion as the right to control one's body: "it is at best a rather feeble argument for the permissibility of abortion. Mere ownership does not give me the right to kill innocent people whom I find on my property…" (The Monist, pg. 44) Using this analogy she shows that just because the fetus is inside us it does mean we have a right to terminate it.

“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).

The following essay will examine the morality of abortion with specific reference to the writings of Don Marquis, Judith Jarvis Thompson, Peter Singer and Mary Anne Warren. I will begin by assessing the strength of the argument provided by Marquis which claims that abortion is impermissible because it deprives a being of a potential “future like ours,” and then go on to consider the writings of Singer, Thomson and Warren to both refute Marquis claims and support my assertion that abortion is morally permissible primarily because of the threat to the freedom and bodily autonomy of women extending the right to life to a foetus in utero would pose.