Warren's Argument Analysis

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.

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

The general argument made from Warren is (1) If a person, they have the right to life, (2) The fetus is not considered a person, and (3) Therefore, since the fetus is not a person they do not have a right to life. Also, (4) A human being needs all the morals of personhood to be considered a person, (5) An infant does not have morals, and (6) Therefore, an infant is not a person because the do not have the morals to be considered a person.

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

The ethics of abortion have long been an issue in the world of both politics and philosophy. Abortion has surfaced many questions regarding the classification of a newly fertilized embryo and whether or not it should be considered a human being. John Noonan, in his paper, “How to Argue About Abortion,” claims that the fetus is in fact a person, from the point of conception to birth, with the right to life. Noonan argues that the main problem with recognizing fetuses as human beings is the inability of some to expand their general view of what it means to be a person (1.

Warren begins her argument by defining a human being as someone who is a “full-fledge member of the community” (149). The members of the community consist of all and only people that possess the 5 qualities that were mentioned before, if you do not have all of those qualities than you are not moral. Warren believes that prior to a certain point of time in the pregnancy, the child does not have “the capacity to understand” of what an abortion would be, they don’t have any feelings or emotions. Judith Thomson questioned,” if we can demonstrate that woman are not morally obliged to complete unwanted pregnancy if they grant the antiabortionist claim that a fetus is a human?” If you are a person you have moral status and your rights should be respected,

Marry Anne Warren and Don Marquis present arguments in favor of and in opposition to the moral permissibility of aborting a pregnancy. Both raise important points, but I am not fully convinced by either argument. Warren proposes a justification for allowing abortion based on the idea of a moral community. According to this view, moral agents have an exclusive or at least preferential obligation to those entities that meet the criteria for membership in the moral community, and their rights should never be violated for the sake of an entity that is not a member. The criterion Warren chooses is personhood, which entails one or more of the characteristics of sentience, communication, reason, emotion, and so on. The essential point of Warren’s

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

Abortion is the deliberate killing of the weakest and most defenseless among us. A pregnant woman has the right to decide whether her baby should live or die. But what about the unborn baby? Doesn’t it get a say? Doesn’t its life cost anything? According to the first amendment of the constitution, we have the freedom of speech. So why not give the speechless fetus a chance to come into the world? If the reason for an abortion is not having enough money or wanting to live a free life, then there are many organizations that can help children that have no support from their family. In this paper, I will defend the view that having an abortion is morally wrong.

In “A Defense of Abortion", Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that a life is a life regardless if it was still in the fetus. Possibly the best argument that was made by Thomson was that a fetus has already been a human person long before birth. In this Paper, I will argue that this argument fails because a life should be consider living when it is “conscious”.

Mary Anne Warren is a proponent of abortion and would agree with Sister Margaret McBride’s and St. Joseph’s Hospital’s decision to go through with the abortion whether or not the mother’s life was in danger. Warren believes that the most important moral issue regarding abortion is the moral status of the fetus. Warren states that “the moral community consists of all and only people, rather than all and only human beings” (On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion, p. 54). Warren finds this distinction between being human and being a person the most important issue regarding the morality of abortion.

Many people when the subject of abortion is mentioned will argue their opinions without really understanding their own beliefs. Some people would say that the unborn children are not human and have no rights, but in this paper I will expound on why abortion in cases of diagnosed fetal anomaly or chromosomal abnormalities is not morally acceptable. Abortion is morally wrong not because of law, not because of a group of people decided it was but because it eliminates compassion, an innocent child’s life and it goes against the act of utilitarianism. According to Mary Warrens essay “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion” the unborn child, in any of its conditions, genetic differences, or diseases, has a right to life just as

Warren thinks that not all humans are persons, and there could be persons that aren’t human. Warren is not trying to analyze or define the concept of personhood. Rather, she is trying to give a list of traits that are central to the concept of personhood. The five characteristics which evaluate personhood are consciousness, reason, self-motivated activities, the capacity to communicate, and the presence of self-awareness. Warren states that at least some of these are necessary, if not sufficient, criteria for personhood. She argues that fetuses do not meet any of these criteria, therefore they cannot be persons, and cannot have moral standing, and therefore abortion is

Abortion is the intentional expulsion of a fetus from a woman’s womb, either at her request through her agency, resulting in the fetus’s death. Whether or not a “fetus is a person” serves as the focal point in the debate for abortion. Warren concludes that a fetus is not a person and thus a woman has a moral right to abortion. The plausibility of her argument relies on the term of “person.” A person is defined as a self conscious or rational being belonging to the human species. However, the terms person and human are used interchangeably. A person can be a human being just as a human being can be a person. What criteria must a being meet to qualify as a person? Warren claims that in order for a being to be considered a person it must meet

“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).