Mary Anne Warren's Characteristics Of Personhood

Mary Anne Warren contends that abortion is morally permissible on the grounds that a fetus is not a person. In her eyes, although, fetuses are genetically distinct humans they are not people because they do not have the necessary characteristics for personhood: sentience, reasoning, emotionality, the capacity to communicate, self-awareness, and moral agency. For her, the lack of these characteristics do not necessarily allude that a fetus is not a person only that it belittles the confidence that they are a person- or in other words creates doubt of their personhood. In this essay, I shall argue when it comes to emotionality Warren sets the bar too high and indoingso runs the risk of wrongly overlooking different types of emotionality, which

That is, a fetus lacks the capacity to communicate, sentience, emotionality, reason, self-awareness, and moral agency (729). The essence of her argument, on personhood, lies in the distinction of human being as opposed to person. For her this is relevant because biologically, fetuses are humans in that they genetically identify with Homo sapiens, but they are not people because they lack the central characteristics of personhood. In order to be confident that one is a person one must display these characteristics- these characteristics ascertain that one is a person. This should not be confused; by saying this she does not mean a fetus which lacks any of these characteristics is definitively stripped of being deemed a person, but that the lack of these characteristics bolsters uncertainty that a fetus is a person. ( Add a sentence her pertaining to the sentence above. Or something like it)Ultimately, these are the characteristics which entail confidence of

The road taken by Warren, that emotionality requires self-observation and integration, is far too polar in that it completely negates the hormonal influence on emotionality. Emotionality ought not be defined in either of these ways because when doing so one wrongly restricts different form of emotionality. This would be the equivalent to defining a dog as a four legged animal, or a domesticated carnivorous animal with four legs, long snout, fur, canine teeth, and a tendency to bark or whine. The former definition sets the bar too low in that every four legged animal can qualify as a dog whereas the latter sets the bar too high in that some dogs may not actually qualify as dogs using that definition. For this reason the definition of a dog has to be somewhere in the middle. Thus when extending this example to emotionality it becomes clear one should take an Aristotelian approach in defining emotion because it would not be polarizing. The emotions we feel (happy, sad, angry, etc) is partly influenced by hormones such as dopamine and partly influenced by our own self-observation of markers. Integrating hormones and self-observation ensures we cover the spectrum of emotionality. This further ensures that the capability of