For Warren the central question in the debate over abortion is the status of the fetus as a moral person. According to Warren a fetus, while part of the human community in the genetic sense, is not a member of the moral community as it does not meet the personhood criteria, and therefore can be justifiably terminated. It’s important to note the difference between being a biological and moral member of a community. A fetus is biologically human but that doesn’t make it morally human, instead, as Warren presents, a list of criteria must be met to be considered a person and part of the moral community.
An interesting point is that Warren doesn’t say that being human, or of the species Homo sapiens, is a criterion to personhood. This leaves the opening for any other species that may one day meet these criteria to be morally considered as persons, such as chimps, dolphins, or even aliens.
Warren’s five criteria for personhood are consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, capacity to communicate, and presence of self-concepts. While not a definition of what it is to be a person, it does list the central features of moral personhood. The first three particularly seem to encompass the base necessity of cognitive functions to be able to think in a moral fashion. Unfortunately a fetus cannot be said to exhibit any of the five criteria, with the exception of consciousness, and is therefore morally comparable to a chicken or a fish. This comparison is a problem for many who argue that the fetus is a person on account of it being human, but as we already noted that is not enough. "If the right to life of the fetus is to be based upon its resemblance to a person, then it cannot be said to have any more right to life than a ne...
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...en asserts that there is a difference and I’m inclined to agree. "So long as the fetus is unborn, its preservation, contrary to the wishes of the pregnant woman, violates her rights... The minute the infant is born, however, its preservation no longer violates any of its mother's rights, even if she wants it destroyed, because she is free to put it up for adoption". The right the mother has to terminating an abortion is dependent on the fetus’s own violation of the mothers’ freedom such that as soon as the fetus is no longer violating the mothers’ rights, the mother herself has no right in violating the fetus/infants existence. Thus Warren’s argument doesn’t support infanticide and she can safely refute the objection that her defense of abortion permits infanticide.
Warren, M. (1982). On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion, Questions of Life and Death, 397-403
...es presented, and disregarded the fetuses right to a valuable life. Warren also briefly discussed the morally permissible options, such as adoption but failed to include how much more beneficiary putting a child up for adoption is rather than aborting the fetus. Marquis article is more convincing even to those who are pro-choice as it is less easy to criticize.
“I argue that it is personhood, and not genetic humanity, which is the fundamental basis for membership in the moral community” (Warren 166). Warren’s primary argument for abortion’s permissibility is structured around her stance that fetuses are not persons. This argument relies heavily upon her six criteria for personhood: A being’s sentience, emotionality, reason, capacity for communication, self-awareness, and having moral agencies (Warren 171-172). While this list seems sound in considering an average, healthy adult’s personhood, it neither accounts for nor addresses the personhood of infants, mentally ill individuals, or the developmentally challenged. Sentience is one’s ability to consciously feel and perceive things around them. While it is true that all animals and humans born can feel and perceive things within their environment, consider a coma patient, an individual suspended in unconsciousness and unable to move their own body for indeterminate amounts of time. While controversial, this person, whom could be in the middle of an average life, does not suddenly become less of a person
In her essay, “A Defense of Abortion,” Judith Jarvis Thompson outlines the most common arguments that people defend, and explains her views regarding each of these. She shares numerous examples and situations that she believes will support her views. One of her most prominent arguments is that of whether or not a fetus has moral standing as a “person.” She highlights the so called “battle” between an innocent life, the fetus, and the bodily rights of the mother. Within this argument, Judith outlines for us several situations which can provide people with a different outlook regarding abortion. Throughout Judith’s essay, she does not truly give a clear stance, but rather allows her readers to choose for themselves.
The criterion for personhood is widely accepted to consist of consciousness (ability to feel pain), reasoning, self-motivation, communication and self-awareness. When Mary Anne Warren states her ideas on this topic she says that it is not imperative that a person meet all of these requirements, the first two would be sufficient. We can be led to believe then that not all human beings will be considered persons. When we apply this criterion to the human beings around us, it’s obvious that most of us are part of the moral community. Although when this criterion is applied to fetuses, they are merely genetic human beings. Fetuses, because they are genetically human, are not included in the moral community and therefore it is not necessary to treat them as if they have moral rights. (Disputed Moral Issues, p.187). This idea is true because being in the moral community goes hand in hand w...
Williams, J. (2010, Nov. 23). Wrongful life and abortion. Retrieved on January 23, 2012, from http://www.springerlink.com/content/q69145g545q13hg5/
“I argue that it is personhood, and not genetic humanity, which is the fundamental basis for membership in the moral community” (133). This is the central idea in Mary Anne Warren’s argument on the personhood of a fetus. She argues that in order for a genetic human being to be considered a person, he or she would have to possess all of the six criteria’s of personhood which include sentience, ability to reason and emotionality. In order to determine the viability of the personhood of a fetus she argues two things. Firstly, Warren argues that even on the surmise that a fetus has a strong right to life, abortion can still be seen as morally permissible. Warren demonstrates this by using Judith Johnson’s Violinist analogy, which asks the basic
"Abortion: In Law, History & Religion." Childbirth By Choice Trust. May 1995. 26 April 2004. <http://www.cbctrust.com/abortion.html>
In A Defense of Abortion (Cahn and Markie), Judith Thomson presents an argument that abortion can be morally permissible even if the fetus is considered to be a person. Her primary reason for presenting an argument of this nature is that the abortion argument at the time had effectively come to a standstill. The typical anti-abortion argument was based on the idea that a fetus is a person and since killing a person is wrong, abortion is wrong. The pro-abortion adopts the opposite view: namely, that a fetus is not a person and is thus not entitled to the rights of people and so killing it couldn’t possibly be wrong.
113. 44) Using this analogy she shows that just because the fetus is inside us, it does mean we have a right to terminate it. She starts off her argument by defining the difference between a human being and a person. The first is part of genetic humanity, and the latter is part of moral humanity. She says that genetic humanity is not sufficient for moral humanity.
“A Defense of Abortion” is a philosophy paper by Judith Jarvis Thomson in which the author argues for abortion, using several analogies to illustrate her points. In a move that separates this paper from the bulk of others on the same topic, Thomson grants at the start of the paper that a fetus has the right to life. She then proceeds to argue that although a fetus has a right to life, that right does not trump a woman’s right to her body. She concludes that abortion is an acceptable choice in a variety of circumstances.
Many arguments in the abortion debate assume that the morality of abortion depends upon the moral status of the foetus. While I regard the moral status of the foetus as important, it is not the central issue that determines the moral justifiability of abortion. The foetus may be awarded a level of moral status, nevertheless, such status does not result in the prescription of a set moral judgement. As with many morally significant issues, there are competing interests and a variety of possible outcomes that need to be considered when making a moral judgement on abortion. While we need to determine the moral status of the foetus in order to establish the type of entity we are dealing with, it does not, however, exist in a moral vacuum. There are other key issues requiring attention, such as the moral status and interests of the pregnant woman who may desire an abortion, and importantly, the likely consequences of aborting or not aborting a particular foetus. Furthermore, I assert that moral status should be awarded as a matter of degree, based upon the capacities of sentience and self-consciousness an entity possesses. In a bid to reach a coherent conclusion on the issue, the moral status of both foetus and woman, along with the likely results of aborting a particular foetus, must be considered together. Given the multiple facets requiring consideration, I assert that utilitarianism (Mill 1863) offers a coherent framework for weighing and comparing the inputs across a variety of situations, which can determine whether it is ever morally justifiable to have an abortion.
Singer first points out that the different opinions on abortion come from the debate on when a human life actually begins. He formulates the common argument against abortion as follows: it is wrong to kill an innocent human being; a human fetus is an innocent human being; therefore, it is wrong to kill a human fetus. It is because killing a human being is undoubtedly wrong and immoral that the opposition instead attempts to deny the second part of the argument “a human fetus is an innocent human being”. By doing so, critics argue that the fetus does not have the status of a human being. This debate results in focusing on whether, or when, the fetus can be considered a human being, and therefore given the same rights against being killed as another human being. Singer however claims that it is difficult to find a moral dividing line between a fetus and a human being because the development of the human egg to a child is gradual. To prove his point, he describes four commonly proposed moral lines (birth, viability, quickening, and consciousness), which he then denies with strong arguments.
The permissibility of abortion has been a crucial topic for debates for many years. People have yet to agree upon a stance on whether abortion is morally just. This country is divided into two groups, believers in a woman’s choice to have an abortion and those who stand for the fetus’s right to live. More commonly these stances are labeled as pro-choice and pro-life. The traditional argument for each side is based upon whether a fetus has a right to life. Complications occur because the qualifications of what gives something a right to life is not agreed upon. The pro-choice argument asserts that only people, not fetuses, have a right to life. The pro-life argument claims that fetuses are human beings and therefore they have a right to life. Philosopher, Judith Jarvis Thomson, rejects this traditional reasoning because the right of the mother is not brought into consideration. Thomson prepares two theses to explain her reasoning for being pro-choice; “A right to life does not entail the right to use your body to stay alive” and “In the majority of cases it is not morally required that you carry a fetus to term.”
The first source for the right to life of a fetus is that it’s a person, however Warren describes that fetuses do not have the characteristics of personhood and do not have a right to life in this case. Another possible source is that a fetus is similar/like a person. She discusses the idea that 7 to 8 month old fetuses do have the ability to feel and respond to pain yet seemingly aren’t fully conscious, she also states that lack the other 5 traits so even though they are similar in some way to a person, the rights of the fetus aren’t as strong as that of a woman’s right to have an abortion. The third source of a possible right to life for fetuses is that they have the potential to be persons. She does give merit to the point that the fetus has a potential to be a person and such has some right
Warren, Mary A."Abortion,” in: A Companion to Ethics, " 38.6 Oxford: Blackwell Publishers(1997): 303-314. Academic Search Premier. Web. 3 Feb. 2014.