Mary Anne Warren Abortion Analysis

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Recommended: Scholarly reactions to Mary Anne Warren's view of abortion

Abortion is a highly debated topic that has caused much conflict in the last 100 years or so, with ethical issues being at the forefront of the conflict. Mary Anne Warren is a prominent voice in this debate and has strong views about the ethicality of abortion. Her main argument in this regard is multi-faceted, she believes that if a fetus has a right to life then it is either because the fetus is a person, is like a person, or they have the potential to be a person. She thinks that fetuses are not people, they are also at no point of development similar enough to a person to have that as a valid argument for their position as a full on person. And even if the fetus would have a right to life in that they have the potential to be persons, that …show more content…

Warren feels that the moral community is composed of persons but makes the distinction that not all humans are persons and there is a possibility for personhood without being human. She makes a claim that there are five traits that are fundamentally seen in those with personhood and uses those traits as a comparison point to the fetuses in the discussion of abortion. However, she doesn’t try to analyze what a person actually is or to define the term in and of itself. The five traits that are important in personhood are: consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, the capacity to communicate by any many and with indefinite possibilities, and the presence of self-concepts and self-awareness in an individual/racial sense. A person has at least one of these traits but it isn’t necessary or sufficient that they have all 5 to be considered a person. These traits are critical in her argument because Warren believes that fetuses lacks any sense of these traits or they lack the strength present in normal persons and as such they aren’t considered persons with a right to life equivalent to a …show more content…

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 but Warren feels that even if they have a right to life, the rights of the potential person are far less valuable than that of an actual person in

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