Perspective of Mary Anne Warren on Keeping Abortion Legal
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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.
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. She suggests that the "moral community consists of all and only people, rather than all and only human beings." (The Monist, pg. 54) If you are a person you have moral status and your rights should be respected, if you are not a person none of that applies to you. So, she says, all she has to do is prove that a fetus is not a person, and that will prove that abortion is in fact moral. But, the vital question is, if not all human beings are people, than how do we define "people", or those that have moral status and a right to life? There are five characteristics that classify you as a person, those being: 1) consciousness (of objects and events external and or internal to the being), 2) reasoning (the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems), 3) self-motivate activity (that w...
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...o prove that it's not an adequate defense. At one point she says that we have a right to deprive other people of happiness because the fetus is inside of us, infringing on our bodies, but on the other hand she says this is not a reasonable argument for the defense of abortion.
Warren's article is full of these types of holes. In the beginning of her article she states that "however we wish to construe the right to abortion, we cannot hope to convince those who consider abortion a form of murder of the existence of any such right unless we are able to produce a clear and convincing refutation of the traditional antiabortion argument, and this has not, to my knowledge, been done." (The Monist, pg. 44) But in fact she has not done this either. Her points are not backed up by proof, some of them are not even logical, and her arguments lead to preposterous results.
Thomson starts off her paper by explaining the general premises that a fetus is a person at conception and all persons have the right to life. One of the main premises that Thomson focuses on is the idea that a fetus’ right to life is greater than the mother’s use of her body. Although she believes these premises are arguable, she allows the premises to further her explanation of why abortion could be
“I intend to judge things for myself; to judge wrongly, I think, is more honorable than not to judge at all.” What author Henry James meant by this was that it is better to make up one’s mind and have an opinion than to remain complacent, such as the case of Mary Anne Warren. Warren’s arguments for abortion’s possible permissibility are lacking in substance. The aim of my paper is to discuss Warren’s insufficient criteria for personhood and address the problem with her concept of potential personhood.
Right to Life: Little argues that every person has “a fundamental right to life,” as well as a “fundamental right to privacy” (p. 297). She strongly supports the “pro choice” stand point when it comes to the discussion revolving around abortion — as opposed to the pro-life position. This debate “requires [humans] to weigh the competing rights held by fetuses and women” (p. 297). Gestation is a commitment, more specifically, a nine-month-long commitment to create a living and breathing being. It’s interesting to note that the fetus’s right to life, seems to constantly outweigh their own mother’s right to choice. In some instances “pro-life treatments fail to [even] mention that pregnancy involves women at all,” because all of their focus, for the most part, is solely on the fetus (p. 298)....
As to any argument, there are two opposing sides when it comes to the matter of abortions. These two opposers usually refer to themselves as “pro-life” and “pro choice”. Pro-life supporters maintain that abortion is wrong and pro-choice believe that it is a woman’s freedom to choose her pregnancy decisions. When it comes to the topic of abortions, most of us will readily agree that it’s a woman’s choice to decide what her reproductive decisions are, i.e. pro-choice. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is in the question of whether or not abortion is a fundamental right granted to women by the Constitution. Whereas some are convinced that a fetus is considered alive at conception, usually citing the word of God, others maintain that
To help argue her point, Thomson first begins with an analogy comparing an acorn of an oak tree to the fetus in a woman’s body. She begins by giving the view of the Pro – Lifers; “It is concluded that the fetus is…a person from the moment of conception” (page 113). She then goes on to say, “similar things might be said about the development of an acorn into an oak tree, and it does not follow that acorns are Oak trees…” (Page 113). This analogy helps illustrate how much she disagrees with this Pro –life argument. She calls it a “slippery- slope argument” and goes to say, “…it is dismaying that opponents of abortion rely on them so heavily and uncritically” (page 113). Although Thomson makes it clear that she disagrees with the notion that a fetus is a person (…I think the premise is false, that the fetus is not a person from th...
Mary Anne Warren was a philosophy professor and distinguished by her beliefs on the topic of abortion. Warren’s thoughts on the morality of abortion were formed based on who is included in the ‘moral community’. Her thoughts on who should be included in the moral community are based on ‘personhood’.
In her article Thomson starts off by giving antiabortionists the benefit of the doubt that fetuses are human persons. She adds that all persons have the right to life and that it is wrong to kill any person. Also she states that someone?s right to life is stronger than another person?s autonomy and that the only conflict with a fetuses right to life is a mother?s right to autonomy. Thus the premises make abortion impermissible. Then Thomson precedes to attacks the premise that one?s right to autonomy can be more important to another?s right to life in certain situations. She uses quite an imaginative story to display her point of view. Basically there is a hypothetical situation in which a very famous violinist is dying. Apparently the only way for the violinist to survive is to be ?plugged? into a particular woman, in which he could use her kidneys to continue living. The catch is that the Society of Music Lovers kidnapped this woman in the middle of the night in order to obtain the use of her kidneys. She then woke up and found herself connected to an unconscious violinist. This obviously very closely resembles an unwanted pregnancy. It is assumed that the woman unplugging herself is permissible even though it would kill the violinist. Leading to her point of person?s right to life is not always stronger than another person?s right to have control over their own body. She then reconstructs the initial argument to state that it is morally impermissible to abort a fetus if it has the right to life and has the right to the mother?s body. The fetus has the right to life but only has the right to a ...
Mary Anne Warren’s “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion” describes her justification that abortion is not a fundamentally wrong action for a mother to undertake. By forming a distinction between being genetically human and being a fully developed “person” and member of the “moral community” that encompasses humanity, Warren argues that it must be proven that fetuses are human beings in the morally relevant sense in order for their termination to be considered morally wrong. Warren’s rationale of defining moral personhood as showcasing a combination of five qualities such as “consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, capacity of communication, and self-awareness” forms the basis of her argument that a fetus displays none of these elements that would justify its classification as a person and member of the morally relevant community (Timmons 386).
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.
“On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion” by Mary Anne Warren is an in depth analysis of what, in Warren’s opinion, it is exactly that defines a person and human being, the moral community, fetal development and the right to life, potential personhood and the right to life, and infanticide. Warren believes that emotion and morality should be entirely separate, and that abortion should be legal for all women, as denial would be stripping women of basic human rights, the rights that a woman holds over an unborn fetus. I personally agree with her arguments on these topics as I agree that women should be allowed to have abortions on their own terms, without subjection of authority or society telling her what she can and cannot do, as well as I agree for the most part on her view of what a person is, potential personhood not outweighing the choice of abortion, and her reasoning on what defines a person of the moral community.
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.
...ther’s sovereignty over her body outweigh the right of an unborn child to live. The answers to these questions are very diverse as a result of the diversity of the American society. With the issue of abortion, one’s attitude toward it is going to be based on many things such as religious background and personal morals. There is no black and white answer to the abortion issue. Luckily we live in a country where we are able to decide for ourselves whether something is morally right or wrong. Thus, ultimately, the choice is ours. As with the many other ethical issues which we are faced with in our society, it is hard to come to a concrete answer until we are personally faced with that issue. All we can do is make an effort to know all of the aspects which are involved so that we may be able to make a sound decision if we were faced with this problem in our own lives.
In Thomson’s “A Defense on Abortion,” she presents her pro-choice argument which is mainly supported by analogies called the violinist analogy, burglar analogy and the people seeds analogy. Firstly, she begins her argument with speaking about whether or not a fetus is a person from conception. This is the use of a pro- life argument that relates to a fetus being a person and how killing a person is wrong; therefore, killing a fetus is wrong. She willingly admits why she partially agrees with the premise of the fetus being a person. It is a belief that a human being has a right to life and if the fetus is a human being that means that the fetus also has a right to life. In Thomson’s argument, she is not arguing to disprove
In conclusion, women have the right to have abortions and to not have abortions. They have the right because it’s their body and it’s unfair to deny any woman that right without knowing the circumstances or situation. At the end of the women have to do what’s best for them and that unborn child and if they don’t have the necessary tools and lifestyle for them and the baby. Advocates of abortion believe that abortion is seriously wrong but it’s the women’s the decision not theirs, they have the right.
Yet, I have clearly shown that the fetus is a separate person with its own heart, lungs, brain, and all different body organs. The oppositions would say that it is the woman’s right to terminate her own pregnancies. Yet, in the eyes of the law two charges are filed when someone kills a woman and her fetus, so how is it her right to kill another human being? A woman doesn’t have four arms, four legs, two heads, four kidneys, two hearts, and two brains… so how is it only her body?