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Mary Anne Warren, "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion
Moral permissibility of abortion mary anne warren essay
Anne Warren's thesis on abortion
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“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.
“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
Consider the second criteria of emotionality. Emotionality is one’s ability to feel and be affected by emotion. While all average individua...
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...l cannot account for that. So being that the hypothetical space explorer experiment and fails to address accidental pregnancy through consensual sex, only accounts for lethal pregnancies, and makes Warren’s argument fails.
To speak plainly, the issue of abortion is a slippery slope of morality. While siding with the Pro-Choice side myself, it felt necessary to examine Warren’s opinion so as to give constructive criticism and potentially help strengthen her argument for the future. Through Warren’s lack of sound consideration for what constitutes a personhood and numerous issues regarding potential personhood, it is clear that the conversation still has a long way to go.
Works Cited
Warren, Mary Anne. "On Moral and Legal Status of Abortion." Trans. Array Exploring Ethics:
An Introductory Anthology. . 2nd. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 164-181.
Print.
Marquis’ argues that like adult humans, fetuses have the ability to experience a future and by preventing them from experiencing that future through abortion is the same as killing an adult human.
In this essay, I will hold that the strongest argument in defence of abortion was provided by Judith Jarvis Thompson. She argued that abortion is still morally permissible, regardless if one accepts the premise that the foetus is a person from the moment of conception. In what follows, I agree that abortion is permissible in the ‘extreme case’ whereby the woman’s life is threatened by the foetus. Furthermore, I agree that abortion is permissible to prevent future pain and suffering to the child. However, I do not agree that the ‘violinist’ analogy is reliable when attempting to defend abortion involving involuntary conception cases such as rape, whereby the foetus does not threaten the woman’s health. To achieve this, I will highlight the distinction
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.
Firstly, Marquis makes clear that we are working under the assumption that the fundamental disagreement present in the abortion debate is whether or not the fetus is a being worthy of being saved, and cites several writers that also believe in this fundamental disagreement to support his case. He then examines this paradigm as it pertains to the abortion argument, with pro-choicers on one side saying that fetuses are not rational actors, and pro-lifers on the other side saying that life begins at conception and making emotional appeals. He writes that the prima facie cases of the pro-choice and anti-abortionist movements are, respectively, that “being a person… gives intrinsic moral worth,” It is only… wrong to take the life of a member of the human community;” “It is always… wrong to take a human life,” and “it is always… wrong to end the life of a baby.” Marquis does not, in actuality, reject the validity of either side’s claims (185).
”[23]Furthermore, they turned to the required qualifications of being defined as a “person.” Clearly, this can refuse personhood to someone unable to commit a crime, for instance, a child who has not yet arrived at the door of reason. Fr. Clifford Stevens recognizes this denial as a threat to the dignity of the human person and draws from the words of President Lincoln’s rebuttal of Dred Scott to point out that the purposes for abortion are very similar to the motives behind slavery.
This essay examines and critiques Judith Jarvis Thomson’s, A Defense of Abortion (1971). Thomson sets out to show that the foetus does not have a right to the mother’s body and that it would not be unjust to perform an abortion when the mother’s life is not threatened. For the sake of the argument, Thomson adopts the conservative view that the foetus is a person from the moment of conception. The conservative argument asserts that every person has a right to life. The foetus has a right to life.
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.
Some people may argue that when the abortion takes place, the fetus cannot feel anything and is not even human being, some almost look at the fetus as just another cell. This is the biggest argument for pro-life and the opposing side, pro-choice. Although por-choice people look at it as not a fetus, The Catholic Church on the other hand believes that a bay is a human being the moment conception happens. In the article, “On the Morality of: Abortion.” written by Adam Lee, Lee argues that consciousness is the characteristic of humanity. Lee states, “Ending the existence of someone and they are not able to function a conscious thought is not the destruction of a human being” (Lee 2013). He believes that, “Until they possess the capability for conscious thought, a fetus cannot have the same moral status as a person”.
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.
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 her essay “Abortion, Intimacy, and the Duty to Gestate,” Margaret Olivia Little examines whether it should be permissible for the state to force the intimacy of gestation on a woman against her consent. Little concludes that “mandating gestation against a woman’s consent is itself a harm - a liberty harm” (p. 303). She reaches this conclusion after examining the deficiencies in the current methods used to examine and evaluate the issues of abortion. Their focus on the definition of a “person” and the point in time when the fetus becomes a distinct person entitled to the benefits and protections of the law fails to capture “the subtleties and ambivalences that suffuse the issue” (p. 295). Public debate on the right to life and the right to choose has largely ignored the nature of the relationship between the mother and the fetus through the gestational period and a woman’s right to either accept or decline participation in this relationship.
In the article 'A Defense of Abortion' Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that abortion is morally permissible even if the fetus is considered a person. In this paper I will give a fairly detailed description of Thomson main arguments for abortion. In particular I will take a close look at her famous 'violinist' argument. Following will be objections to the argumentative story focused on the reasoning that one person's right to life outweighs another person's right to autonomy. Then appropriate responses to these objections. Concluding the paper I will argue that Thomson's 'violinist' argument supporting the idea of a mother's right to autonomy outweighing a fetus' right to life does not make abortion permissible.
...e open to all women at any point of pregnancy, and that the woman reserves the right as a fully conscious member of the moral community to choose to carry the child or not. She argues that fetuses are not persons or members of the moral community because they don’t fulfill the five qualities of personhood she has fashioned. Warren’s arguments are valid, mostly sound, and cover just about all aspects of the overall topic. However much she was inconsistent on the topic of infanticide, her overall writing was well done and consistent. Warren rejects emotional appeal in a very Vulcan like manner; devout to reason and logic and in doing so has created a well-written paper based solely on this rational mindset.
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.