Mary Anne Warren Abortion Summary

In the essay, “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion” Mary Anne Warren provides an argument for the permissibility of abortions at any stage of a woman’s pregnancy. In the argument, Warren firstly states that the potential to become a human is not the same as being a human, and therefore is not deserving of the same rights. Warren then asserts that to be a human, a person must possess the following characteristics or traits: consciousness, self motivated activity, reasoning, awareness of oneself, and the ability to communicate.1 Furthermore, Warren then states that since fetuses, at their very early stages, do not possess these traits, they are not human.1 She then continues on to deduce, that if being similar to a person grounds a right

If one considers Warren’s idea of potential persons to be correct then in terms of being a person, being like a person, or being a potential person, newborn infants are not significantly different than a fully developed fetus.2 If one then agrees with Warren’s argument and conclusion stating that abortions are, for the most part, morally permissible, then one can conclude that it is morally permissible to kill a fully developed fetus. If then newborn infants and fully developed fetuses are not that different, then it must also be morally permissible to kill a newborn infant. Though most people would consider this to be a terrible thing to do, it is a reasonable deduction that stems from Warren’s argument. Another criticism that can be found for Warren’s argument emerges from that fact that she does not specify two things in her argument. Firstly, Warren does not tell us how far in development from conception a fetus has to being before it begins to have enough of a virtue of personhood to be of value in the world. Next, Warren does not tell the readers how many or to what extent the rights a fetus’ potential for personhood stretch in the moral

She believes that infanticide is wrong. Even if the parents of the said child do not want the child for some reason; other people do want the child and could be deprived of a great amount of happiness if the newborn infant was to be killed.2 Next, Warren says that a lot of people value the lives of newborn infants and as long as there are people who value the infants then it is wrong to kill those infants as the person would be taking away potential happiness from those people, potential parents, if the infant were killed.2 By saying this Warren gives a reason for infants not to be killed, but she still does not disprove what she previously insinuated by saying that killing fetuses was morally