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Mary Anne Warren's Argument For The Moral Permissibility Of Adulthood

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Mary Anne Warren’s argument for the moral permissibility of abortion concentrates on the question of personhood and humanity with reference to a common anti-abortion argument and the discussion of potential personhood. Her argument builds on the belief that fetuses are not human beings and considers humanity through certain categories one must have in order to be considered a human person. Warren’s argument is logical, however, her argument is unsound because of a series of erroneous premises. Thus, because these premises are erroneous, an Aristotelian-type argument can be constructed that properly discusses potential persons and argues against Warren, thus aruging for the moral impermissibility of abortion. Warren establishes her arugment …show more content…

She then goes on to infer that a fetus is only a genetic human, not morally human, based on the rejection of five traits that, in her opinion, are “most central to the concept of personhood…and [moral] humanity,” which are the following: consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, the capacity to communicate, and the presence of self-concepts. Regarding these characteristics, Warren believes it is “so obvious” that a fetus is not a person because it does not satisfy “none of” the traits and thus does not have “full moral rights.” Lastly, regarding genetic and moral humanity, Warren states that there are “people who are not human beings,” and, in the case of fetuses, “human beings [who] are not people…” Thus, Warren argues that abortion is morally permissible because fetuses are not people and do not have a right to life. Secondly, Warren argues for the moral permissibility of abortion by discussing a fetus’s potential personhood with the example of a space explorer who gets imprisoned by aliens. Through the space explorer example, Warren infers that “a women’s right to her health, happiness, freedom, and…her life”— like that right of the space

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1. Compare and Contrast A. Summary for first author U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, from “Why Abortion Is Bad for America,” The Human Life Review (2012), discusses why he is against abortions from mainly a moral viewpoint, rather than a political viewpoint. Overall, he states that an unborn child is still a human being and that they have the right to live. Rubio states agrees that the mother has her own right to do whatever she wants, but when there is a child living in her, that child has its own right. Therefore, the mothers “are the voice of children who cannot speak for themselves.”

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Patrick Lee and Robert George assert that abortion is objectively immoral. One of Lee and George’s main reason for coming to this conclusion is that human embryos are living human beings. This essentially validates that abortion is indeed the process of killing a human. Another main point said by the two is a rebuttal to a common argument used in favor of abortion, which states that a potential mother has full parental responsibilities only if she has voluntarily assumed them. The rebuttal to this was that the potential mother does indeed have special responsibilities to raise the child.

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In “A Defense of Abortion,” Judith Thomson argues with a unique approach regarding the topic of abortion. For the purpose of the argument, Thomas agrees to go against her belief and constructs an argument based on the idea that the fetus is a person at conception. She then formulates her arguments concerning that the right to life is not an absolute right. There are certain situations where abortion is morally permissible. She believes that the fetus’s right to life does not outweigh the right for the woman to control what happens to her own body.

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Mary Anne Warren establishes a belief that a fetus’s right to live is overruled by an expecting mother’s right to an abortion because it is not a technically a true person until it is born. Warren supports her argument by saying that a nearly full-developed fetus is no more significant than a small embryo because “…it is not fully conscious… it cannot reason or communicate message… and has no self-awareness” (Warren, page 499). In contrast, our text states that “…some fetuses develop the capacity to survive outside the womb…” after nearly being two-thirds fully developed; this means that a fetus is ultimately capable of communication and awareness through it’s movements (Munson and Lague, page 469).

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The issue of abortion creates questions such as whether or not abortion is morally justifiable, rights of a fetus, and explores the criteria necessary to be proven as a person. To summarize, Mary Ann Warren believes the choice of abortion is always the mothers choice. Warren continuously supports this statement through the argument that a fetus is not a person unless they exhibit a sense of moral being, demonstration of the five traits of personhood, and secures the rights that true human beings rights prevails the rights of fetus, regardless of potentiality or value of any

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Women’s rights have been a long struggle in America’s legal system, as well as in the religious world, for many decades and women continue to have challenges, concerns, and struggles today. Fighting for what is best for their bodies such as a woman’s right to contraceptives to control whether she will get pregnant or not was not ideal for religious and personal reasons but would find a worthy advocate in a woman who would dedicate her life for women’s reproductive rights. The right for a woman to have an abortion became a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Courts in a very well-known case. It has always been a double standard in what was right and wrong, moral or immoral, towards women than men. A man was looked at with respect

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Doris Gudino Professor Chounlamountry Political Science 1 27 July 2015 Pro-Choice Anyone? A woman has, undoubtedly, the freedom to procreate, but once a woman chooses to retreat from that freedom, a commotion arises. Abortion is a woman’s choice for many reasons. It’s her body, therefore, no one else can decide for said person.

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Thus, they hold that personhood is largely irrelevant to the problem of abortion. In his Life's Dominion, Dworkin, writes it would be wise [...] to set aside the question of whether a fetus is a person [...] because it is too ambiguous to be helpful (1993, 23). However, although one can agree that the concept of person and personhood is ambiguous, this does not entail that we should not discuss and qualify what is a person. Being ambiguous is not an enough reason to leave a complicated concept such as personhood.

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In this speech I hope to present a persuasive moral argument that abortion is akin to murder and should be avoided, even if the child is unplanned or unwanted or the women would be in danger by the consequences of abortion. (Transition: Let’s look more closely at the health risks posed by cell phones.) Body I. Abortion is a murder. It is the intentionally killing of a human being and it is also can be considered as a war on the unborn which are obviously defenseless and voiceless. A. Abortion denies the right of the eternal being to have a mortal experience and also learning experience in this world.

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The debate whether abortion is morally permissible or not permissible is commonly discussed between the considerations of the status of a fetus and ones virtue theory. A widely recognized theory of pro-choice advocates can be thought to be that their ethical view is that fetus’s merely are not humans because they lack the right to life since they believe a fetus does not obtain any sort of mental functions or capability of feelings. Although this may be true in some cases it is not in all so explaining the wrongness of killing, between the common debates whether a fetus does or does not obtain human hood, should be illustrated in a way of a virtuous theory. The wrongness of killing is explained by what the person or fetus is deprived of, such as their right to life; not by means of a heart beat or function of one’s body, but by the fact that it takes their ability of potentially growing into a person to have the same human characteristics as we do.

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The personhood argument can be articulated in two popular versions: Mary Anne Warren 's version and Michael Tooley 's desire version. These two more arguments take the idea of the distinction between the descriptive concept of human being and the normative concept of the person to its extreme logical conclusion. Warren is responsible for creating the distinction between genetic and moral humanity in the first place. Warren advances a strict psychological standard for personhood. According to Warren, a person is defined as a full-fledged member of a moral community.

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