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 which is relatively independent of either genetic or direct external control), 4) the capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite variety of types, that is, not just with an indefinite number of possible contents, but on indefinitely many possible topics, and 5) the presence of self-concepts, and self-awareness, either individual, racial, or both.
The Term Paper on Vegetarian in order to be a truly Moral Person?
Morality is and will always be a major philosophical issue as it touches on several aspects of ethical discussions. This makes it very important for one to have a good understanding of this term so that any reasoned argument revolving around the topic can exhibit sense and logic. Morality has generally been used to refer to a measure of behavior against the standards of right and wrong as set by ...
(The Monist, pg. 55) Now, it’s not necessary to have every one of these five characteristics, but one and two are an absolute must and possibly even three. If we hold these standards up to the fetus, we see that it has not even one characteristic, thereby leaving it ok to say that it is not part of the moral community and therefore has no moral status, and no right to life. So, no matter what stage the fetus is in, be it the first trimester or the last, there is absolutely nothing wrong with aborting it. However, if we hold these standards up to several other things we can see that, according to Warren, they too have no moral status or no right to life. For example, there is the person in a persistent vegetative state, which Warren even gives an example of to prove that not all human beings are people: “A man or woman whose consciousness has been permanently obliterated but who retains alive is a human being which is no longer a person, defective human beings, with no appreciable mental capacity, are not and presumably never will be people.” (The Monist, pg. 56) They cannot be considered to have any of the characteristics of people. There are also animals. The majority of them can only fit into characteristic number one, that of consciousness. And there are also infants. They too only fit into number one if they fit into any. Should we be allowed to kill infants or treat them unfairly? Do they not count as part of our community?
Warren does have a response to the statement that her reasoning would justify infanticide. She states that it would be wrong to kill infants for consequentialist reasons. She says that infanticide is not the best solution. If we killed our babies we would be depriving other people of happiness. There are other couples that would readily raise our children, and if we murdered them than we would be taking away the joy that our baby could possibly bring other parents. She also says that we do not want to see babies killed, that is why we invest our tax money in orphanages instead of baby incinerators. (In class notes, Oct. 18th)
The Term Paper on Nutrition For Infants Children And Adolescents
Nutrition for Infants, Children, and Adolescents Each child is an unique individual whose heredity and environment shape the course of his or her life. Woven into the daily life are aspects of food and nutrition. What childhood memories of food do you have Are these memories healthy or unhealthy Foods and their nutrients are essential to life. In the beginning years of life an infant's nutritional ...
This is a highly inadequate response and still leaves her argument with many holes and problems. The first problem is the fact that those are not typical reasons why we do not commit infanticide. We see murdering innocent children as something that is intrinsically wrong and evil. She explains the problem more as one of impracticality. Why kill a baby when it could make someone else happy? It’s not the welfare of the infant that we’re considering when we’re considering why we don’t have the right to kill them; it’s the happiness of the possible parents.
Another problem with her defense is what if you couldn’t find someone who wanted to take the child in as their own? Hypothetically, what if all the orphanages were full, what if there were no couples willing to take in the infant, what if our society wasn’t interested in funding such places that care for unwanted children? Would it then be ok to kill them? Warren would have to say yes.
And still there are more problems. Warren’s defense only covers that of infants. She doesn’t have anything to say about other beings that don’t have number one and two of the characteristics. As stated before there are humans who are in a persistent vegetative state. They carry no characteristics of people. Is it our right to kill them? Can we use them in medical experiments and do what we please with their bodies? And what about animals? They hold only consciousness and nothing else. Can we torture animals? Do they not have a right to be treated with love and care? It seems contradictory to say this; after all we take them into our homes and even consider them as part of the family. But, according to Warren we don’t have to do that. We’re under no obligation to feed them or care for them once we’ve taken them in. We could abuse them, abandon them, murder them for absolutely no reason if we wanted because they have no moral status and no right to be treated as part of the moral community. It would be completely moral to do all of this.
The Essay on Outline The Arguments In Favour Of Abortion
“An operation or other procedure to terminate pregnancy before the foetus is viable.” ( The English Dictionary) There are many different arguments against and for abortion, although there are three main groups. There are those who believe abortion should be available on request (Pro-Choice), those who believe abortion is acceptable under some circumstances (Pro-Life), and those who ...
Then there is the last problem I have with her argument, that of where she contradicts herself. When she is responding to the fact that her logic leads to a justification of infanticide she says this is not so because if we killed our babies we would be depriving other people of happiness. There are other couples that would readily raise our children, and if we murdered them than we would be taking away the joy that our baby could possibly bring other parents, and we have no right to do this. In raising this issue she raises many other questions of her argument. If our unwanted child could bring happiness to others and it’s wrong to deprive others of happiness than instead of ever having an abortion why don’t we just give the baby up for adoption? As she said, we don’t want to see them murdered, that’s why we pay for orphanages. Her response to this is that before the fetus was violating the mother’s bodily integrity, so the mother had the right to abort it, but now that the baby is no longer in the mother she doesn’t have a right to kill it. (In Class Notes, Oct. 18th) This is an interesting contraction of a statement earlier in her article where she says that we don’t have a right to kill the fetus simply because it is in us, and she even goes so far as to call this defense of abortion “at best a rather feeble argument… Mere ownership does not give me the right to kill innocent people whom I find on my property…” (The Monist, pg. 44) Not only does she simply state this, but in fact she spends two pages of her essay discrediting Thompson’s argument simply to 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.
The Essay on Abortions Are Done Baby Abortion One
Abortion: Do We Have the Right to Kill Each year millions of babies are conceived, unfortunately only about three fourths of them are actually born. Some of these babies die of natural causes; others are killed before they get the chance to experience their first breath. Abortion is fast becoming a quick fix to a rather large responsibility, especially among teenage women. Having sex is a huge ...
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.
