In this paper, I will argue that Mary Ann Warren fails to effectively address objections to her argument that a fetus is not a person and therefore not entitled to full moral rights. Initially, I will summarize Warren’s argument in support of abortion. I will then examine two objections to Warren’s argument: infanticide and potential person objections. Then I will scrutinize Warren’s responses to assess whether they effectively refute the objections. I will conclude by showing that Warren’s thesis does not provide a reasonable argument against the objections proposed.
Summary
In Warren’s paper, On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion, Warren introduces her argument by acknowledging the difficulty in defending a woman’s right to an abortion, without first showing that a fetus does not qualify as a person. Warren criticizes the traditional pro-choice argument, which states that denying a woman an abortion is a violation of her “property rights”. While this argument does pose viable concerns, Warren recognizes that killing innocent persons is morally unjustifiable, even at the expense of one’s property rights. Warren further undermines this argument by identifying the discrepancy between one’s body and one’s property. A person can be separate from their property, but not from their body. By this logic, it is inadequate to construe the right to one’s body as a property right. For those who consider abortion a form of murder, efforts to confirm the existence of any right to abortion have proven futile. To Warren, the dispute about abortion remains unsolved because pro-abortionists and anti-abortionists alike have abstracted the issue, leading to the faulty assumption that if a fetus is a human being, then abortion is wrong and needs to be prohibited. However, Warren, rather than assessing the human status of the fetus, instead evaluates the personhood of the fetus. Warren’s thesis asserts that because the fetus is not a person, abortion is morally permissible at any stage during pregnancy. Because the fetus is not a person, a woman’s right to her autonomy will always override whatever rights a fetus may have.
To prove her thesis, Warren breaks her argument into two stages. First, Warren investigates whether abortion is morally permissible assuming that a fetus is a person with full rights. Unlike Judith Thomson, who would argue abortion is morally permissible under these assumptions, Warren does not believe that this idea can be justified with the conclusiveness needed to convince skeptics. In stage 2 of her argument, Warren argues that a fetus is not a person and that thus abortion is morally permissible. Warren’s argument is as follows: Premise 1: abortion is wrong only if the fetus is a person; premise 2: the fetus is not a person; and conclusion: thus, abortion is not wrong.
In place of the genetic meaning of human (a human is a member of the species homo sapiens), Warren uses the moral definition of human (a human is a person with rights) to support her thesis. According to Warren, “the moral community consists of all and only people, rather than all and only human beings” (54). Warren starts with premise 1 and assesses whether a fetus is a person. To be a person, Warren argues that at least one of the following traits needs to be present: consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, the capacity to communicate, and the presence of self-concepts and self-awareness. Warren then moves on to premise 2. Because a fetus does not possess any of the five traits of personhood at any stage during pregnancy, the fetus is not a person. Thus, Warren can conclusively say that abortion is not wrong.
Warren’s argument relies heavily on the difference between necessary vs. sufficient clauses. The five traits defined by Warren are necessary conditions for personhood, although there are many other sufficient clauses for personhood such as a heartbeat. Warren also acknowledges that fetuses have been known to feel pain, however, does not believe that this is enough to deem the fetus fully conscious. To further emphasize her point, Warren refutes the idea that a fetus's right to life is attributed to how it closely resembles a person. By this logic, many animals (such as newborn guppy) should have a right to life equal to that of a fetus, and a right of that magnitude should never override a woman’s right to have an abortion.
Objections and Responses
a. Objection A: Infanticide
The most common objection to Warren’s argument is that her 5 criteria for personhood make infanticide justifiable. A newborn infant is no more a member of the moral community than a late-term fetus. Like fetuses, newborn babies lack the 5 traits of personhood that Warren identified. Thus, applying the circumstances of a newborn fetus to Warren’s premises and conclusion, a newborn baby has no more right to life than a fetus, and killing it would not be wrong. Warren, understanding the magnitude of this implication, responded with the following: “neonates are so very close to being persons that to kill them requires a very strong moral justification… It is certainly wrong to kill such beings just for the sake of convenience, or financial profit, or ‘sport’”.
b. Objection B: Potential Persons
An additional objection to Warren’s argument is that fetuses, although not persons yet, are potential persons. Critics of Warren’s thesis question whether it is morally justifiable to kill a fetus when it will eventually develop to become a member of the moral community. In response to this argument, Warren claims that a non-person does not have a right to life by virtue of potential. To put this argument in perspective, Warren asks us to consider that every speck of dust was a potential person. Surely, by Warren’s logic, we would be much less inclined to assign every speck of dust a set of rights. Even if potential persons did have some semblance of rights, Warren remains firm in her belief that these potential rights do not outweigh a woman’s rights. To illustrate this concept, Warren creates a hypothetical situation involving a captured space explorer in an alien culture. In this situation, the alien scientists decide to create more human beings using the space explorer’s component cells and genetic code. Warren maintains that the man would be morally justified in escaping, even at the expense of hundreds of thousands of potential lives. The space explorer would also be morally justified in escaping if the alien scientists only needed a year or even a day of the explorer’s freedom to create the potential persons.
Criticism
Objection A and objection B are interrelated on the grounds that a newborn baby qualifies (by Warren’s 5 criteria) as a potential person since it is not a person yet but has the potential to develop into one. However, Warren’s responses to objection A and objection B are contradictory and inconsistent with one another. Warren’s response to objection A is that killing a neonate (a potential person) would certainly be wrong and would require very strong moral justification. However, in objection B, Warren contradicts herself when stating that a potential person does not have a right to life by virtue of potential. Does a newborn baby not have a right to life by virtue of potential? Warren finds it easy to disregard potential persons when she conceptualizes them as specks of dust but fails to acknowledge that a newborn baby, just as much as a fetus, counts as a potential person. Warren claims that potential persons do not have a right to life yet says that infants (potential persons) do have a right to life, which is contradictory.
In Warren’s space explorer analogy (response to objection B), Warren insists that the space explorer is morally justified in escaping the alien culture, even if the aliens only need a day of the explorer’s freedom to create hundreds of thousands of potential persons. In other words, the space explorer is justified in fleeing the alien culture, regardless of the degree of burden that creating the potential persons requires. This argument also does not fully align with Warren’s response to the infanticide objection. If an infant is considered a potential person, which is according to the 5 necessary clauses that Warren defined, theoretically infanticide could be morally justifiable on the grounds that caring for a baby requires a minimum of 18 years of the mother’s freedom. Regardless of the alternatives that exist for babies that are born to un-wanting mothers (adoption, orphanage care, etc.), infanticide would still be permissible for a woman not yet willing to be a mother. Because Warren’s argument maintains that the woman’s right to her freedom overrides the potential person’s right to life, infanticide would be permissible regardless of the alternatives available, so long as the woman feels her freedom has been impeded by the infant. Warren states that destroying a potential person may be immoral when another’s rights are not in conflict. However, even in the case of a newborn baby, there may still exist a conflict between a woman’s right to her freedom and the potential person’s right to life. Because a woman’s rights will always override those of a potential person, Warren’s logic suggests that infanticide is permissible if a woman feels her freedom is being compromised.
The woman’s right to her freedom exists in all circumstances, whether she is pregnant or has given birth. To Warren, this right is enough to justify abortion (as explained earlier by the space explorer). However, Warren overlooks a fundamental difference when responding to the infanticide objection (objection A). When a woman gives birth, she sacrifices her right to have an abortion. When a woman is pregnant, she has a right to control her body and the fetus within it. When a woman gives birth, the baby is no longer a part of her body, and she loses this right. Instead of acknowledging this fundamental difference in her response to the infanticide objection, Warren instead deems infanticide immoral due to how person-like an infant is. Here, Warren contradicts herself again. Warren states in her response to objection A, “to kill [newborn babies] requires a very strong moral justification as does the killing of dolphins, whales, chimpanzees, and other highly person-like creatures.” However, in her analogy with the newborn guppy (used in her initial argument), Warren claims that the right to life is independent of how person-like an entity appears. Warren re-emphasizes this point in her response to objection B (potential persons), stating that “neither a fetus' resemblance to a person nor its potential for becoming a person provides any basis whatever for the claim that it has any significant right to life”. Yet, she views infanticide as impermissible because an infant too closely resembles a person, contradicting herself again. Warren could have appropriately responded to objection A by identifying the fundamental differences between a newborn baby and a fetus as it pertains to a woman’s rights, but instead, Warren gives an unsatisfactory response that contradicts her earlier claims.
Conclusion
Warren’s thesis does not stand up against the objections proposed. In Warren’s response to objection A, she neglects very fundamental differences between an infant and a fetus, namely that the fetus is still a part of the mother, while the infant is not. To effectively respond, Warren should have clarified how a woman’s rights evolve before and after a child is born. While the woman does not lose her right to freedom, she does lose her right to an abortion after giving birth.
However, Warren’s use of the space explorer analogy in response to objection B implies that the right to freedom may be enough to justify infanticide because a woman’s rights will always override whatever rights a potential person has. Warren emphasizes that infanticide is morally impermissible in her response to objection A, but she contradicts herself in her response to objection B. In objection B, Warren describes that the right to life is not granted by virtue of potential. It is contradictory of Warren to state that infanticide is impermissible, yet the killing of potential persons is permissible when a newborn baby constitutes a potential person.
Likewise, in her response to objection A, Warren deems infanticide impermissible due to how person-like a newborn baby is. This response contradicts her argument that rights cannot be granted based on how person-like an entity is.
Throughout her paper, Warren seeks to reconcile the idea that a fetus is a human being and the idea that abortion is morally justifiable. However, her argument poses too many concerns that Warren cannot effectively address in a consistent and convincing way.
Citations
Director, Samuel Joseph. “Mary Anne Warren: ‘On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion.’” 28 Aug. 2019, Boulder.
Hardy, Loren, Contemporary Social Problems Midterm, October 30, 2019.
Warren, Mary Anne. “The Monist.” On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion, vol. 57, no. 1, Jan. 1973, pp. 43–61.