Abortion Is Morally Permissible By Mary Anne Warren

Warren’s article “Abortion Is Morally Permissible” discusses if a fetus deserves to have a right to live. She begins her argument with describing why fetuses do not deserve rights because they do not have any traits of personhood. She then points out that even throughout the entire pregnancy a fetus does not deserve rights, she ends her argument by stating that even though a fetus has the potential to become a person it should not have as much rights as a pregnant women who is already a person. Warren’s argument is thought out and has very little mistakes, but the few mistakes that are there can be pulled apart and can be used to destroy her argument. In the article “Abortion Is Morally Permissible” Warren argues that a women should be allowed …show more content…
Warren starts by refuting the main argument which argues that it is wrong to kill fetuses, she says that the argument uses two different definitions of the term “human” which makes the argument invalid. Warren does a good job describing each definition and showing when the argument uses each definition of the term “human”. Later on in the article Warren attempts to define the traits of personhood, she uses the traits to help prove that fetuses are not a person which means they have no rights, but she mistakenly states that her definition of personhood is not a complete concept of personhood. This mistake allows people to refute her argument because if this is not the full definition of personhood then Warren might be leaving out part of the definition that might give fetuses rights. To make it even worse Warren explains that an entity does not need all the traits to be classified as a person, so if there are traits that are left out of the definition of personhood and if any of those traits describe a fetus, then makes it even easier to refute Warren’s argument. If we assume that Warren’s definition of personhood is complete, then her argument proving that fetuses are not a person is well thought out and hard to refute. In the argument she states that a human whose conscious has been destroyed is no longer a person which means they have no rights, this might upset a lot of people because there are many humans that fall under this situation. Many people will disagree with her on this situation because most people would agree that any fully grown human that is alive deserves to have full rights. Warren than argues that a women should be able to get an abortion at any time during the pregnancy,