First we must decide if the fetus is indeed a person or not. Munson states, “The claim of the fetus as a person must be given weight and respect in deliberating about any action that would terminate its life” (Munson, p. 456). If we rule that a fetus is a person, then abortion would be a case of unjust killing (Munson, p.456). So, if a fetus is a person it, like all human beings, has the right to life and one without harm. This relates back to cases like that of Tabita Bricci.…
However, despite objections, states recognize fetal rights, because it is the child’s “legal right to begin life with a sound mind and body” (UA,…
Warren believes that the first couple weeks of pregnancy a fetus does not have a functional nervous system and it isn’t capable to have the same experience as humans. Warren also describes the fetus isn’t aware of itself and can’t control itself in any type of way. She believes early fetuses are not humans. She believes that abortion is morally…
Abortion is the planned termination of a human pregnancy. Several philosophers and activists have argued over if it is permissible. The author of A Defense of Abortion, Judith Jarvis Thomson, is correct about her argument that abortion is permissible even if the fetus is a person. This is because a woman’s right to bodily autonomy, which, combined with the woman’s own right to life, takes precedent over a fetus’s right to life. Even if people claim that she gave the fetus permission to be there, she should not be forced into going against her right to bodily autonomy.…
I think that Warren needs to stress the claim that while both a fetus and infant are not persons, by her definition of personhood, a fetus’s rights are completely dependent on the mother, in contrast to an infant. While a fetus is inside of the mother, a fetus is not a part of the moral community, and all the mother’s rights outweigh the fetus’s. The fetus’s right to life is overridden by the mothers right to her body because she has full moral status, while the fetus does not. An infant however, no longer is dependent on their mother’s rights, since it’s not using her body to…
In Patrick Lee’s and Robert P. George’s, On The Wrong of Abortion, it is argued that abortions are objectively immoral. To support this conclusion, Lee and George state that, the fetus is a complete person in an immature phase of development, that the fetus has the potential to develop into a “person” and that abortions are intentional killings. Pro-Choice defenders argue that a human fetus is not a human being because it cannot live on its own, that they are not ‘people’, and that the mother has the executive decision of not wanting the child in her uterus. According to Patrick Lee in another one of his works, The Pro-Life Argument from Substantial Identity: A Defence. Bioethics , He claims that “What makes it wrong to kill you or me now would…
In one of his points he mentions the innocent-human-life perspective which states the syllogism “1. All innocent human beings have the right to life, 2. All human fetuses are innocent human beings, 3. Therefore, all human fetuses have the right to life.”. Another one of his points when arguing with singer Mary Anne Warren who stated “being a person in terms of the traits of consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, the capacity to communicate, and the presence of self-concepts, nothing, too, that her characterization of personhood” a person must have these at least some of these in order to be consider a person and therefore fetus’s lack the right to life because they don’t have these traits.…
Every unborn child should have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the second and third trimester. In 2010, research shows that states indicated that unborn children are considered humans under tort, property and criminal law (Roden, 2010). By these laws shown, a mother shouldn’t get to choose whether the fetus lives or dies. The unborn child is its own person and by a mother aborting her own child should be considered murder. Under law a child is supposed to be born for many different reasons, including being capable of having a legacy (Roden, 2010).…
Using her Personhood Qualifications, Mary Anne Warren deems that for a being to have a right to life, they need to meet the following requirements: have consciousness (the ability to feel joy or pain), be able to reason, complete self-motivated activities (the ability to behave in ways that are not reflexes or externally caused), have the capacity to communicate, and have self-awareness (the ability to recognize oneself). She uses this argument to determine that abortion is not morally wrong. However, with these Qualifications for Personhood, she is also implying that infanticide is not morally wrong either. This is where I believe that Warren’s argument is flawed and needs to be fixed. I believe that to fix her argument she should adapt the…
She then points out five traits to personhood, including consciousness and the ability to feel pain, reasoning; the capacity to solve new and complex problems, self-motivated activity: activity that is relatively independent of either genetic or direct external control, the capacity to communicate, the presence of self-concepts and self-awareness. If a human being does not fulfill any of these traits it’s not a person. A woman should have the right to decide on abortion. Mary Anne would tell the couple that it is okay to get an abortion if they feel like it’s the best thing to do, she would explain that a fetus is not fully a…
She suggests that because a pregnancy is such a great sacrifice, that, while women should carry a child to term after becoming pregnant, we cannot require them to do so. This argument also requires that the fetus’ right to life is subject to the mother’s whim and does not carry as much weight as the first two arguments. Thomson concludes the article by saying that she is not attempting to delineate the circumstances in which a pregnancy might be morally permissible and those in which it isn’t, but rather to make it clear that even if we consider a fetus to be a person, that abortion can still be morally permissible. This weakens her argument a great deal, instead of providing a proscriptive criterion to base the morality of abortion on, she simply provides what may be a series of fringe cases to establish that while abortion is normally wrong, it isn’t always so. Thomson’s argument on abortion is fundamentally deontological.…
Where Thomson addresses John Paul II’s missed premise about the content to the right to life, leads his argument to be an invalid conclusion. She also touches upon and disagrees that the fetus’s rights outweigh that of the mother whereas Paul II believes otherwise. Warren chooses to elaborate Thomson's objections with the argument of what constitutes as person, and personhood, with the five traits that a fetus does not satisfy. Thus, according to these counterarguments the traditional argument loses its validity; leading to my own conclusion that the argument is invalid. References: Thomson, J. (1971).…
People are known for having sympathetic feelings to a child who is visible over the unborn fetus. However, pro-life activists hold that emotions that cannot form a basis for justifying birth. With the fetus being born or not being born; the fetus does have a chance in becoming a full human being. Viability of a fetus to survive outside the womb independently is when the fetus is able to get that ‘full human being’ status. Abortion also raises ethical issues of character.…
When looking at human life from a moral point of view, can a fetus be considered a…
A human life begins start at the time of the conception. A children does not deserve to be kill for the irresponsibility of their parent. According to Life Site News, "Abortion is a defining human-rights issue of our time.." (Ricker 1). Everyone stands up for their own human rights, but when it comes to abortion no one stands up for the baby’s human rights.…
