Jennifer Hallock
Current Moral and Social Issues
Paper One: 8/7/00
In Mary Anne Warren’s “The Abortion Issue,” children are not persons in the
empirical sense. Warren believes that prior to a certain point in a pregnancy,
the child does not have “the capacity to understand” the ramifications of what
an abortion would be, therefore the abortion does not infringe upon the rights
of the unborn fetus. She states that: “…in the ways that matter from a moral
point of view, human fetuses are very unlike human persons, particularly in
their early months of development”(152). In essence, personhood as defined by
Warren can only come after the first trimester. Before that time, the fetus
does not have the sentience that would make it a person. Warren’s main criteria
for what makes a person will be considered first, then we will move on to her
argument on sentience, and the differences she notes between a fetus and an
infant.
As she states in her paper, there are five main categories that empirically
place something as a person. They include sentience, or conscious behavior,
such as awareness of our surroundings, rationality: the ability to respond
according to what affects us, self-concept: the ability to understand what we are,
self-motivated behavior: the planning and carrying out of our own beliefs and
thoughts beyond how we are externally affected, and linguistic capacity, or the
use of a system to convey messages. Warren does not raise the answers to
already obvious arguments when considering these categories. For example,
someone who has lost the use of one of their senses still may have the use of
others, so that does not make them non-empirically a person. A paralyzed person
is also empirically human due to the fact that their internal capacities are
still the same, and the physical limitation does not eliminate them under any
means from “personhood”, as Warren defines it. When considering a later-term
fetus, she recognizes the unborn’s ability for sentience, but without
rationality, self-awareness, and other mental and behavioral capacities, they
are still far from being persons in the empirical sense. In other words,
without the ability to act and learn from the use of the capacities given, one
is not deemed a person. A major sticking point in how we deem life according to
Warren is whether or not we can morally value something as equal to other
things. For example, she considers plant life and renders it different than
other life as it lacks sentience.
One of the more vulnerable parts of her arguments centers on the consideration
of whether sentient fetuses are persons. While they may not have the ability to
act upon their sentience, that does not mean that they are not persons. Here is
where she brings up the reasons why infants are persons, and thus somehow
morally above even sentient fetuses, and especially fetuses not beyond the
first trimester. Her words are that: “not all sentient beings are persons with
full and equal moral rights”(146). The difference between moral and empirical
rationale behind how we act towards people is significant for Warren. In
essence, as mentioned earlier, if something is not deemed morally equal to
another thing, it is automatically not the same: for example, Warren’s
reasoning behind the differences between those born and those who are yet to be
born. In returning to her categorization of infants and late-term fetuses as
different due to higher moral worth, it must be realized that her entire
argument is based on our perception of them, and that alone is not a reasonable
argument for something that we cannot interact with. She raises considerations
we have for infants that we are not likely to have for the unborn, but neglects
to realize that our concerns might be {there}..where? for them as well, only in
a different sense. Take for example her argument that: “The realistic concern
that maltreated infants may become asocial or anti-social children or
adult”(148). This simple argument that she uses to support how infants and
fetuses are different, is incorrect. For example, if the unborn fetus is
introduced to certain chemicals via the carrier of the fetus, it may be greatly
affected. Most mothers therefore take into consideration how they act once they
are pregnant, and therefore exhibit concern for how their child may turn out.
Warren would most likely refute this argument, as she does at other points in
her analysis, by saying that in this case we are showing concern for the infant
or newborn that the fetus will become, and not the fetus itself.
Warren’s categories for personhood prohibits a fetus from being categorized
with an infant, or others who are already born. However, her conclusion that we
treat the fetus any differently than we would any other person because of what
it is seems to be an oversight on her part. While we may show our concern in
different ways, it still remains there even in this case she raises.