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Furniture Chairs Bamboo furniture chairs
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Furniture Chairs Bamboo furniture chairs Information
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.
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