On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion - Essay Example

Abortion The process via which a fetus or embryo is expelled from the womb; causing pregnancy termination is referred to as abortion. When this process occurs naturally, without induction, it is referred to as miscarriage. There exists a passionate and long history about abortion. Methods of induction have ranged from utilizing sharpened tools, herbal medicines and physical trauma. Opinions, both culturally and legally differ worldwide, with public debate over legal ramifications and ethics of abortion being a very emotive issue. Abortion and the debate ranging around it have birthed activism, debates and controversy in equal measure. It is in fact a norm for people to refer to themselves as pro-life or pro-choice. Personal beliefs touching on responsibility, morality, government role in public policy and religion all affect ones view on abortion. Mary-Anne Warren, an American philosopher, put forward in her article “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion”, the perspective that abortion is acceptable morally. This paper seeks to delve into her article, especially her arguments and form an objection to her work. Warren begins her argument by debating how permissibility of abortion morally is dependent on whether the subject fetus is indeed a person. She argues that while a satisfactory defense of the right of a woman has to an abortion without proof of a fetus not being a human being is not satisfactorily possible, this difficulty in conclusion of a fetus’s status should not make it impossibility in the production of a solution to the moral status of the abortion problem (Warren 2). Pro-abortionists, due to not coming to grips with issues surrounding abortion, have had most of their arguments fall flat, failing to weaken traditional arguments on antiabortion. Their arguments are of two sorts, they either state that denial of a woman’s right to abortion is a deprivation of her rights to have control over her own body, or that deaths induced by illegal abortions, especially by poor women, is as a consequence of this law. This is obviously flawed since the fact that access restriction to abortion has such tragic side effects is not a pointer to the unjustified restrictions, as murder is still wrong. She cites J. Noonan saying, “The fundamental question in the long history of abortion is; how you determine the humanity of a human being?” (Warren 1). She goes on to argue that once the assumption of a fetus’ moral rights is allowed in full, the question of whether abortion is justifiable becomes a difficult and complex question. Warren seeks to push her abortion agenda via discussion of the five characteristics she believes are central to being a person. Warren tends to view persons as entities who have consciousness, self motivation, reasoning, communication capacity and presence of self awareness and self concepts (Warren 2). The first issue she tackles is the Definition of a human. She argues that “human” has two meanings, distinct but not easily distinguishable. Since killing of innocent humans is wrong and fetuses are an example of humans that are innocent, killing them is wrong. She shoots down this argument by claiming that the usage of human in similar sense in both conclusions, whichever use is meant of the two, one of them begs questions. If used in two senses that are different, then the conclusion is still wrong (Warren 5). She claims that the presence of the human genome in fetuses does not point to it being morally human. Her second characteristic deals with the definition of moral community. She asks if it is indeed possible to establish if moral humanity can be sufficiently defined by genetic humanity. She describes the moral community as all people and only people, rather than all human beings and only human beings. Her argument continues to debate what characteristics enable any entity qualify for consideration as a person. She puts these characteristics down as consciousness and capacity to detect pain, acting out of self motivation, capacity to reason, ability to communicate, and ability to be self- aware and have self concepts. An entity only need 2 or more attributes to be considered a person. A fetus satisfies not even one of the above, thus, according to warren, is not a person. This criterion renders genetic humanity neither sufficient, nor necessary in the establishment of whether an entity is a person. Therefore, to ascribe moral rights fully to a non-person entity is absurd, according to Warren (Warren 3). Her third argument has to do with fetal development and right to life. She analyzes two problems that arise in application of moral community definition to determine the moral status of a fetus. The first has to do with how advanced a fetus has to be since conception to be given a life right via virtue of being person-like, and to what lengths does the fetus’s possession of potential for personification impart on it similar rights? (Warren 4). While a 7-8 month old fetus possesses personified features that arouse protective instincts, similar to those towards an infant, it is not conscious fully, is not cannot communicate a large collection of messages, is not self-motivated, and is not self aware. Thus according to her, the fetus is less person-like than an average fish. In conclusion, Warren claims that in light of the fact that fully developed fetuses are not personified enough in their features for them to have any life rights on person-likeness basis, there can be no restrictions legally on whatever stage a pregnancy can be terminated. The indecency of a woman obtaining an abortion in order to travel to Europe would thus be a moral and permissible act (Warren 6). The last argument on characteristics central to personhood is the potential personification and right to life. After arguing that a fetus does not resemble a person, Warren asks about its potential, if nurtured and let to naturally develop, to become personified. Does this give it a right to life? The fact of potential personification of an entity is a powerful reason not to destroy it, but potential alone is not enough of a conclusive theme with which to imbue them with a right to life. Any right an entity with potential to life may have cannot possibly be enough to prevent a woman from procuring an abortion. Neither the resemblance of a fetus to a person, nor its personification potential can put forward any basis for its claim to any right life. The right of a woman to protect her happiness, health, life and freedom overrides any right to life that the fetus may ascribe to (Warren 8). However, Warren’s points of view are objectionable. One is that if the killing of fetuses is acceptable, since they are not members, fully fledged, of the moral community, then killing new born babies would be permissible. Killing of non-human creatures would also be permitted, but as is well known, this is not the case. Another objection to Mary-Anne’s problem is that severely disabled people would also be morally “worthless” since they show little if any signs of reasoning. However, humans, persons, believe it is immoral to cut the life of these beings short because moral rights are still attached to their lives. Warren’s definition of personhood is also a quite special case concerning how the law treats personhood. Personhood concept is borrowed from Romans, with this definition modeled along social contexts on adult individuals. Warren herself admits that this argument would result in infanticide becoming a moral practice. It is thus very irrelevant with concern to children unless one has belief rational substance. There is no recognition of special unique status of the embryo respectively. Works Cited Warren A. "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion." The Monist (1973): 1-9. Print. Read More