The Personhood Argument in Favor of Abortion

1. The Personhood Argument in Favor of Abortion Mary Anne Warren

2. The Moral Community • Warren argues that to deal with the issue of abortion we have to define the moral community and to do this we have to define what makes a being human. • Warren is concerned with a moral community because the community’s members are the one’s that we attribute inalienable rights to, such as the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

3. Human • Warren argues that the conservative position on abortion defends their view with the following argument: 1. It is wrong to kill innocent human beings. 2. Fetuses are innocent human beings. 3. Therefore, it is wrong to kill fetuses. • Premise (1) is a self-evident moral truth. • However, premise (2) can have distinct meanings, depending on how we define “human”. • If we define it in the moral sense, then the argument does not beg the question but the premise is FALSE. • If we define human in the genetic sense, then the premise is TRUE, but the argument begs the question.

4. The Meanings of “Human” • The moral sense of human: This refers to members of the human species that belong to the moral community. • The genetic sense of human: This refers to any organism that is genetically human. • Does genetic humanity entail moral humanity? • If so, an argument of some sort is required, and we should not simply assume that this is the case.

5. The Moral Community • Warren argues that it is self-evident that the moral community is constituted of all and only people and NOT all and only human beings. • The best way to demonstrate this is to analyze the concept of personhood.

6. Personhood • What characteristics entitle an entity to be considered a person? • Warren does not mean present a complete and exhaustive analysis of personhood, but rather simply one that will resolve the issue concerning fetuses. • Therefore, she means to present only a rough and approximate definition of person.

7. Thought Experiment • To get away from the genetically human issue, let us think of a being that is NOT human. Let us imagine a space traveler who meets an alien race that are physically and organically different than humans. • How would we determine if they are persons? Obviously they are not human, but how would we know if they are persons? • How should we know how to treat them and what rights they might have? • How would we know if they belong to our moral community?

8. “5-Person Traits” Warren comes up with 5 traits she claims are sufficient and necessary for being a person 1. Consciousness: (of objects and events external and /or internal to the being), and in particular the capacity to feel pain; 2. Reasoning (the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems); 3. Self-motivated activity (activity which is relatively independent of either genetic or direct external control); 4. The capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite variety, that is, not just an indefinite number of contents, indefinitely many possible topics; 5. The presence of self-concepts, and self-awareness, either individual or racial, or both.

9. Persons • Warren argues that we need not discover all 5 of these traits in order to determine that our alien friends are persons. • She claims that by exhibiting 1-3 we can safely conclude that our alien friends are persons and should be brought into out moral community as persons, with all of the inalienable rights normally attributed to human persons.

10. Fetuses • However, if these alien organisms were not to exhibit any of the 5 traits, that is, if they were not conscious (could not feel pain), could not reason, were not self-motivated, did not have the capacity to communicate with us or among themselves and had no sense whatsoever of self, or self-awareness, we could safely conclude that they are NOT persons. • Moreover, we could also conclude that they should not be included in our moral community or attributed the same rights that we attribute to persons of our moral community. • Fetuses manifest none of these 5 traits, therefore, fetuses should not be a part of our moral community.

11. Genetic Humanity • Warren concludes, • “Now if (1)-(5) are indeed the primary criteria of personhood, then it is clear that genetic humanity is neither necessary nor sufficient for establishing that an entity is a person.” • “But to ascribe full moral rights to an entity which is not a person is as absurd as to ascribe moral obligations and responsibilities to such an entity.”

12. 2 Central Issues With Warren’s Conception of Personhood • First, if the paradigm view of persons requires the 5 traits discussed above, when do genetic human beings become a persons? • Second, a fetus has a real potential to acquire the 5 traits required for being a person. To what extent does this potentiality give the fetus any moral rights?

13. When Does a Genetic Human become a Person • Warren argues that being person-like requires an entity to acquire the 5-person traits. It is NOT enough that an entity look like a person for it to be a person. • Therefore, Warren argues that a 7 or 8-month-old fetus might look like a human person, but it is no more a person than a week-old embryo.

14. Absolute Right • She concludes, “Thus, since the fact that even a fully developed fetus is not personlike enough to have any significant right to life on the basis of its personlikeness shows that no legal restrictions upon the stage of pregnancy in which an abortion may be performed can be justified on the grounds that we should protect the rights of the older fetus, and since there is no other apparent justification for such restrictions, we may conclude that they are entirely unjustified. Whether or not it would be indecent (whatever that means) for a woman in her seventh month to obtain an abortion just to avoid having to postpone a trip to Europe, it would not, in itself, be immoral, and therefore it ought to be permitted.”

15. Potentiality and the Right to Life • Warren admits that a fetuses’ potentiality to become a person does give it some prima facie right to life, that is, everything else being equal, it would be better not to destroy the fetus than to destroy it. • However, she also argues that this “right” of the fetus could never outweigh the rights of a woman to have an abortion. • Warren presents an example of a space explorer who is captured and the aliens who have capture him have decided to use him to make a few hundred thousand of new human beings. These potential human beings’ rights could never outweigh the rights of the space explorer. Therefore, the space explorer has the right to escape.

16. Postscript on Infanticide • Warren claims that infants do not have a right to life, but unlike fetuses, the mother should not have a right to kill it. • First, there are people in society who want the infants, care for the infants, and do not want to see them killed. Therefore infanticide is analogous to destroying valuable natural resources or valuable art works. • Second, people in society would prefer to preserve the lives of infants. Therefore, killing infants is wrong because it goes against societal values but not because it violates the infant’s right to life.

17. Before and After Birth • Warren also notes that before birth a fetus’s rights clash with the mother’s, but after birth a fetus’s right no longer do and thus the mother should have no say on the continued existence of the infant. • “There is, however, a crucial difference between the two cases: so long as the fetus is unborn, its preservation, contrary to the wishes of the pregnant woman, violates her rights to freedom, happiness, and self-determination. Her rights override the rights of those who would want to see the fetus preserved, just as if someone’s life or limb is threatened by a wild animal, his right to protect himself by destroying the animal overrides the rights of those who would prefer that the animal not be harmed.”