Mary Anne Warren: “Abortion is Morally Permissible” 

Here are some notes on Mary Anne Warren's article. Click here for the full original from from Biomedical Ethics. 4^th ed. T.A. Mappes and D. DeGrazia, eds. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc. 1996, pp. 434-440.

1. ON THE DEFINITION OF “HUMAN” [808]

Two senses of “human”: 

1. The genetic sense
2. The moral sense

2. DEFINING THE MORAL COMMUNITY [809] 

Is (1) sufficient for (2)? 

[Sidenote: A is sufficient for B if A is enough to give you B without anything 
else. For example, being a dog is sufficient for being a mammal. A is
necessary for B if you have to have A to have B. For example, “having three
sides” is necessary for being a triangle.]

First Space Traveller example: encountering alien life. If genetic humanity 
were necessary for moral humanity (let’s call it personhood from now on),
then presumably you could do what you like with the aliens, or at least eat
them.

Warren suggests 5 criteria as “most central to the concept of personhood” 
[810]:

1. Consciousness 
2. Reasoning
3. Self-motivated activity
4. Capacity to communicate
5. Presence of self-concepts/self-awareness

Are all of them necessary? No (although having all of them would certainly 
be sufficient).

Is any single one of them necessary? Probably not. 

BUT: 
“any being which satisfies none of 1-5 is certainly not a person” [811]
(That is, it is necessary to have at least one.)

Conclusions:

Genetic humanity is not sufficient for personhood, because some genetic
humans (e.g., anencephalic infants) lack all 5.

Genetic humanity is not/will not be necessary if non-genetic humans have a sufficient subset of the five (e.g., E.T.) 

3. FETAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE RIGHT TO LIFE [812]

Even a 7 or 8-month fetus, while it appears like us, is not like us in the 
relevant ways:
1. Not fully conscious
2. Cannot reason
3. Does not engage in self-motivated activity
4. Cannot purposefully communicate
5. Has no self-awareness

Thus:

“I think a rational person must conclude that if the right to life of a fetus is
to be based upon its resemblance to a person, then it cannot be said to have
any more right to life than, let us say, a newborn guppy (which also seems to
be capable of feeling pain), and that a right of that magnitude could never
override a woman’s right to obtain an abortion, at any stage in her
pregnancy” [813]

4. POTENTIAL PERSONHOOD AND THE RIGHT TO LIFE [814] 

“Potential” persons might have some value (but this depends on how 
common they are – if cloning was possible, could every cell in our body be
used as a potential person?) but not enough to give them rights against
actual persons – Second Space Explorer Case [814]:

If aliens could turn the astronaut into thousands of new people, does he have 
a duty to give up: 

• 
  his life
• 
  a year of his freedom
• 
  a day

Warren says no, even if he was put in this situation out of his own
carelessness or even deliberately (i.e., non-rape pregnancies).