Issue of the Fetus as a Person

This study will analyze the pros and cons of the moral arguments for and against the fetus as a person or human being (with respect to abortion) in two works, Mary Ann Warren's "The Abortion Issue" and John T. Noonan's "An Almost Absolute Value in History." The study will first defend, then criticize each of the essays, and will conclude with this reader's own views on the subject of personhood, siding with Warren and against Noonan in the debate.

Warren argues that the fetus is not a person because the definition of personhood is based on sentience, which a fetus does not possess. A fetus is not a moral agent because of this lack of sentience, and therefore abortion is not an act against morality. Warren writes:

In the ways that matter from a moral point of view, human fetuses are very unlike human persons. . . . First-trimester fetuses have not yet begun to develop a capacity for sentience and thus lack a necessary precondition for the possession of moral rights (Warren, 1987, p. 139).

Warren strengthens her argument against the personhood of the first-trimester fetus by acknowledging that "late-term fetuses probably do possess some capacity for sentience" and thus should be seen as having more moral status than an earlier-term fetus. However, she addresses this issue effectively as well, arguing that such late-term fetuses "are not . . . persons in the empirical sense" because such a "capacity for sentience, in the absence of rationality [and] self-awareness . . . i

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moral suffering as a result of having that abortion. Noonan argues that the fetus is a human being at the moment of conception and that the only argument morally for the right of the woman to have an abortion is that her own life is threatened by carrying the fetus to birth. His conclusions emphasize the religious, Biblical and Christian aspects. A fetus is a human being because it is produced by human beings: "The criterion for humanity, thus, was simple and all-embracing: If you are conceived by human parents, you are human" (Noonan, 1970, p. 125). In that theological perspective, "To say a being was human was to say it had a destiny to decide for itself which could not be taken from it by another man's decision." Although Noonan does grant the mother the moral right to terminate pregnancy if her own life is threatened, he nevertheless argues persuasively that "Cases of conflict involving the fetus are different only in two respects: the total inability of the fetus to speak for itself and the fact that the right of the fetus regularly is at stake is the right to life itself" (Noonan, 1970, p. 128). One of Noonan's stronger arguments is that the fetus is a human being at conception because at that moment it possesses

Category: Medical - I