Philosophy notes John Paul s Argument Humans versus homo sapiens Warren According to warren the central question in the abortion debate is whether the fetus is a person in the moral sense According to warren abortion is justified because the fetus does not qualify as a person Personhood according to Warren o Consciousness and the ability to feel pain o The ability to reason o The ability to have motives and goals o The ability for complex communication o Having sense of self Note that to be a person one needs not to satisfy all of the criteria above Perhaps a portion of them may suffice For example we may count creatures that satisfy just the first three criteria to count as people Fetuses in the early stages of pregnancy do not satisfy o If the rights of a person and the rights of a non person conflict then the rights of the person take precedence o Pregnant women are persons and fetuses aren t o Therefore abortion is morally permissible Infanticide The problem that warren discusses at the end of the article is that of infanticide Infants are not much different from fetuses So if abortion of fetuses is morally permissible then why isn t infanticide equally so Warren says that it is not murder If other people want the neither baby then it is nor morally permissable Infanticide Is not wrong because people would not like it to happen that would make infants analogous to expensive paintings and books Instead it seems that people think infanticide should not happen because they think its wrong Potentiality Warren lists the abilities that one must possess in order to qualify them as a person But is it necessarily the case that if one does not have these abilities one does not count as a person What about potential people Potential people can come to have these abilities eve if they don t have them right
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