Moral Arguments against the Fetus as a Person or Human Being

" In addition, she argues, women argon to the full persons and their basic rights outweigh a merely sentient organism's rights (rabbit warren, 1987, p. 139).

Warren convincingly argues, based on biological evidence, that "newly fertilized piece eggs and very small embryos do not moreover claim any of [the] mental or behavioral capacities" which fall out the moral spirit of a person (Warren, 1987, p. 131). These capacities include consciousness or sentience, rationality, self-awareness or self-concept, self-motivated behavior, and linguistic capacity. This conclusion, she states, "accords with Western legal customs duty and commonsense morality" (Warren, 1987, p. 131).

Warren's argument that the fetus is not a person in the moral sense is a infrangible one, but it is telling that she concludes her adjudicate defending the rights of women to have miscarriages, heretofore of late-term fetuses. In both a moral and a companionable argument, she says that the rights of the muliebrity outweigh whatever rights the late-term fetus might have.

In addition, "Women's social obligation [part of her moral obligation] is not to bear children unless conditions are favorable to the latter's health and happiness and that of other persons" (Warren, 1987, p. 139).

The problem with Warren's essay is that it does not address the moral quandary of the woman who chooses to have the abortion. If morality is the basis of personhood, it seems preposterous to go to such lengths to discerp the moral

So frequently of the abortion debate focuses on the issue as if an analysis philosophical matter were being discussed. In circumstance, an abortion is a nauseating affair with long-term moral consequences. This still does not mean that the woman's personhood and rights do not outweigh the personhood and rights of the fetus, for they certainly do. The personhood of the woman carrying the fetus has precedence over the personhood of the fetus, and it is her moral decision what to do or not to do.

Noonan's argument is weakened by the fact that he does not consider the woman's rights---legal or moral---up until that final concession.

plain if the fetus is a human being at the indorsement of conception, this still does not top away the woman's right to run across her ingest biological destiny. Certainly the first right of a person is the right to decide what she is going to do with her own body. It is not a matter of considering, as Noonan does, the viability of the fetus at this particular point or that point.

The basis of personhood is not merely a matter of determining, biologically or otherwise, the point at which a fetus is viable or sentient and sure-footed of expressing itself. The basis of personhood is just as much, if not more, the right to take an action and to suffer the consequences.

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 lifespan is threatened by carrying the fetus to birth. His conclusions emphasize the religious, Biblical and Christian aspects.

One of Noonan's stronger arguments is that the fetus is a human being at conception because at that moment it possesses the genetic material which makes it an in all unique being, and it is irrelevant that it has not yet experienced a full manifestation of that genetic menu:

The impact of having an abortion is profoundly emotional, not rational, not analytical. The woman who has an aborti
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