Fetal Personhood

One of the furthermost essential issues in biomedical ethics is the controversy around abortion. There’s a long history on this controversy and it is still critically debated among researchers and the public in both terms of morality and legality. Some of the basic questions argued that may perhaps characterize the importance of the issue: Is abortion morally justifiable? Does the foetus/embryo/zygote have any moral and legal rights? Is the foetus a human being and, if so, should it be protected?

Pro-choice advocates have phrased their counterargument this way, “A fetus is not yet a human being. It is nothing but a clump of cells with the potential to become a human being. It is ‘alive’ but that is also true of all the other cells in a woman’s body. It has no life of its own yet. It is not yet a separate life from the life of the woman in whose uterus it is.”

Abortion is a never-ending controversial topic, that is why it is important to examine the definition of a fetus, pro-life arguments, and pro-choice arguments. “According to the Bible, life begins at birth- when a baby draws its first breath” (Knapp 45). A baby is considered living at no other time prior. Arguments among the abortion debate have brought this fact into dispute over many years, even before abortion was legalized in 1973 in the court case Roe vs Wade. As written in the Abortion Controversy, I believe that an early embryo may be called a potential human being.

Even today, there are many moral and philosophical issues that divide the United States because they create very polarized opinions and beliefs. One such philosophical issue is the moral permissibility of infanticide. Mary Anne Warren, a philosopher, presents her liberal yet controversial views on the issue of infanticide in the postscript of her article, On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion. However, the anti-infanticide arguments pose problems for Warren’s position because they justify the immorality of infanticide through the physical similarity in resemblance of neonates to human beings. These arguments also claim that the destruction of a viable infant is needless because even if the infant’s biological parents reject the infant, there are many other parents who are willing to adopt and nurture that infant.

By failing to define the terms ‘fetus’ and ‘standard fetus’, he leaves open for interpretation not only the moral significance of the terms, but also their strength in relation to his argument. Marquis assumes that the fetus has a future that is just as valuable as that of an adult yet fails to grant the fetus the same moral status as an adult. This lack of consistency along with the falsity of his claims weakens his argument and leaves a large piece of the abortion question unanswered. Because many of his premises are false, I altered them to be correct which in turn resulted in an illogical sequence of evidence for Marquis’ original conclusion; rendering his argument invalid. After altering the conclusion to follow the revised premises, it only gave a suitable claim for some abortions, rather than the overwhelming majority of abortions.

The debate whether abortion is morally permissible or not permissible is commonly discussed between the considerations of the status of a fetus and ones virtue theory. A widely recognized theory of pro-choice advocates can be thought to be that their ethical view is that fetus’s merely are not humans because they lack the right to life since they believe a fetus does not obtain any sort of mental functions or capability of feelings. Although this may be true in some cases it is not in all so explaining the wrongness of killing, between the common debates whether a fetus does or does not obtain human hood, should be illustrated in a way of a virtuous theory. The wrongness of killing is explained by what the person or fetus is deprived of, such as their right to life; not by means of a heart beat or function of one’s body, but by the fact that it takes their ability of potentially growing into a person to have the same human characteristics as we do.

Given that the infant, like any infant, is not a person, as I see it, I think that it’s ethically defensible to say we do not have to continue its life. It doesn’t have a right to life”. It’s a jarring opening statement to say the least,

In “A Defense of Abortion,” Judith Thomson argues with a unique approach regarding the topic of abortion. For the purpose of the argument, Thomas agrees to go against her belief and constructs an argument based on the idea that the fetus is a person at conception. She then formulates her arguments concerning that the right to life is not an absolute right. There are certain situations where abortion is morally permissible. She believes that the fetus’s right to life does not outweigh the right for the woman to control what happens to her own body.

Mary Anne Warren’s argument for the moral permissibility of abortion concentrates on the question of personhood and humanity with reference to a common anti-abortion argument and the discussion of potential personhood. Her argument builds on the belief that fetuses are not human beings and considers humanity through certain categories one must have in order to be considered a human person. Warren’s argument is logical, however, her argument is unsound because of a series of erroneous premises. Thus, because these premises are erroneous, an Aristotelian-type argument can be constructed that properly discusses potential persons and argues against Warren, thus aruging for the moral impermissibility of abortion.

Pregnancy, giving birth, and abortion are three interrelated topics. They offer moral dilemmas that aren’t easily solved or tackled. In this paper, I will discuss abortion and I will approach it from the point of view of a consequentialist, a deontological ethicist, and a virtue ethicist. I will start by defining abortion, provide some information about the reasons why women opt to abort a fetus, then give a specific example of a moral dilemma that a woman is facing, and explore the dilemma from the different points of view.

The fetus is technically its own self, they are only relying on the mother for nourishment and to grown until their bodies are able to function without being attached to the mother. Life has to begin somewhere, we don't simply go from "nothing" to

Abortion is not only a fluctuating concept in our society, but an ethical and emotional debate, as well. The image I have chosen presents concepts from a cultural and historical background, as well as presents an ethical, emotional, and logical appeal to the audience. The debate about abortion has simply been overblown and exhausted. The truth of the matter is, abortion is murder. Ending a life, whether innocent or guilty, is murder.

But pro-life advocates argue that when a woman is pregnant, there is another body involved. They argue that the unborn body has the same rights as any other person and has the right to live. Pro-life advocates believe the presence of human life alone defines personhood. An unborn baby is a person just like everyone else that walks on the earth. They may be inside a womb and depended on their mother but they are still people.

However, in most cases it is the embryo that is aborted and not a fetus, which is the stage in which the embryo starts to develop. As such an embryo cannot be written in statistics as a life lived as it is dependent solely on the carrier, thus aborting at this stage technically should not be considered as the taking of life but as a decision on whether to facilitate this possible life. Personhood begins after a fetus is able to survive outside the womb, not at conception. Conclusion

Another way of looking at it is by identifying legal and moral status calculated in constitutional frameworks. A baby is considered to acquire both legal and moral standings when they exist as a separate person. Numerous questions