Marquis's Arguments Against Abortion

Warren states that the anti-abortionist must show that the fetus is a person in the full moral sense, not just in a genetic sense. The moral community, she believes, consists of all and only people, rather than merely human beings. She finds a distinction between a human being (someone genetically human) and a person (someone we have included in our moral community). She gives the example of finding life forms on another planet, and questions how humanity would decide if they should be treated as persons, or as potential sources of food. The determining factors she decides on are five traits of personhood: consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, the capacity to communicate, and self-awareness. While a being need not have all five
With his moral viewpoint, it is not only wrong to kill biological humans, but also possible other life forms similar to us (contrary to biological anti-abortion views). It is also wrong to kill certain nonhuman mammals in our own planet that are very like us (supporting animal rights). Further, killing infants is clearly wrong (in contrast to personhood theories that self-awareness constitutes human personhood). Finally, Marquis’ argument rules that euthanasia can be moral (unlike sanctity of life theories) if the person’s future only contains pain and suffering. While I am pro-choice like Warren, I do not agree with the entirety of her argument. Her qualifications for personhood exclude several groups from the moral community, such as infants and young toddlers. Through her reasoning, there would be just as little harm in killing an two year old child as in killing a three month old fetus. Therefore, I don’t think her qualifications to be included into the moral community are acceptable. I do agree with her point about a fetus’ potential rights, though- that they have some rights, but not full rights, and therefore the woman’s right to her own body override
By treating the fetus as a person, she takes into account the rights of both the mother and the fetus. However, she doesn’t base her arguments on possible futures, like Marquis- instead she compares their situations (one party growing within, the other being forced to house it), personal rights, and responsibilities to one another (if any). What was particularly convincing to me about her argument was how she argued that abortion does not need to be decent or unselfish to be morally permissible. This removes a lot of the responsibility of a mother to keep an unwanted fetus just to be a “good person”, rather than end their unwanted pregnancy. Thompson’s definition of the right to life was also significant to me. That a fetus has the right not to be killed unjustly, not not be killed, and the right to life, but not whatever it takes to sustain that life (such as in the example of the kidney donor), and this is an important distinction. This view protects the rights of the fetus, but also protects the rights and autonomy of the mother. Further, it recognizes that some rights are stronger than other rights, giving the mother the proper moral rights as not only a fully realized person, but one that would have to give the fetus life as well. Due to these reasons, I find Thompson’s argument as to why abortion is morally permissible the most