How Does Mary Anne Warren Outweigh The Right To Life

The right to an individual’s life will always outweigh that of another’s. If in all circumstances the right to your life comes before anyone else’s life, then abortion is justifiable. Overall we have the ultimate control of our bodies and the consent to what we allow to happen or not happen.

Mary Anne Warren argues that no matter the situation, the woman always has the utmost authority in the sense of her life and body. The assertion: “But even if a potential person does have a prima facie right to life, such a right could not possibly outweigh the right of a woman to obtain an abortion, since the rights of any actual person invariably outweigh those of any potential person, whenever the two conflict,” is very significant. Here, Warren claims
Her analogy is about an explorer who falls into the hands of aliens that are going to make a few hundred thousand clones of him unless he can escape. The clones would have roughly the same genetic code and be potential human beings. Warren states, “[T]o deprive all of these potential people of their potential lives; for his right to life outweighs all of theirs together, in spite of the fact that they are all genetically human, all innocent, and all have a very high probability of becoming people very soon…” (Warren, p. 489). She reasons that he has the right to deny the potential beings life because his own life is significantly worthy. Our own lives exceed the viability of all others, as so does theirs to ours. Warren says, “Regardless of how he got captured, he is not morally obligated to remain in captivity for any period of time for the sake of permitting any number of potential people to come into actuality, so great is the margin by which one actual person’s right to liberty outweighs whatever right to life even a hundred thousand potential people have” (Warren, p. 490). Altogether, even if the circumstances in no way harms or affects a person, they have sole authority to determine what occurs in their
Constitutionally, we as actual human beings have the right to our own lives. In the article “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion” Warren states, “[I]n the absence of any overwhelming social need for every possible child, the laws which restrict the right to obtain an abortion, or limit the period of pregnancy during which an abortion may be performed, are a wholly unjustified violation of a woman’s most basic moral and constitutional rights” (Warren, p.490). With this being said, if women are dismissed form having the power to make decisions concerning their lives then they are being refused of their moral and even constitutional rights. Having freedom means having the power to act, think, speak as we want without limits. As American’s we are granted these rights. Therefore, as actual human beings we have rights to protect our won interest and