Marry Ann Warren: What Does It Means To Be Human?

For this week’s posting, I will be discussing a topic from the assignment I found interesting and the reason why. Marry Ann Warren gives an interesting definition of what it means to be human. She argues that there are distinctions to the definition of humanness. To her, being part the moral sense is to be human, whereas genetic humanity does not qualify someone for being a human. Warren argues that the human fetus is not a person because they do not fulfill the five qualifications of personhood. I do disagree with her argument because it seems ridiculous to base a pro-choice, pro-abortion thesis on the notion that a fetus cannot exhibit consciousness, reasoning, self-motivation, communication and self-awareness therefore it cannot possibly
be human.
Warren attempts to make the claim that being human consist of five central traits and since a fetus is not a person making abortion okay. There is no denying that a fetus cannot and will not be able to satisfy even one of the humanistic traits in Warren’s critical so it is an unfair and inappropriate claim. We all understand that a fetus has not developed into a person, so it does not have any moral rights. However, if we were to apply it to people who have dementia, Alzheimer’s disease or some organic dysfunction that causes them to become incoherent. Are we also making the claim that they too are not human? I think that every human life is valuable regardless of the circumstances and should be valued. I feel that Warren’s theory in favor of abortion contains many weak premise because the criteria for personhood has no bearing on the argument on abortion rights. Accepting her claim just leads to a slippery slope that ultimely ends with infanticide is okay, which is wrong on every level.