A Long Way to Legalize Abortion

In this essay I will be examining the concept of capacity and its connection to human rights and duties. I will also be examining the early years of abortion and Marry Anne Warrens argument in her article “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion.” Towards the end of the essay, with the knowledge of capacity I will be commenting on Warrens remarks in regard to her articles, “Fetal Development and the Right to Life” and Potential Personhood and the Right to Life.”

Capacity is the ability to do, experience or understand something. The human capacity is based on our upbringing, our survival instincts and the social experiences we encounter. Animals do not have the capacity to create moral structure but are able to hold a higher archery amongst themselves. The hierarchy is based upon fear and respect to where challenge may be initiated with the prospect of death. Humans have created a hierarchy with moral rights, a challenge can be initiated without the fear of death.

As human we are bound by our social and moral duties. An example of a social duty would be to your community, respecting the moral rights of others. Examples of moral duties would include telling the truth, obeying the law and protecting the people in your care. An example of a social and moral duty would be to not commit suicide. You have a social duty to your community and a moral duty to your family.

Rationality can be seen in the Australopitecus during the Stone Age Era, when we first see the use of tools. By using rationality, they realized through experimenting and experience using one thing may make a task or duty easier. We see this rationality evolve with our own human development. Are rationality regarding moral rights and duties is based on our capacity to reason due to the evolutionary process.

The nineteen sixties were times of protest and revolution. Dr. Martin Luther King marched with two hundred and fifty thousand people in hopes of better jobs and freedoms, millions of people watched a man take a giant leap for man kind on the moon and yet women were still being denied the right to make their own choices regarding their body. During the nineteen sixties abortion was still illegal in many states with some states offering limitations on abortion. Only when the women’s life was in danger would an abortion be permitted by the doctor in the cases of an abortion banned state.

With abortion being illegal, women turned to the black-market, home remedies and horrific methods of terminating their pregnancies. Many women died due to complications while performing home abortions. People were beginning to open their eyes to the legality of legalizing safe abortions.

Nineteen seventy, Hawaii was the first state to legalize abortions to its residents, following with New York, Alaska and Washington. With many other states still banning abortion. The year is nineteen seventy-three and a decision has just been passed by the United States Supreme Court that will change the legal standings of abortion in the United Sates. The case is Roe vs Wade.

“Jane Roe” was the name given to a young woman to protect her identity in the high-profile case. “Roe” came from low income and could not afford to pay out a physician to terminate her pregnancy. In her state of Texas, abortion was only legal in instances where the mother’s life was in jeopardy. Roe met6 with attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Wedding who wanted to fight to change the anti-abortion laws. The road ahead would not be easy and filled with a legal battle against the infamous lawyer Henry Wade. The next year the Roe team had been given a devastating blow, a Texas court ruled that a states abortion ban was illegal because it violated a constitutional right to privacy. The case was soon appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

With a seven to two jury decision the court ruled in favor of Roe. Determining a pregnancy into three trimesters. In the first trimester the women has the choice to terminate the pregnancy, the second trimester would be regulated by the government and the third trimester the government could prohibit the abortion in regards to the fetus. The court found that banned abortion was unconstitutional and effectively legalizing the procedure across the Country. Under the fourteen amendment of the U.S. Constitution the court found that a women’s rights to an abortion was implicit to her protected rights. The court was view and read about by millions of people, one very crucial person was a woman named Mary Anne Warren.

Mary Anne Warren was an American writer and philosophy professor at San Francisco State University. By most Warren is best known for her essays based around abortion. Her essay entitled “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion” has been required reading material in many college classrooms. Warren is pro-choice and believes every women has the right to choose what to do with her body.

Warren examines the “moral community” and who it is comprised of. Warren believes the moral community is based around “personhood” and made up of humans in two different senses. She discusses the human sense and genetic senses, “From here on, I will use “human” to mean “genetically human,” since the moral sense of the term seems closely connected to, and perhaps derived from, the assumption that genetic humanity is both necessary and sufficient for membership in the moral community.” The genetic sense is that of just physicality whilst the moral sense humans can be thought of those that are representatives of the moral community.

Warren then looks closely at what criteria makes up a person and establishes that a fetus should not be considered a person because it does not meet any of the criteria of “personhood”. Warren has comprised personhood in six criteria. One is sentience, the capacity to have conscious experiences. The second is emotion, the capacity to feel pain and pleasure. The third is reason, the capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems. The fourth is the capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite variety of types. The fifth is self-awareness, which is having the concept of oneself. The last being sixth is moral agency, the capacity to regulate one’s own actions through moral principles or ideals.

Warren states a human does not have to meet all the criteria to be considered into the moral community but must meet some. She then argues that a fetus does not meet any of the criteria and thus can not be admitted into the moral community. She states, “But small fetuses, which have not yet begun to experience, are not persons yet and do not have the rights that persons do.”

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