Topic > Mary Anne Warren's reflection on the moral status of...

Warren argues against whether a fetus is a human being in the moral sense. He states that we can say that a fetus has the moral sense of being a human being but not in the genetic sense. For a fetus to be human in the moral sense, it must be a being in the genetic sense. Warren thinks that a fetus does not have full moral status because it is not a person. To be a person you must have equal moral rights. Warren believes that a fetus at any stage will not resemble a person or have any meaningful right to life. A fetus does not have the ability to make decisions or have memories, therefore it has no right to life. Warren states that a fetus is not a person and should have no moral rights. Warren stated in Potential Personhood and The Right to Life that a fetus in no way resembles a person. He wonders about the potential that could unfold if the fetus were given the chance to become a person. “It is difficult to deny that the fact that an entity is a potential person is a prima facie strong reason not to destroy it; but it is not necessary to conclude from this that a potential person has a right to life, in virtue of that potential” (Warren, p.472). After analyzing the concept of personhood, Warren concluded that a fetus, at any stage of development, does not resemble a person enough to have the right to life or the potential to be a person.