Mary Anne Warren

Mary Anne Warren

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In 1973, the same year that the Supreme Court handed down Roe vs. Wade, an article was published by a philosopher named Mary Anne Warren. Now by 1973, it was undeniable that a new human organism begins to exist at the point of fertilization. Therefore, not even the most ardent pro-abortionists could argue that abortion does not, in some sense, take the life of an innocent human being.

Warren’s way around this was to say that, even though abortion does indeed take the life of an innocent human being, it does not take the life of a person. What is the difference between a human being and a person, you ask? According to Warren, a human being is simply defined biologically, and so it is not necessarily wrong to kill human beings even though they may be innocent.

A person, on the other hand is defined differently. As Warren argued, persons must possess consciousness, they must have the capacity to reason, to communicate, to exercise free choice, and self-awareness. Of course, her point was that even though fetuses are human beings in the biological sense, they possess few, if any, of the qualifications for personhood, and may therefore be killed indiscriminately.

Warren just forgot one thing: If is OK to kill human beings that lack her characteristics for personhood, then it’s also OK to kill the mentally handicapped, infants, not to mention those who have merely fallen asleep. Is this really what Warren meant to imply?