Morality is wrong essay

In Mary Anne Warren article “ The Moral And Legal Status of Abortion”, She attempts to move beyond the stalemate in the debate over who is a “ human”.

The typical argument against abortion she said. With the universal truism of moral consideration that it is wrong to kill innocent human beings. The pro-life advocate then develops a simple syllogism based on this first major premises. The second premises being, “ Fetus are innocent human being”. These two premises together force the intellect to conclude that is wrong to kill a fetus. She acclaimed next move is not to deny the first premises. She allows that it is a self evident moral truth. Her tactic is casting doubt on the conclusion is to allow premises one but to suggest that the second premises switches the meaning of the term human being and the syllogism is then a case equivocation.

If the terms change meaning one can no longer have confidence in the conclusion drawn from their used. The first sense is with regard to those who are full fledged members of the moral community. This is she acclaimed the moral sense of the term. The second is the mere genetic sense of the term.

If one is then simply saying that a fetus genetically moves towards becoming a human in the moral sense, the warren has no particular problem. Her problem is with regard to the applicability of the first premise to those who are only genetically human. Who are that community of humans to whom the premise applies?, It is wrong to kill innocent human beings. The question that then remains for warren concerns how one will define this moral community for which the first premise of the argument has meaning and relevance.

Her conclusion is simple and she claims self evident. Only people belong to the moral community. In order to see the truth of this claims, we are then directed to a consideration of what a person actually is. A good starting point she suggested is that we consider what elements we might look for in an alien form of life as evidence of person hood. In her five distinct criteria it is conceding that much debate could be brought forth regarding that criteria, both with respect to what is found and not . Warren is willing to accept the criteria 1 to 3 as a sufficient basis for her theory. But she says that if an entity is unable to fulfill any of the five criteria it should self sense of the term human is simply insufficient as basis for including one in the moral community of persons to whom the moral maxim, It is wrong to kill innocent human life.