In Mary Anne Warren’s “The Abortion Issue,” children are not persons in the empirical sense. Warren believes that prior to a certain point in a pregnancy, the child does not have “the capacity to understand” the ramifications of what an abortion would be, therefore the abortion does not infringe upon the rights of the unborn fetus. She states that: “…in the ways that matter from a moral point of view, human fetuses are very unlike human persons, particularly in their early months of development”(152). In essence, personhood as defined by Warren can only come after the first trimester. Before that time, the fetus does not have the sentience that would make it a person. Warren’s main criteria for what makes a person will be considered first, then we will move on to her argument on sentience, and the differences she notes between a fetus and an infant.

As she states in her paper, there are five main categories that empirically place something as a person. They include sentience, or conscious behavior, such as awareness of our surroundings, rationality: the ability to respond according to what affects us, self-concept: the ability to understand what we are, self-motivated behavior: the planning and carrying out of our own beliefs and thoughts beyond how we are externally affected, and linguistic capacity, or the use of a system to convey messages. Warren does not raise the answers to already obvious arguments when considering these categories. For example, someone who has lost the use of one of their senses still may have the use of others, so that does not make them non-empirically a person. A paralyzed person is also empirically human due to the fact that their internal capacities are still the same, and the physical limitation does not eliminate them under any means from “personhood”, as Warren defines it. When considering a later-term fetus, she recognizes the unborn’s ability for sentience, but without rationality, self-awareness, and other mental and behavioral capacities, they are still far from being persons in the empirical sense. In other words, without the ability to act and learn from the use of the capacities given, one is not deemed a person. A major sticking point in how we deem life according to Warren is whether or not we can morally value something as equal to other things. For example, she considers plant life and renders it different than other life as it lacks sentience.

One of the more vulnerable parts of her arguments centers on the consideration of whether sentient fetuses are persons. While they may not have the ability to act upon their sentience, that does not mean that they are not persons. Here is where she brings up the reasons why infants are persons, and thus somehow morally above even sentient fetuses, and especially fetuses not beyond the first trimester. Her words are that: “not all sentient beings are persons with full and equal moral rights”(146). The difference between moral and empirical rationale behind how we act towards people is significant for Warren. In essence, as mentioned earlier, if something is not deemed morally equal to another thing, it is automatically not the same: for example, Warren’s reasoning behind the differences between those born and those who are yet to be born. In returning to her categorization of infants and late-term fetuses as different due to higher moral worth, it must be realized that her entire argument is based on our perception of them, and that alone is not a reasonable argument for something that we cannot interact with. She raises considerations we have for infants that we are not likely to have for the unborn, but neglects to realize that our concerns might be {there}..where? for them as well, only in a different sense. Take for example her argument that: “The realistic concern that maltreated infants may become asocial or anti-social children or adult”(148). This simple argument that she uses to support how infants and fetuses are different, is incorrect. For example, if the unborn fetus is introduced to certain chemicals via the carrier of the fetus, it may be greatly affected. Most mothers therefore take into consideration how they act once they are pregnant, and therefore exhibit concern for how their child may turn out. Warren would most likely refute this argument, as she does at other points in her analysis, by saying that in this case we are showing concern for the infant or newborn that the fetus will become, and not the fetus itself.

Warren’s categories for personhood prohibits a fetus from being categorized with an infant, or others who are already born. However, her conclusion that we treat the fetus any differently than we would any other person because of what it is seems to be an oversight on her part. While we may show our concern in different ways, it still remains there even in this case she raises.