Originally posted by wikipedia

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Mary Anne Warren, in her famous article arguing for the permissibility of abortion,[4] holds that moral opposition to abortion is based on the following argument:

1. It is wrong to kill innocent human beings.
2. The fetus is an innocent human being.
3. Hence it is wrong to kill the fetus.

Warren, however, thinks that 'human being' is used in different senses in (1) and (2). In (1), 'human being' is used in a moral sense to mean a 'person', a 'full-fledged member of the moral community'. In (2), 'human being' means 'biological human'. That the fetus is a biologically human organism or animal is uncontroversial, Warren holds. But it does not follow that the fetus is a person, and it is persons that have rights, such as the right to life.[5]

To help make a distinction between 'person' and 'biological human', Warren notes that we should respect the lives of highly intelligent aliens, even if they are not biological humans. She thinks there is a cluster of properties that characterize persons6]

1. consciousness (of objects and events external and/or internal to the being), and in particular the capacity to feel pain
2. reasoning (the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems)
3. self-motivated activity (activity which is relatively independent of either genetic or direct external control)
4. the capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite variety of types, that is, not just with an indefinite number of possible contents, but on indefinitely many possible topics
5. the presence of self-concepts, and self-awareness, either individual or racial, or both

A person does not have to have each of these, but if something has all five then it definitely is a person whether it is biologically human or not, while if it has none or perhaps only one then it is not a person, again whether it is biologically human or not. The fetus has at most one, consciousness (and this only after it becomes susceptible to pain—the timing of which is disputed), and hence is not a person...

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Originally posted by wikipedia

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The infanticide objection points out that infants (indeed up to about one year of age, since it is only around then that they begin to outstrip the abilities of non-human animals) have only one of Warren’s characteristics—consciousness—and hence would have to be accounted non-persons on her view; thus her view would permit not only abortion but infanticide. Warren agrees that infants are non-persons (and so killing them is not strictly murder), but denies that infanticide is generally permissible.[14] For, Warren claims, once a human being is born, there is no longer a conflict between it and the woman's rights, since the human being can be given up for adoption. Killing such a human being would be wrong, not because it is a person, but because it would go against the desires of people willing to adopt the infant and to pay to keep the infant alive.

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Originally posted by Silvershield

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For the life of me, I cannot understand this concept. If something is wrong, it is wrong. If something is right, it is right. If something is morally neutral or morally irrelevant, than it's a moot point whether it is right or wrong. But how can killing a baby be morally wrong yet still be right? Or vice versa?

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Originally posted by Xkeeper

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...why are you so mean you

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