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Mary Anne Warren and the Boundaries of the Moral Community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2022

Timothy Furlan
Timothy Furlan*
Affiliation:
Center for Ethical Leadership, University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas 77006, USA
*
Corresponding author: Email. Timothy_Furlan@hms.harvard.eduand
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Abstract

In her important and well-known discussion “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion,” Mary Anne Warren regrets that “it is not possible to produce a satisfactory defense of a woman’s right to obtain an abortion without showing that the fetus is not a human being, in the morally relevant sense.” Unlike some more cautious philosophers, Warren thinks that we can definitively demonstrate that the fetus is not a person. In this paper, Warren’s argument is critically examined with a focus especially on the question of the foundation and the boundaries of the moral community. The fundamental thesis of the paper is that Warren’s approach is flawed for at least four reasons: (1) that being a person is not as obviously central to having full moral rights as Warren assumes, (2) that her exclusivism regarding moral status has dubious moral consequences independent of the abortion issue, (3) that it is not clear that a fetus is not a person, even on Warren’s own criteria, and (4) her criteria for personhood are themselves suspect.

Keywords

moral statusmoral communitydignitypersonhoodabortionrights
Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , April 2022 , pp. 230 - 246
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

Notes

1. Warren, MA. On the moral and legal status of abortion. The Monist 1973;57:43–61 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Hereafter, cited as MLSA. Warren’s article has been anthologized hundreds of times since then and is widely used in ethical theory, bioethics, and applied ethics courses. Remarkably, it has been cited at least 627 times as of 2021. See for instance Warren MA. On the moral and legal status of abortion. In: Cahn, S, ed. Exploring Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press; 2009 Google Scholar.

2. Contrary to Judith Jarvis Thomson, Warren argues that if one grants the full personhood of the fetus, it is not possible to establish conclusively that abortion is morally permissible. See Thomson, JJ. A defense of abortion. Philosophy & Public Affairs 1971;1:48 Google Scholar.

3. I will focus primarily on her article MLSA because of the significant influence it has had on discussions surrounding the morality of abortion, moral status, and the boundaries of the moral community. At various points in the article, I will make reference to other relevant works by Warren and in particular to her later book Moral Status. Warren, MA. Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things. Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1997 Google Scholar.

4. See note 1, Warren 1973, at 52.

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7. For a good overview, see Beauchamp, TL, Childress, JF. Principles of Biomedical Ethics. 8th ed. New York: Oxford University Press; 2019 Google ScholarPubMed, at chap. 3.

8. See, for example, Fletcher, J. Four indicators of humanhood: The enquiry matures. The Hastings Center Report 1974;4:4–7 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Tooley, M. Abortion and Infanticide. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1984 Google Scholar; Rachels, J. The End of Life: Euthanasia and Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1986:7–8 Google Scholar; and Dworkin, R. Life’s Dominion: An Argument about Abortion and Euthanasia. New York: Random House; 1994:27 Google Scholar. In this regard, Peter Singer has enthusiastically adopted Rachels’ project to “unsanctify” human life. See Singer, P. Is the sanctity of life ethics terminally ill? Bioethics 1995;9:327–42CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Singer, P. Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics. New York: St Martin’s Griffin; 1996:189 Google Scholar; Singer, P. Unsanctifying Human Life: Essays on Ethics. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell; 2002 Google Scholar; Singer, P. The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 2011:71–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Singer, P. Practical Ethics. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2011:71–94 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a good critique of Singer on this point, see Gensler, H. Singer’s unsanctity of human life: A critique. In: Schaler, JA, ed. Peter Singer Under Fire: The Moral Iconoclast Faces His Critics. LaSalle, IL: Open Court; 2009:163–85Google Scholar. On the sanctity of life approach, see Dyck, AJ. Life’s Worth: The Case Against Assisted Suicide. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; 2002:45–71 Google Scholar; Sulmasy, D. Speaking of the value of life. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 2011;21:181–99CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Keown, J. The Law and Ethics of Medicine: Essays on the Inviolability of Human Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2012:88–109 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a good collection of articles on the topic, see Bayertz, K, ed. Sanctity of Life and Human Dignity. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers; 1996 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. See note 7, Beauchamp, Childress 2019, at 80–1.

10. See note 7, Beauchamp, Childress 2019, at 69–70. See as well Savulescu, J. Human-animal transgenesis and chimeras might be an expression of our humanity. American Journal of Bioethics 2003;3:22–5CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Eberl, J, Ballard, RA. Metaphysical and ethical perspectives on creating human-animal hybrids. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 2009;34:470–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hyun, I. From naïve pluripotency to chimeras: New ethical challenge. Development 2015;142:6–8 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

11. On this point, see Lee, P. The pro-life argument from substantial identity. Bioethics 2004;18:249–63CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; George, RP, Gomez-Lobo, A. The moral status of the human embryo. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 2005;48:201–10CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Beckwith, F. Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2007:130–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lee, P. Abortion and Unborn Human Life. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press; 2010:8–108 Google Scholar; Kaczor, C. The Ethics of Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice. London: Routledge; 2014:41–152 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lee, P, Tollefsen, C, George, RP. The ontological status of embryos. The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 2014;39:483–504 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

12. See note 7, Beauchamp, Childress 2019, at 75.

13. Examples here would include infants, individuals with advanced dementia, PVS patients, and the cognitively disabled.

14. For a good discussion, see MacIntyre, A. Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues. LaSalle, IL: Open Court; 2001:21–53 Google Scholar and Beauchamp, TL, Wobber, V. Autonomy in Chimpanzees. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 2014;35:117–32CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

15. On the possibility of AI or Robot rights, see Gunkel, DJ. Robot Rights. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2018 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a skeptical view, see Smith, BC. The Promise of Artificial Intelligence: Reckoning and Judgment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2019 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a good overview of the field, see Carter, M. Minds and Computers: An Introduction the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press; 2007 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. For a powerful account, see Korsgaard, C. Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals. New York: Oxford University Press; 2018 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. The literature on animal rights is vast. Some of the better studies include: Beauchamp, TL, DeGrazia, D. Principles of Animal Research Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press; 2019 Google Scholar; DeGrazia, D. Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status. Cambridge: Cambridge Press; 1996 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frey, RG. Interests and Rights: The Case Against Animals. Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1980 Google Scholar; Lindsay, RL. Slaves, embryos, and nonhuman animals: Moral status and the limitations of common morality theory. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 2005;15:323–46CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Beauchamp, TL, Frey, RG, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press; 2011 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at chaps. 1–4; Nozick, R. Do animals have rights? In: Socratic Puzzles. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1997:303–10Google Scholar; O’Neill, O. Kant on duties regarding nonrational nature. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary 1998;72:211–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Regan, T. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; 2004 Google Scholar.

18. One extraordinary element of human reason is the capacity for objectivity, that is, the ability to go beyond one’s immediate interests, needs, and desires and perceive oneself and others as possessing intrinsic value, dignity, and worth. In addition, human rationality involves the use of abstract concepts that do not refer to this or that object but to all possible objects of a certain kind. As Stephen Barr notes, “circularity applies to all circles and circular objects of any size, position, and orientation. Its universality has an unlimited reach to all possible things. It is infinite in scope.” Another extraordinary ability is to judge the truth and falsehood of propositions. A computer can also “distinguish” between true and false propositions but only when it has been programmed by a human intellect and does so in an automatic way. Even more astonishing is that human beings not only can judge truth and falsehood, but that we are also capable of certitude that some are necessarily true. As Barr notes, humans can know with certainty that necessary truths like 1 ≠ 0 are “true here and now, true a billion years ago and true a billion years hence, true in galaxies too remote to be seen with a telescope, even true in any other possible universe.” In addition, “we can even know that some truths remain true in an infinite number of cases such as a × b = b × a, for all numbers a and b.” See Barr, S. Modern Physics and Ancient Faith. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press; 2003:199–203 Google Scholar.

19. Allen, C, Bekoff, M. Species of Mind: The Philosophy and Biology of Cognitive Ethology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 1997 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Griffin, DR. Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 2001 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Korsgaard, C. Medical research on animals and the question of moral standing. Harvard Journal of Bioethics 2019;5:1–27 Google Scholar.

20. As Fukuyama notes, “we tend to accord conscious creatures greater rights in this regard because, like humans, they can anticipate suffering and have fears and hopes. A distinction of this sort might serve to distinguish the rights of a salamander from those of, say, your dog Rover … But even if we accept the fact that animals have rights not to suffer unduly, there is a whole range of rights that they cannot be granted because they are not human. We would not even consider granting a right to vote, for example, to creatures that, as a group, were incapable of learning human language. Chimps can communicate in a language typical of their species, and they can master a limited number of human words if extensively trained, but they cannot master human language and do not possess human cognition more generally. That some human beings cannot master human language either actually confirms its importance to political rights: children are excluded from the right to vote because they do not as a group have the cognitive abilities of a typical adult.” Fukuyama, F. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux; 2002:146 Google Scholar.

21. Warren refers to this as the “Agent’s Rights Principle” in her later work. See note 3, Warren 1997, at 156.

22. Noonan, JT. Deciding who is human. Natural Law Forum 1968;13:134 Google Scholar. See as well Noonan, JT. An almost absolute value in human history. In: Feinberg, J, ed. The Problem of Abortion. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth; 1984:9–14 Google Scholar.

23. See note 7, Beauchamp, Childress 2019, at 81.

24. In particular, the notion of personhood seems to be a good example of what Bernard Williams has referred to a “thick ethical” concept. See Williams, B. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1985 Google Scholar.

25. See note 1, Warren 1973, at 54.

26. See note 1, Warren 1973, at 56.

27. For a skeptical account of personhood as a necessary condition for moral status see Ohlin JD. Is the concept of the person necessary for human rights? Columbia Law Review 2005;105:209–49.

28. See note 7, Beauchamp, Childress 2019, at 71. As Alan Donagan notes, such an approach often reduces the concept of personhood to a “do it yourself kit for constructing a ‘moral community’ to your own taste.” See Donagan, A. The Theory of Morality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1977, at 170.

29. Beauchamp captures this point well: “possession of a right is also independent of being in a position to assert the right. A right-holder need not be the claimant in a particular case. For example, small children and the mentally handicapped may not be able to understand or claim their rights. Nonetheless, they possess them, and claims can be made for them by appropriate representatives. Similarly, animals have all the rights correlative to obligations that humans owe them, and they have these rights regardless of whether they or any surrogate is in a position to exercise the rights.” See note 5, Beauchamp 1999, at 317 and Bartolotti, L. Disputes over moral status: Philosophy and science in the future of bioethics. Health Care Analysis 2007;15:155–7Google Scholar.

30. See note 1, Warren 1973, at 54.

31. See note 1, Warren 1973, at 55.

32. See note 1, Warren 1973, at 56. For an insightful critique of these criteria as manifestations of an “anthropology of expressive individualism” see Snead, CO. What it Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 2020:139–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On expressive individualism see Sandel, M. The procedural republic and the unencumbered self. Political Theory 1984;12:81–96 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bellah, R, Madsen, R, Sullivan, WM, Swidler, A, Tipton, SM. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; 1985 Google Scholar; and Atomism, Taylor C.. In: Philosophical Papers, Vol 2: Philosophy and the Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1985:187–211 Google Scholar.

33. See note 1, Warren 1973, at 56.

34. See for instance Allen, D, Ashok Kumar, M. Culture and Self: Philosophical and Religious Perspectives. Boulder, CO: Westview Press; 1997 Google Scholar; Cohen, AP. Self-Consciousness: An Alternative Anthropology of Identity. London: Routledge Press; 1994 Google Scholar; Geertz, C. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books; 1973:360–411 Google Scholar; and Mauss, M. A category of the human mind; The notion of person. In: Carrithers, M, Collins, S, Lukes, S, eds. The Category of the Person: Anthropology, History, and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1985:1–25 Google Scholar.

35. This view also seems to have been held by John Locke. See his discussions of the “Prince and the Cobbler” as well as the “Day Man” and the “Night Man.” In each of these cases, two distinct persons “inhabit” or “occupy” the same material body at different times. Locke, “Of identity and diversity,” Chapter XXVII of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. For a strong critique of this view, see Van Inwagen, P. What do we refer to when we say I? In: Gale, RM, ed. Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell; 2002:174–99Google Scholar; Lee P. Soul, body, and personhood. American Journal of Jurisprudence 2004;49:87–125; and Eberl, J. The Nature of Human Persons: Metaphysics and Bioethics. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press; 2020 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. On this point, see Shweder, RA, Bourne, EJ. Does the concept of the person vary cross-culturally? In: Marsella, AJ, White, GM, eds. Cultural Conceptions of Mental Health and Therapy. Boston, MA: D. Reidel; 1982 Google Scholar, and Markus, H, Kitayama, S. Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion and motivation. Psychological Review 1991;98:224–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37. In response to vigorous criticism, Warren has attempted to walk back some of these implications in subsequent work. In particular, in her 1982 postscript to MLSA and her later book Moral Status (1997) she attempts to find a place for infants, PVS patients, individuals with advanced dementia, and the mentally disabled within her multicriterial account of moral status. In particular, she focuses on possessing (1) the “barest level” of sentience as sufficient for moral status as well as (2) being an “object of empathy” for those “who care for and about them” and finally being part of a (3) “community of caring.” The difficulty for Warren though is that unborn fetuses should then also be afforded moral status and included in the moral community as they also meet these very same criteria for moral status. And yet if Warren were to recognize this then her entire defense of abortion rights would unravel. On this point, see as well Card, R. Infanticide and the liberal view of abortion. Bioethics 2000;14:340–51CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

38. See note 1, Warren 1973, at 56.

39. These implications have been explicitly defended most notably by Michael Tooley and Peter Singer. See Tooley, M. Abortion and infanticide. Philosophy & Public Affairs 1972;2:37–65 Google Scholar and Singer, P. Discussing infanticide. Journal of Medical Ethics 2013;39:260 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. On this point, see as well Warren’s later essay “The Moral Significance of Birth” where she attempts to argue for birth as marking a decisive moment where some type of moral status is conferred. See Warren, MA. The moral significance of birth. Hypatia 1989;4:46–65 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Significantly, in her 1982 postscript and Moral Status, Warren does not regard the killing of newborns as murder because of their subpersonal status and continues to defend infanticide as being consistent in principle with what she calls the “Human Rights” principle. Finally, she urges that a “tolerant attitude towards early infanticide is kinder and more just than the persecution of parents who choose it as the lesser evil.” See note 3, Warren 1997, at 165.

40. While this gap in her argument is acknowledged in Moral Status, nonetheless, her revised conception of the moral community remains problematic. In particular, Warren now includes infants, PVS patients, and individuals with severe cognitive disabilities. As Warren notes, because such individuals may be “objects of empathy” or pass the “barest threshold of sentience” they may be acknowledged as members of the moral community. The difficulty for Warren though is that this acknowledgment undermines her exclusion of fetuses from the moral community as well as her specific argument in defense of abortion. The continual challenge for Warren is to find some way to incorporate these “marginal cases” without also including fetuses who meet the same criteria for moral status. As Warren notes, “it is both impractical and emotionally abhorrent to deny full moral status to sentient human beings who have not yet achieved (or who have irreparably lost) the capacity for moral agency. If we want there to be human beings in the world in the future, and if we want them to have any chance to lead good lives, then we must at least value the lives and well-being of infants and young children. Fortunately, instinct, reason, and culture, jointly ensure that most of us regard infants and young children as human beings to whom we can have obligations as binding as those we have to human beings who are moral agents.” See note 3, Warren 1997, at 164–5. In this regard, I am in complete agreement with Warren. The question immediately arises, however, as to why this same regard, concern, and protection is not extended to fetuses if they also possess a potential for moral agency, are “objects of empathy,” and we desire and value their well-being as well as the continued existence of the human race.

41. For a good overview, see Chalmers, D. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University Press; 1997 Google Scholar.

42. See Brugger, CE. The problem of fetal pain and abortion: Toward an ethical consensus for appropriate behavior. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 2012; 22:263–87CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed and Derbyshire, S, Bockman, JC. Reconsidering fetal pain. Journal of Medical Ethics 2020;46:3–6 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

43. See note 7, Beauchamp, Childress 2019, at 73–4.

44. McMahan, J. Cloning, killing, and identity. Journal of Medical Ethics 1999;25:83 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Alfonso Gomez-Lobo captures this point of view well: “on the dualist view, the core of our being is our mind or consciousness. The key intuition or self-evident claim behind this view is my awareness of myself. It is a ‘first-person singular’ perspective. As long as I am conscious of the fact that I am thinking, I am assured that I exist, and if I should become permanently unconscious, the person that I am would no longer exist, even if my body continued to live. Indeed, my body is somehow external to me, for I am, on this view, what might be called a ‘nonbodily person’ or a ‘mind inhabiting a body.’ When Jane watches her mother baking a cake in the kitchen, Jane does not see a person: she sees only a biological organism. The person is her mother’s mind, which merely inhabits her body. If her mother develops advanced dementia, she ceases to be a person, and all that remains is a biological organism.” See Gomez-Lobo, A. Bioethics and the Human Goods: An Introduction to Natural Law Bioethics. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press; 2015:31 Google Scholar.

45. As Gomez-Lobo notes, “most people would surely have trouble thinking of themselves as somehow distinct from their body. They experience themselves primarily as a single body occupying a place in space and subject to the ravages of time. Illness affects them, not something they occupy, and it is on this assumption that they worry about their health and well-being. We are immediately affected by everything that happens to our body, such as the pain of a wound. All this could perhaps be explained within a dualist framework by postulating a sophisticated theory of the copresence of two substances in the same place. However, the more sophisticated the theory, the less persuasive it will probably be. What seems to count decisively against dualism, though, is the fact that the empirical evidence makes it highly unlikely that a substantial change occurs when the mind arises.” See note 45, Gomez-Lobo 2015, at 33. For a good general critique of such an approach see George, RP, Lee, P. Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2009 Google Scholar. As Gomez-Lobo argues, a more likely explanation is “the brain is formed gradually as required by the human genotype and is part of the unified overall development of the human organism under the guidance of the human genome. Indeed, the neural activity that may indicate the onset of sentience arises at some point during gestation, but the brain continues to develop well after birth. If these elementary biological facts are taken into account, it becomes clear that the metaphor of an ‘unoccupied organism’ before the detectable activation of a crucial human organ, the brain, is highly misleading. It is much more plausible to hold that a succession of continuous alterations is taking place in an organism that does not thereby receive something external or extraneous to itself. A young human body, by its genetic constitution, is internally programmed as a unified whole to undergo the alterations that lead to the activation of the mind. It undergoes a dynamic, self-directed progression toward the full actualization of its indwelling capacity.” See note 45, Gomez-Lobo 2015, at 33–4.

46. I would argue that this is ultimately rooted in the lack of consensus regarding the concept of personhood itself noted earlier.

47. Following Alasdair MacIntyre, I would argue that we have moral duties and obligations to protect the vulnerable and defenseless even though they may not have nor be able to fulfill such duties to others. See note 14, MacIntyre 1999.

48. In this regard, every identifiable and existing adult human being has once been a fetus though never just a sperm or an ovum. But unless some adult human beings have a history of past membership in other species, or in none, no existing adult has ever not been a member of the species Homo sapiens. So, it seems, clear that fetuses are human beings.

49. For a good overview, see Chamovitz, D. What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses. New York: Farrar Strauss & Giroux; 2013 Google Scholar.

50. As Patrick Lee notes, “We [human beings] understand the difference between a modus tollens argument, and one that is similar but invalid, namely, the fallacy of affirming the consequent (If A then B, B, therefore A). But, what is more, we understand why the fallacy of affirming the consequent is invalid—namely, some other cause (or antecedent) could be, or could have been, present to lead to that effect. A computer, a mechanical device, can be programmed to operate according to the modus tollens and to react differently (give a different output) for words arranged in the pattern of the fallacy of affirming the consequent. But understanding the arguments (which humans do) and merely operating according to them because programmed to do so (the actions of computers) are entirely different types of actions.” See note 35, Lee 2004, at 92.

51. Lee captures this point well in his review of MacIntyre’s Dependent Rational Animals: “We become mature practical reasoners, and thus able to participate in fully human flourishing only in, ‘a set of relationships to certain particular others who are able to give us what we need.’ But once we reach that stage, we then find ourselves in a network of relationships of giving and receiving. And we owe to this community a kind of giving that cannot be calculated or restricted in advance. We ought to enter this network of relationships, this pool of giving and receiving, but to enter it is to assume an obligation to give to individuals from whom we have not received, and to be ready to give without restrictions or conditions.” See Lee, P. Review: Dependent rational animals: Why human beings need the virtues. American Journal of Jurisprudence 2000;45:133–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52. On this point, see Veatch, R, Ross, LF. Defining Death: The Case for Choice. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press; 2016 Google Scholar.

53. See note 1, Warren 1973, at 56 and Moral Status, at 166.

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55. In her 1982 postscript to MLSA, while Warren begrudgingly acknowledges this concern she continues to insist that infants are in several crucial respects more like fetuses than “full” persons. At times in the postscript and her later work Moral Status the tension is palpable as it appears that she wishes to grant them some type of intermediate moral status but she recognizes doing so would undermine her argument for all members of the moral community possessing equal rights.

56. See note 1, Warren 1973, at 58.

57. On this point, see Nussbaum, M. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press; 1992:54–106 Google Scholar, 148–68, 261–86.

58. See note 1, Warren 1973, at 58–9.

59. See note 1, Warren 1973, at 76.

60. Some of the better studies of the topic of intergenerational justice include: Barry, B. Justice between generations. In: Law, Morality, and Society: Essays in Honor of H.L.A. Hart. Clarendon: Oxford University Press, 1977:268–84Google Scholar; Jonas, H. The Imperative of Responsibility. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1979 Google Scholar; Feinberg, J. The rights of animals and unborn generations. In: Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty: Essays in Social Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1980:159–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parfit, D. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1984 Google Scholar; Daniels N. Am I My Parents’ Keeper: An Essay on Justice Between the Young and the Old. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1988; Broome, J. Discounting the future. Philosophy & Public Affairs 1994;23:128–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sher, G. Transgenerational compensation. Philosophy & Public Affairs 2005;33:181–201 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wolf, C. Intergenerational justice. In: Frey, RF and Wellman, CH. A Companion to Applied Ethics. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell Press; 2005:279–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wenar L. Reparations for the future. Journal of Social Philosophy 2006;37:396–405; Reiman J. Being fair to future people: The non-identity problem in the original position. Philosophy and Public Affairs 2006;35:69–92; and Mulgan, T. Future People: A Moderate Consequentialist Account of Our Obligations to Future Generations. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2009 Google Scholar.

61. I would also argue that the question of whether X will remain X in becoming Y is important to how we now characterize X. I will not explore this question in depth here but save it for another time.

62. In addition, Warren acknowledges, “it is probably inappropriate to describe a woman’s body as her property, since it seems natural to hold that a person is something distinct from her property, but not from her body. Even those who would object to the identification of a person with his body, or with the conjunction of his body and his mind, must admit that it would be very odd to describe, say, breaking a leg, as damaging one’s property, and much more appropriate to describe it as injuring oneself. Thus, it is probably a mistake to argue that the right to obtain an abortion is in any way derived from the right to own and regulate property.” See note 1, Warren 1973, at 44.

63. Beckwith, F. Personal bodily rights, abortion, and unplugging the violinist. International Philosophical Quarterly 1992;125:105–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.