Mary Anne Warren (August 23, 1946 – August 9, 2010) was an American writer and philosophy professor, noted for her writings on the issue of

abortion Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of pregn ...

and

animal rights Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the sa ...

Biography

Warren was a professor of philosophy at

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...

for many years. Her essays have sometimes been required readings in academic courses dealing with the

abortion debate The abortion debate is a longstanding, ongoing controversy that touches on the moral, legal, medical, and religious aspects of induced abortion. In English-speaking countries, the debate most visibly polarizes around adherents of the self-describ ...

and they are frequently cited in major publications like

Peter Singer Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher, currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular, ...

's ''The Moral of the Story: An Anthology of Ethics Through Literature''Singer, Peter. ''The Moral of the Story: An Anthology of Ethics Through Literature''; Oxford:

Blackwell Publishing Wiley-Blackwell is an international scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons. It was formed by the merger of John Wiley & Sons Global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business with Blackwell Publish ...

(2005); and

Bernard Gert Bernard Gert (; October 16, 1934 – December 24, 2011) was a moral philosopher known primarily for his work in normative ethics, as well as in medical ethics, especially pertaining to psychology. His work has been called "among the clear ...

's ''Bioethics: A Systematic Approach''.Gert, Bernard/ Culver,Charles M./Clouser,K. Danner (2006); ''Bioethics: A Systematic Approach'';

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. She was sometimes described as a

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

, largely due to her

pro-choice Abortion-rights movements, also referred to as pro-choice movements, advocate for the right to have legal access to induced abortion services including elective abortion. They seek to represent and support women who wish to terminate their pre ...

writings. Warren also wrote on the implications of

sex selection Sex selection is the attempt to control the sex of the offspring to achieve a desired sex. It can be accomplished in several ways, both pre- and post-implantation of an embryo, as well as at childbirth. It has been marketed under the title family ...

and about animal rights.Taylor, Angus. (2009). ''Animals and Ethics: An Overview of the Philosophical Debate, Third Edition''. Broadview Press. pp. 83-84. Warren died on August 9, 2010 from cancer, aged 64.

Criteria of personhood

In response to whether a thing can be said to be a person, and so have moral standing, Warren suggested the following criteria: # Sentience -- the capacity to have conscious experiences, usually including the capacity to experience pain and pleasure; # Emotionality -- the capacity to feel happy, sad, angry, loving, etc.; # Reason -- the capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems; # The Capacity to Communicate -- by whatever means, messages of an indefinite variety of types, i.e., not just with an indefinite number of possible contents but on indefinitely many possible topics; # Self-Awareness -- having a conception of oneself as an individual and/or as a member of a social group; # Moral Agency -- the capacity to regulate one's own actions though moral principles or ideals. She stated that at least some of these are necessary, if not sufficient, criteria for personhood (which is necessary and sufficient for moral standing). She argued that fetuses do not meet any of these criteria; therefore, they are not persons and have no moral standing. Abortion is thus morally permissible. However, some philosophers have criticized Warren's criteria. For instance,

Don Marquis Donald Robert Perry Marquis ( ; July 29, 1878 – December 29, 1937) was an American humorist, journalist, and author. He was variously a novelist, poet, newspaper columnist, and playwright. He is remembered best for creating the characters Ar ...

charged that Warren's criteria are “…plagued by difficulties concerning cases”.

Animal rights

Warren argued for an animal rights position called the "weak animal rights position" in contrast to the strong animal rights position of

Tom Regan Tom Regan (; November 28, 1938 – February 17, 2017) was an American philosopher who specialized in animal rights theory. He was professor emeritus of philosophy at North Carolina State University, where he had taught from 1967 until his reti ...

. Her weak animal rights position held the view that

sentience Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations. The word was first coined by philosophers in the 1630s for the concept of an ability to feel, derived from Latin '':wikt:sentientem, sentientem'' (a feeling), to distinguish it fro ...

is a sufficient condition for having some sort of moral rights. She stated that although all sentient animals have rights (including the right not without compelling reason to be killed or made to suffer) their rights are not identical in strength to humans and thus can can be more easily overridden depending on certain economic or social considerations. One such example she used was killing rodents to protect damage of crops or to prevent the spread of disease that can harm or kill humans. According to Warren: Warren argued that as some animals are more sentient and have a greater sense of awareness than others the thesis that all subjects-of-a-life have equal moral status should be rejected. She used the example of the moral status of a spider. She commented that if Regan's view is right then "we are forced to say that either a spider has the same right to life as you and I do, or it has no right to life whatever– and that only the gods know which of these alternatives is true." She stated that Regan's subject-of-a-life criteria provides no clear moral guidance of how to deal with most animals. Warren dismissed the notion of equal rights as problematic and defended a "sliding scale of moral status". In her weak animal rights position, animals have different degrees of inherent value depending on their levels of awareness and sentience. Her scale based on levels of sentience and mental ability had human interests above animals and higher order animal interests above lower order animals.Walters, Kerry. (2012). ''Vegetarianism: A Guide for the Perplexed''. Continuum International Publishing. p. 83. According to Warren we have stronger obligations to animals which have higher degrees of mental sophistication and sentience so our obligations to tadpoles and scorpions will be relatively weak compared to apes, dolphins or elephants. In 2007, philosopher Aaron Simmons wrote a detailed rebuttal to Warren's weak animal rights position. Simmons concluded that "Warren fails to justify her beliefs that animals do not have an equal right to life and that it is permissible for humans to kill animals for food".

Select publications

Books *Warren, Mary Anne, ''Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection'';

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an independent publishing house founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns the book distributing compa ...

(1985) *Warren, Mary Anne, ''Moral Status - Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things '';

(2000) Essays *Warren, Mary Anne
"On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion"
''The Monist'' 57 (1): 43–61, (1973) *Warren, Mary Anne, "Do Potential People Have Moral Rights?" In R Sikora and B Barry, eds. ''Obligations to Future Generations''. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press,: 14-30, (1978) *Warren, Mary Anne, "Postscript on Infanticide". Reprinted in Mappes and DeGrazia 2001: 461-463, (1982) *Warren, Mary Anne, "The Nature of Woman: An Encyclopedia and Guide to the Literature". EdgePress (1980) *Warren, Mary Anne
"Difficulties With the Strong Animal Rights Position"
''Between the Species'' 2 (4): 163-173, (1986).
"The Moral Significance of Birth"
''Hypatia'' 4 (3), Ethics & Reproduction, pp. 46–65, (1989) *Warren, Mary Anne, "The Moral Difference Between Infanticide and Abortion: A Response to Robert Card". ''Bioethics'', Vol. 14, pp. 352–359 (October 2000) *Warren, Mary Anne
"The Rights of the Nonhuman World"
In Clare Palmer. ''Animal Rights''. Routledge (2017)

References

External links

Notice of Mary Anne Warren's death

Mary Anne Warren's bibliographyTribute to Mary Anne Warren and David Lee Hull
{{DEFAULTSORT:Warren, Maryanne 1946 births 2010 deaths American philosophy academics American women philosophers Animal rights Bioethicists Deaths from cancer in California Feminist studies scholars San Francisco State University faculty 21st-century American women