A Critique on What Determines Humanity and Right to Life - Essay Example

To start with, the author does not acknowledge the role of genetic humanity in determining moral humanity. Trying to eliminate the genetic component in determining moral humanity appear illogical and ridiculous to me. The genetic component and the moral aspect of a human are inseparable, a person only retain the traits distinguishing them as morally human only if the genetic composition is normal or not distorted. Altering the genetic component of a human being such as the nucleic acids can utterly deny personhood traits such as rationality, reasoning, consciousness, independence, and communicative ability hence humanity in the moral sense.

Trying to detach the two facets makes the definition of moral humanity invalid. What is a human without the genes or even nucleotides? According to the author, an infant is accorded full human just because it can be adopted, this argument is void since the possibility of adoption does not make the infants morally human than an eight month old fetus. The infant should not be considered more human just because it does not fully limit the rights of the mother. This paper is a critique of the article on the moral and legal status of abortion and seeks to establish the invalidity of the traits that determine if any entity is human or not.

To support the conclusion that foetus are not morally human, not entitled to any human rights and thus can be aborted, the author gives several reasons. To start with, the author claims that the foetus does not satisfy the traits of humanity in the sense of morals. Another reason is that the unborn can be a source of risk on the mother’s health or even source of unhappiness. In addition, she argues that the right of a human outweighs that of the foetus that is not human and therefore the mother should determine the choice on whether the foetus is entitled to life.

The author uses different types of premises to support her argument but mainly relies on the descriptive assumption. In descriptive assumptions, she depicts and describes several examples to support her point of view. An example is the assumption of how a person visiting a new planet where there are alien beings would use the traits of humanity to discern if the organisms are human or not (Warren 434-440). In evaluative assumptions, the author assesses assumptions made by people on different grounds and evaluates them, some of which she rejects in the conclusion.

Evaluation helps to distinguish if assumptions made are realistic or if they make any sense. Those that do not make sense are abandoned when concluding. A good example of evaluative assumption in the article is the one on the tendency of people criticising infanticide while it is not morally a misdemeanour. The author also appeals to general principles for example when she tries to explain why infants could be considered more human as compared to infants. In the example, the author posits that infants do not limit the right to the happiness of the mother since it can be given for adoption.

The appeals to general principles are used to support the assumption described. The argument is invalid, since some premises that do not support the conclusion, others are missing, others controversial and in some instances the author appeals to public emotions. Inconsistency between different premises is evident throughout the article. A good example is the author denunciation of foetus as not human on basis of absence of traits defining a human, acknowledging infants also lack these traits and later alluring to people’s emotions in the conclusion by agreeing infants could be more human just because their restriction to mothers liberty is lesser. Another