My ethics class has an argument re: Abortion that I've never heard before

[Larry]

And again with the violinist: To make it match a woman carrying a child.

The Person had to have volunteered at some point to have a 'payout' with a bit of risk: The people that got the violinist attached were hit with the lil bit of risk.

People are arguing that it just 'happened'. This is not how it happens in 99.8% of the time. Jesus is the only one I know of where the mother wasn't involved.

The rest are just extremist examples.

(Also addresses to all of the other people claiming that the mother consented to spend the rest of her life supporting another person):

Exactly how much, in y'all's opinions, does the woman have to do, to be considered to have consented?

If she goes out in public without a steel chastity belt, and gets raped, then is it her fault?

If she goes out to a bar, gets drunk, and consents to sex while drunk, has she agreed to a contract which is binding on her for the rest of her life?

If she's taking birth control, but it doesn't work, then well, too bad, should have stayed a virgin?

If the guy wears a condom, but it doesn't work. She consented to getting pregnant?

----------

My opinion is that I think in our society, a person can't be held to a credit card contract without the right to change their mind within 30 days. I'd bet that if a car salesman sells a car to a customer who's obviously drunk, then the customer can get the sale overturned. If I buy a TV set online, federal law says they have to allow me to change my mind within 30 days.

If an Army recruiter signs up a drunk kid to a four-year enlistment, I bet the kid can get out of it.

Buying a house requires how many attorneys and forms and notaries and witnesses?

But a lifetime commitment to parenthood, the standard should be "Well, if you aren't a virgin, then you consented"?

Analogy: During the fight over Gitmo and Bush's detention program, the government tried to argue that when Congress authorized Bush to fight terrorism "by any means necessary", that Congress granted Bush the power to suspend Habeas Corpus.

The Supreme Court ruled that suspending Habeas Corpus was a monumental decision. One which Congress could only perform explicitly, by passing legislation specifically authorizing it. That because of the gravity of suspending Habeas, that there could be no

implied

suspension, it could only be done by an active act.

To me, the commitment to become a parent, to assume that responsibility, is a commitment that's vastly more important than joining the Army or buying a house. That because of the magnitude of that commitment, that no, you can't say that a person who has sex with a condom consented anyway because "well, they should have known that those things only work 99% of the time".

---------- Post added February-27th-2011 at 09:01 PM ----------

If you dropped a $100 and a homeless person picked it up can you kill him?

Jury says?

That wasn't my question.

(But then, it shouldn't surprise me.)

Does his right to life give him the right to your money?

[twa]

Society isn't asking to you take care of anything you didn't create. .

Quite right,this is not some stranger,but rather a being formed from yourself and another...the male is clearly not absolved of responsibility

[Thiebear]

(Also addresses to all of the other people claiming that the mother consented to spend the rest of her life supporting another person):

Exactly how much, in y'all's opinions, does the woman have to do, to be considered to have consented?

If she goes out in public without a steel chastity belt, and gets raped, then is it her fault?

If she goes out to a bar, gets drunk, and consents to sex while drunk, has she agreed to a contract which is binding on her for the rest of her life?

If she's taking birth control, but it doesn't work, then well, too bad, should have stayed a virgin?

If the guy wears a condom, but it doesn't work. She consented to getting pregnant?

Sometime as short as 23 weeks due to modern science. (rest of your life is voluntary) - another choice.

She opens her legs voluntarily she takes her chances. incredibly small with steel chastity belts and much higher with alcohol and dumbasses with bad condoms.

She chose not to be on the pill.

she chose to go out

She chose to drink

She chose the boy

She chose to have sex

She chose not to take the morning after pill

Now she's being "PUT UPON" by society for nothing of her own choosing? i get this right?

Well hell she was just a victim of the embryo

[Larry]

For the record, Larry, I want a citation on the paper you eventually write, since I know you're just testing out the arguments here first.

Actually, I don't think there's a paper on this subject.

[twa]

That wasn't my question.

(But then, it shouldn't surprise me.)

Does his right to life give him the right to your money?

That's because your question starts from a fallacious position

He already has your money,possession (or if you prefer position;)) is already established.

To go to your other example of the house....can you legally kill the other person to get rid of them?

Not even in Texas:ols:

[Larry]

Sometime as short as 23 weeks due to modern science.

She opens her legs voluntarily she takes her chances. incredibly small with steel chastity belts and incredibly higher with dumbasses with bad condoms.

Confessing that I don't grasp what you're saying with the first sentence.

But am I correct that your second sentence is saying that, in your opinion, a person who cannot be held to a contract to buy a car, can be held to a contract to provide her body for a year, followed by a lifetime of lesser, but still heavy, support?

And am I also correct that in your opinion, the mother has consented to donating her body for nine months, but only for nine months? Or is she required to, say, donate blood/kidney/whatever, if the child needs it, later?

---------- Post added February-27th-2011 at 09:12 PM ----------

That's because your question starts from a fallacious position

My question is exactly as stated. Does a person's right to life, give them the right to your money? (If he will die without it.)

[Thiebear]

23 weeks is the shortest time a woman can carry and still give live birth so far. (least thats what i read last year)

SO: Here for me her shortest time of responsibility is 23 weeks. (then there are adoption etc...)

Give the child to Grandma, Sister, Other daughter thats grown up. Foster care, Church, Firehouse, Police station.

would you kill someone over 23 weeks?

[techboy]

If the guy wears a condom, but it doesn't work. She consented to getting pregnant?

Did said guy consent to pay child support for 18 years if she decides not to have an abortion?

[Thiebear]

Did said guy consent to pay child support for 18 years if she decides not to have an abortion?

I have 1200 that says no.

[Prosperity]

You mean we allow mothers Prosperity....Dad is still on the hook

true, thankfully dads can't abort either

[Larry]

Did said guy consent to pay child support for 18 years if she decides not to have an abortion?

Can one of them consent to parenthood, but not the other?

Actually, I just had one of those "lightbulb moments".

Every time I've seen a comment similar to that one, what I've heard, in my head, is "Can the guy escape all responsibility for everything by playing the 'I told her to get an abortion, and she didn't' card?" (And I've thought that only complete scum could even imply such a thing.)

But it's just occurred to me that there's a second way of looking at it. I could look at the question as "If the woman, after one night of sex, hasn't consented to a lifetime of support for a child, then has the guy consented?"

It's a valid question. I hadn't looked at it that way.

----------

I have to confess that my own personal opinions on abortion are more utilitarian in nature. (New buzzword I got from the class.)

I think that society benefits if children are born to parents who actually spent 30 days thinking about the implications of becoming parents, and, after thinking about it for 30 days, those parents chose to stand up and say "I chose to become a parent".

I think that ideally, that decision should be made as a couple, and it should be made before the sex. But I'm not stupid enough to assume that it will be. (I'll willingly confess to being guilty, myself.) So I think that the "next best thing" is to permit the woman (preferably the couple) be given 30 days to think it over, before the decision becomes binding.

And yes, I'll freely admit that it's a completely arbitrary number, arrived at via nothing more than personal opinion.

[Destino]

And yet, the argument is intended to support abortion in general, not those relatively rare cases of rape or incest, as the author herself notes, so the trick is played by the person that attempts to focus on the extreme rather than the general.

It's generally a bad idea to argue an idea based on its extremes.

The real problem here, of course, is that the entire violinist analogy is an argument from emotion, which is why it tries to shift the debate to rape by proposing an unwilling, completely free of responsibility, surprised "victim".

There's no rational argument, just an attempt to make the person who thinks about it feel "icky", or perhaps hypocritical. That can be flipped around, though, as I will show in a separate post (this one's going to be long enough as it is).

I disagree. There are always two arguments in cases like this. The first is "should there be a line" and the other is "where do we put it". This argument is well suited for the former because the goal of the pro-life movement is to ban abortion outright. As such the movement will always be confronted with real world scenarios that can't just be written off as extremes. Woman and girls in the US do get pregnant at the hands of predators by the pedophiles, predatory family members, or rapists. An outright ban would involve those scenarios, however minor they may be. Failure to justify a ban in those cases is a failure to make the case for a complete ban on abortion because otherwise we establish that there is a line and the argument shifts to where it should be drawn. We haven't even touched on health and life situations that also exist, even if they are in your 1% category.

This is yet another appeal to emotion. It's sad, but irrelevant to abortion.

Let's suppose a mugger stabs me in the back, and I lose both kidneys. My negative rights have been violated, and I will die without a transplant. Do I then have the right to simply take a kidney from a third, innocent party (suppose my attacker's kidney is not a match)?

The violation of one person's negative rights does not give that person the right to violate the negative rights of another person (and remember, the analogy grants the personhood of the fetus for the sake of argument).

Funny how what is effectively the exact same argument suddenly cuts against abortion when the emotional element of rape is removed, huh? (For the record, this is not the reversal I was referring to).

It's not the same argument because it's no longer your body that's been violated, left with a dependent, and an option .to restore it's previous condition. In my scenario the person that received your kidney was completely innocent and killing them was the only way to restore your own body. Your scenario hinges on bringing in someone completely unrelated with no horse in the race. Doesn't fit.

The analogy specifically prevents you from passsing your duty safely onto another, so this is irrelevant. The conclusion we are forced to draw, if we accept the thrust of the argument, is that we should be able to kill innocent parties which we have responsibility for, if we find that responsibility inconvenient or troublesome.

I disagree entirely. The argument hinges on your ability to decide if your body should be used to help another exclusively. Finances and trips to soccer practices don't come into this at all.

[techboy]

I disagree. There are always two arguments in cases like this. The first is "should there be a line" and the other is "where do we put it".

I tend to agree, but that's not the way the author of the argument sees it. This is confusing enough without you interjecting general lines of reasoning that don't even apply in this specific case.

You will note that I pointed this out as a reason that the author's argument is contradictory, though.

It's not the same argument because it's no longer your body that's been violated, left with a dependent, and an option .to restore it's previous condition.

Oh, it most certainly is. My kidney has been violated, and I am exercising an option to restore my body to its previous condition.

Your scenario hinges on bringing in someone completely unrelated with no horse in the race.

You mean like the fetus?

Doesn't fit.

It certainly does.

The argument hinges on your ability to decide if your body should be used to help another exclusively.

I guess you think it's also morally permissible not to feed the accidental stowaway, because your body would suffer near starvation?

---------- Post added February-27th-2011 at 10:23 PM ----------

It's a valid question. I hadn't looked at it that way.

Thank you.

While you're being utilitarian, consider this.

I don't mean to diminish the stress and problems a pregnancy can cause. I work with students that get pregnant in high school all the time. I'll just talk (vaguely) about one in particular.

This girl told me that she wants to pursue a certain career that requires a college education.

She got pregnant. She now misses a lot of school because she's sick. Her grades are slipping because of this. She has a lot of medical expenses she can't necessarily afford, and of course, those appointments mean more time at the doctor, and more missed school.

Once she does have the baby, college is going to be 10 times more difficult for her, if she manages it at all.

Her life has been radically changed, and probably not for the better (though there are always exceptions). The kid's going to have problems too: poverty, probably no dad around, etc.

If I could push a magic button and make it all go away, or go back in time and let her stop herself, I'd do it.

The problem now is that she can't get out of the contract like she would with a car or a house. She'd have to kill an innocent 3rd party.

The same is true of a young father. I can certainly imagine a scenario where a young 17 year old is planning on going to college and becoming an engineer, but instead drops out of high school and gets a job so he can support the baby, either through child support or by living with the mother.

Either way, the young man's life is ruined, but we don't let him push the magic "I won't pay child support button", because we know that doing so would hurt an innocent 3rd party (the child).

Sometimes the consequences are so serious that they override the hardship faced, or the lack of consent you talk about.

We do it with child support, and if the child is a person (as granted by the argument), I can't see how we don't do it with abortion, especially since in this case abortion would be murder.

[Thiebear]

In watching the Universe channel.. they were trying to get a particle to go back a millionth of a sec just to prove it was doable.

And as the narrator said: We all wish to go back and fix the wrongs. Life doesn't work that way: Yet.

[TheLongshot]

The same is true of a young father. I can certainly imagine a scenario where a young 17 year old is planning on going to college and becoming an engineer, but instead drops out of high school and gets a job so he can support the baby, either through child support or by living with the mother.

Either way, the young man's life is ruined, but we don't let him push the magic "I won't pay child support button", because we know that doing so would hurt an innocent 3rd party (the child).

Sometimes the consequences are so serious that they override the hardship faced, or the lack of consent you talk about.

We do it with child support, and if the child is a person (as granted by the argument), I can't see how we don't do it with abortion, especially since in this case abortion would be murder.

Problem with your argument is that after an abortion, neither party would have any responsibility afterwards. If a child is born, both should have responsibility.

Personally, there is a bigger problem if the man wants the child, but the woman doesn't. Who does the rights support there?

I actually just read a SF short story that involved that, where the woman was getting an abortion and the man managed to get the fetus and raised her outside the laws of his government.

[Larry]

OK, follow up. Just took the quiz at the end of this chapter.

One of the questions was "What was the point of the famous violinist argument in the Thomson piece?"

One of the answers was "That violinists are arrogant and are likely to make unreasonable demands, just like babies."

[twa]

Problem with your argument is that after an abortion, neither party would have any responsibility afterwards. If a child is born, both should have responsibility.

Personally, there is a bigger problem if the man wants the child, but the woman doesn't. Who does the rights support there?

I actually just read a SF short story that involved that, where the woman was getting an abortion and the man managed to get the fetus and raised her outside the laws of his government.

sounds like a interesting SF story

On a bit of a tangent,but the law holding the male liable w/o a voice is truly a travesty...though certainly less of the one to allow homicide(imo) so casually w/o a minimum level of justification.

How could we tie that situation into the violinist example?....Perhaps the male could be his life ins company?... that would be the inverse,but financial liability would be determined simply by the other parties choice.

yes,I'm bored:beatdeadhorse:

[elkabong82]

I think the best question, in regards to abortion, is whether or not the government has a right to tell somone what they can and can't do with their body. A lot of small gov't advocates from the right seem to break their advocacy when it comes to abortion because it is a life, at some point, that we are discussing.

Like I've said, it would be a very difficult option to entertain should I get a girl pregnant unintentionally, and I don't think I could allow it to happen when I'm personally involved, but at the same time, I know I have ZERO right to tell someone else they are right or wrong on such decision, and I believe government should take no part in such a decision either.

Then again, I also believe the anti-abortion crowd needs to see their opinion through to the end, meaning they should, IMO, be supportive of welfare and education programs that would help those children they fought so hard to ensure were brought into the world. Is forcing an "unwanted" baby on a mother the right thing to do when you support nothing after the fact to help that child through it's growth?

[twa]

Elk, it is the level and method of welfare/education that is questioned...not the need

there are very few absolutists(relatively) on either subject,

requiring me to pay for the violinist's care and and his lessons while trying to withhold his right to life does not work....either society has basic obligations or it does not.

Why do we allow the violinist to have his status as a person determined by the host in this case?

added

Surely you recall how ignorant we now believe those were that denied personhood and rights to a class of people because of their differences and circumstances?

you want to have fun,,,,contrast stands on the status of illegal immigrants and personhood for fetuses.

the fetus made it across the border and ya can't send it back:ols:

[mardi gras skin]

I think the best question, in regards to abortion, is whether or not the government has a right to tell somone what they can and can't do with their body. A lot of small gov't advocates from the right seem to break their advocacy when it comes to abortion because it is a life, at some point, that we are discussing.

Small government advocates don't believe they have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies. I am not allowed to strike you and kill you because just you inconvenience me. Assuming the fetus is a person (as in Larry's analogy) small government advocates would be consistent in saying that the fetus has the right to exist without violence being done to it. The intrusion is being committed by the person doing violence (mother, doctor) to an innocent person (fetus). The government should protect the rights of all people, including the fetus. It should not be legal for me to poison you and it should not be legal for the doctor to poison the fetus.

Assuming the fetus is a person, their is no break in their advocacy.

[Larry]

Extending my own thread, here, because there was another reading in the same chapter that featured a somewhat different analogy.

Jane English, in her piece, used a different analogy:

An evil scientist (I'm going to call him Dr. Evil, because when these analogies get complicated, it's easier to figure out who we're talking about if the hypothetical people have names) is hypnotizing people, and forcing them to roam the streets, attacking people with knives.

She asserts (and I agree) that a person, if attacked by a zombie, has the right to kill the zombie to protect his own life, even though the zombie is completely innocent, and has no ill will towards the victim at all. (The zombie doesn't want to kill anybody, he's being forced to do it.)

I thought it a kind-of clever analogy.

English points out that you can make variations on the analogy, to apply to other aspects of the abortion debate.

She asserts that a frail, elderly, person might well hire a bodyguard to protect herself from zombies, and that if a zombie were to attack her, then that bodyguard would be perfectly moral in killing that (completely innocent) zombie, to protect the life of a person who cannot protect herself from the zombie.

She observes that, even if it were well known that the zombies only attack at night, that a person who goes out at night has not consented to being killed by a zombie, and is not prohibited from defending herself if attacked.

She proposes another variation:

You are a surgeon. You have been kidnapped by a zombie. The zombie kidnapper explains that his mission is to take you to Dr. Evil's lair, where Dr. Evil will, through hypnosis, remove all of your medical knowledge and skills, and then release you, physically unharmed. You must either kill this (completely innocent) zombie, to escape, or lose your future career as a surgeon.

She asserts (and I agree) that yes, you are morally permitted to kill in order to protect yourself from this act, even though the act only threatens your future professional career.

Although this morning, I thought of a counter-analogy to use against this argument. My analogy:

I am applying to medical school. The school uses a mathematical formula to rank their applicants by desirability, and every year, admits the top 300 applicants.

I'm applicant number 301.

Does English's argument, that it is moral to kill an innocent to protect one's future career, permit me to kill one of the 300 applicants who are ahead of me, and who therefore threaten my future medical career?

I assert that my analogy is a better fit for the abortion debate. English's zombie is committing violence against her surgeon. (Even if unwillingly.) And English's surgeon already is a surgeon, whereas my medical student would be acting to "defend" a future career which he has not yet achieved. (And may not. Not everyone who is admitted to medical school becomes a doctor.)

But I thought her analogy had some validity.

(Next week: The analogy of the zombie violinist. )

[twa]

Equating a fetus to a zombie is lame...among many other things,clever not being one of them

added

Let's try this analogy....a fetus is like a immigrant to this country:evilg:

We have border control(birth control)

We have those that are welcomed and even sought after (HB1 visas ect)

We have uninvited and unwelcome ones that some would like to kill or be rid of what they consider a problem,and those that believe in open borders.

We have many that get past the barriers erected

We have those that profess their inherent right to be here(in the body of the US)

We have those that are a drain on our resources,and some even claim a threat to our way of life

We are all (or most) the children of immigrants and protect their right to life despite whether we planned (or agreed) on them being here or not.

Are immigrants instead zombies?...or is that offensive?

[Larry]

Equating a fetus to a zombie is lame...among many other things,clever not being one of them

Whereas responding to an analogy in which an innocent life is compared to another innocent life, by complaining about one word in the analogy, well that's not lame, is it?

(BTW, "zombie" is my word. She simply describes them as people who have been hypnotized. But I call them zombies because it's easy to become confused, when you see the word "victim" to figure out who she's referring to.)

[twa]

sorry I'm touchy....see my add?

[techboy]

Problem with your argument is that after an abortion, neither party would have any responsibility afterwards. If a child is born, both should have responsibility.

You're missing the point.

Larry raised the (very real) issue that even in the case of consensual sex, it's not like most women carefully consider their options, and decide to get pregnant (one would expect that this didn't happen in the case of most abortions, anyway, though I suppose there have been those that changed their minds).

The basic point essentially was that it's not fair for something so loosely consented to to have such lasting consequences (at least 9 months, and if not for adoption, as many as 18 years), with no way to get out of it. He contrasted this with other scenarios such as buying a house, or a car, when often people get a "cooling off period", where they can change their minds.

The point I was raising is that there are certain scenarios in which society has decided that, careful consent or not, the cost of "getting out of it" is just too high.

One example of this would be that we don't let the young man out of paying child support, even if making him do so might well destroy his chances to make a life for himself as a doctor or engineer. The cost of letting him get out of it would be that a child is raised without proper support.

Abortion, I argue, should be another such case, because while you are correct that both parents no longer have any responsibility (in that sense), if we accept that the fetus is a person (as the argument being discussed here does), then you are killing an innocent party, which I would argue is murder. That's also a cost that is too high, even if it doesn't seem to be ongoing as it is in the case of the young man paying child support. We can't allow murder.

Personally, there is a bigger problem if the man wants the child, but the woman doesn't. Who does the rights support there?

Outlaw abortion as murder, and after the child is born, the father can take the child.

If abortion is legal, the father has no rights at all, by the reasoning that makes abortion legal in the first place ("it's her body", a premise that one can only reject should one believe that a fetus is a seperate person with a seperate body).

I think the best question, in regards to abortion, is whether or not the government has a right to tell somone what they can and can't do with their body.

That's actually not the question at all. Framed that way, the answer is "of course not".

The question really is, is the fetus a seperate person with a seperate body, and if so, does the mother have the right to kill that person (as this argument attempts to suggest)?

A lot of small gov't advocates from the right seem to break their advocacy when it comes to abortion because it is a life, at some point, that we are discussing.

Even libertarians, that believe that the government effectively exists only to prevent force and fraud (allowing for rational contracts to be enforced) can believe that abortion is force against an innocent person, and so worthy of government intervention.

See, for example, Libertarians for Life.

Extending my own thread, here, because there was another reading in the same chapter that featured a somewhat different analogy.

I actually have no problem with that analogy, because I'd suggest that it is not moral to kill one of those innocent "zombies" unless forced to by imminent danger to one's own life or health. Otherwise, the moral course would be to flee and perhaps seek a method of stopping the scientist and freeing the zombie.

I also think it's moral for a mother who is placed in physical danger by her pregnancy to have an abortion.

Although this morning, I thought of a counter-analogy to use against this argument. My analogy:

Your counteranalogy has force too, and also potentially cuts against those who would suggest that, for instance, the high school student I mentioned earlier should be allowed to have an abortion so that she will have a much easier time going to college and pursuing her career.

It really does all come down to whether or not a fetus is a person, despite what the violinist analogy attempts to argue.