-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Judith Jarvis Thomson, professor emeritus at MIT, provides some interesting thought experiments in her article entitled In Defense of Abortion. Thomson acknowledges the problem of determining the particular moment during gestation when a fetus becomes a human being, so she starts by granting that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. From there, the argument usually goes that, since every person has a right to life, a fetus has a right to life. The fetus’s right to life supersedes the mother’s right to decide what happens in and to her body.
Thomson asks you to consider that you’ve awoken to find you’re in a hospital bed with an unconscious violinist of supreme repute. The violinist is suffering from a fatal kidney disease and the Society of Music Lovers has determined that you are the only blood match that can save him. Members of the Society kidnapped you last night and have surgically integrated the violinist’s renal and circulatory systems with yours. Your kidneys are now removing the toxins from the violinist’s blood, keeping him alive. To remove the connection between you and the violinist would mean certain death for the latter. The doctors assure you that after nine months the violinist will have recovered from his disease and the two of you can be disconnected. Should you be legally obligated to save the violinist’s life? Are you morally obligated?
While you were kidnapped and didn’t volunteer for the operation, a victim of rape, legitimate, also didn’t volunteer for her pregnancy.
Thomson also notes the problematic nature of what it means to have a right to life. Thomson writes that “in some views having a right to life include having a right to be given at least the bare minimum one needs for continued life.” Under this view if one is dying from a sickness that only the cool touch of Henry Fonda’s hand can cure, your right to life can not force Fonda to touch your fevered brow. In the violinist experiment, the violinist has no right to the use on your kidneys unless you give him that right.
One might argue that the violinist is a stranger while the fetus is an offspring containing half the DNA of the mother. If the violinist were a brother or sister, would the brother or sister’s right to life impose an obligation against the rights of the mother? While it would be an act of kindness for a person to provide life-giving assistance to a brother or sister, should there be a legal obligation that compels that kindness against a person’s desires? Or is each person’s body secure against another’s intrusion.
The right to life could be viewed as the right not to be killed by anybody. Under this view, the violinist has the right not to be unplugged from you. However, the violinist does not have the right to compel you to allow him the use of your kidneys. You may allow the use of your kidneys out of kindness but it is not something you should be compelled to do.
Thomson considers the case of voluntary intercourse that leads to a pregnancy and the partial responsibility of the fetus inside the mother. It could be argued that the fetus is dependent on the mother and this responsibility gives the fetus rights against the mother, rights not possessed by an ailing violinist. However, this argument would not apply to those pregnancies that occurred as a result of rape.
Thomson uses the concept of people-seeds to make another point. People-seeds float around the air until one makes it into your home where it can take root in your carpeting or upholstery. You don’t want children so you place a fine mesh over your open windows to keep the people-seeds out. However, sometimes screens have defects and a people-seed manages to find its way into your home and takes root in your living room. Does the developing people-plant have the right to the use of your home? Thomson says no. Likewise, if a women makes an effort to prevent conception, even knowing that contraception is not foolproof, Thomson argues that her responsibility doesn’t extend to allowing the fetus to have the right to use her body.
H/T: Massimo Pigliucci.
If abortion is criminalized, then the father of the aborted fetus should be held equally accountable to the loss of life.
Bonnie
I am in complete agreement with holding the speem donors in this world accountable on many levels. I hesitate to use the word dads or fathers because I believe that those words have connotations that imply someone who actively participated in the care and maintanence of the life that have co-created.
Well no body seems to want to take on the subject of person-hood tonight. Besides the women who have responded seem to be saying, in so many words ‘don’t care about person-hood, it is her body’.
So regardless of person-hood are there other arguments besides privacy to support a woman’s right to choose. Is there a reasonable analogy with Castle Doctrine to support a woman’s right choose? Is it possible that a woman’s right to choose shares common ground with Stand Your Ground?
How is an abortion anybodys business other than the one seeking the same and the doctor……
@Anonymously Yours “anybody’s business other than the one seeking the same;”
Again, I think person-hood is the key issue. If you believe the fertilized egg is entitled to protection that we afford individuals then the interest of society is clear. If the fertilized egg is not a person then maybe it is no ones business but the woman and her doctor, or perhaps the woman, her doctor and her sperm donor.
So at what point or in what fuzzy band of development do you believe a fertilized egg becomes a person: when the egg and sperm fuze, when the fertilized egg implants, when development proceeds to the point of viability outside the mothers body? And what about the development of technology? If technology can support an embryo prior to the point of viability outside the mothers body, does that change anything.
I don’t think these questions are simple. And I don’t think the answers are obvious.
But if you know where the answers are engraved in stone, let me know.
Oh! We have made some progress. Few of us are still arguing over the exact instant when the soul enters the body.
Now back to my favorite topic: community and state support to assure children have the resources they require to become productive citizens in a intensely competitive global market.
It seems to me this would then extend to criminalizing, for women, smoking, drinking, eating junk food etc, anything that the repubs would deem potentially dangerous to the egg that is fertilized, and maybe even before then so the egg will be in pristine condition for that fertility rite.
Bigfatmike. Repub gov Jindal has made the limit of 4600 (and change) the amount a family of 3 or 4 (not sure which from the article I read) can have in assets to avail themselves of Medicaid. Znother example once youre alive, we don;t care
and Bron the cost of that family not getting this help will fall on all of us as they take time from the emergency rooms and increase health care costs for all as they get their cre in the ER. They will avail themselves of shelter services if they need, the ones gov’t provided, the cost comes out of your pocket. No matter how you cut it these people whom you would apparently not help thru your taxes will still cost you money one way or the other.
@Leejcaroll “Repub gov Jindal has made the limit of 4600 (and change) the amount a family of 3 or 4 (not sure which from the article I read) can have in assets to avail themselves of Medicaid.”
Thank you for your rapid, accurate response to my question.
It is certainly reassuring to know that families will have all the resources they need to raise healthy children with the education to compete in tomorrows more global workplace.
It is clear that keeping families and the US first is the highest priority.
Bron, all that doesn’t matter. Nazi times were not unlike other times, in terms of people deciding how they were going to participate in the world around them — just more extreme, more dangerous. What I am saying is that (a) those kinds of times are not over; they can be renewed; they have, in some cases, been renewed in another format and in a less visible way already; and (b) we do not get to decide which part of our “giving” is OK with us until we are right down to the actual life interest of any one person. So be it, that must happen. I do not agree with the portion of my taxes that goes for aggressive and even murderous conduct in other countries, even countries that are hostile to the USA. But I can’t decide to withhold taxes based on that objection.
The idea, though, is that I DO get to decide what part of my life’sblood goes to supporting a violinist.
Actually I heard of an insane story that came from the city of Split, in Croatia — told to me by a Croatian registered nurse, whose job was in the post-surgery wing of a hospital. A woman was in the hospital and had four blood draws in a single day, and wanted to know why it was necessary to do four blood draws that day. Apparently a physician came in and told her that her blood was needed for another patient. She objected that when she was herself in the hospital, that was not a time when she would agree to donate blood. The doctor said to her that in his judgment she could afford to lose that amount! She protested, “But I don’t agree!” and he said, “You have that blood and you’re NOT the only one who needs it, you know!”
This story astonished me. But that’s the point. The story is not about a hospital making a decision that all the blood in the blood bank would be used in a certain way — a policy decision that might be considered wrong by some people and that might be changed if word got out — it was about how some blood that was inside a person would be used, whether used for HER or for someone else. That decision could only be hers.
So if the decision is made by a government that all women must bear children by a certain age, unless they can prove that they have tried diligently and been unable to do so, that law would be challenged, but at least it would apply to all women, and not be the result of a policy that targeted one instead of another. If, however, a law provided the basis for a single, individual woman being told that she had to bear a child, that would be a completely different matter.
Here is what I propose for the ultimate in “what do we do with a life that has begun at conception if the mother does not want to have a baby?” solutions: The fertilized egg is considered a “life,” right?
But its landlord does not want to continue “renting” to it, and that landlord has his or her right to not continue to “rent.”
Therefore, the state is now responsible for the resident who is being evicted. The state should carefully and tenderly evict the resident and provide alternative housing until the resident can provide for itself — which would naturally be 18 years and nine months. That, I can support.
Zarathustra 1, August 25, 2012 at 11:32 am
Everyone…. STFU!!! It’s no one’s business but the woman who is pregnant!!!
————————————-
I would agree but there are way too many people attempting to dictate to her. If people with views like Akins or Ryan have their way
She is not to have sex except for procreation
She is not to use contraception
She is not to do anything that would result in a miscarriage or face possible criminal charges.
She is not to have an abortion except for “legitimate” rape.
She is not to have in vitro fertilization if she is having trouble conceiving
and btw, she will get little to no help in providing basic essentials for the child, which isn’t a child until it is born.
So STFU isn’t the solution until the neanderthals are removed from all positions of power.
Kraaken, the male has “provided 50% of the DNA” in cases of rape and incest too!
This is not about providing DNA. It is about the use of the body of one of the two “providers of DNA” to gestate for 9 months and then take the rest of the physical AND OTHER responsibility regardless of what the “other” provider does.
Sorry, Zarathustra. Except in cases of rape and incest, the male has provided 50% of the DNA and therefore shares the responsibility.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/24/bill-maher-republicans-dont-like-it-when-single-women-have-sex/
malisha:
during a time of crisis like the dark ages of the nazis is not the time in which to build a system of morality. Getting rid of the nazis was a moral imperative in which all should take part because the nazis were just evil, it was an emergency to destroy them.
What is money? Most people earn a living by working, very few have inherited wealth but even then, someone earned the money. A person spent his/her life working to amass that wealth. They spent time which is all any of us have. That pair of shoes you bought cost your time, it was time out of your life that was needed to buy those shoes.
How many hours did it take? If you make minimum wage it might take 5 to 10, if you are a lawyer it might only take 15 minutes. But it is time spent out of your life, you gave up that time to buy those shoes.
So what is the difference? Either way time is being taken, you either sit on a bed and have your blood used against your will or you have money taken from you which you spent a portion of your life to earn.
As far as taxes go, I am willing to pay for police, fire, a court system, defense, roads and other infrastructure. That amounts to about 25% of total spending. And I do use those things so it seems fair to pay a share to keep them going. But to keep the violinist alive? I am not responsible for that life. I have 4 lives for which I am responsible; a wife, 2 children and myself. Isnt that enough?
Frankly, I would be a lot less suspicious of the conduct and the positions of the anti-choice folks and/or the “pro-life” folks if they had been active like MF’s for 50 years spreading around free and effective contraceptives! There were villages in India where folks had gone in, working for something like $10 per month, to help women learn how to avoid pregnancy when they WANTED to avoid pregnancy. These folks were doing wonderful work and they were getting good results and the statistics gathered showed it and every whichway, they were not only doing good, but morally, economically, socially, politically, and personally creating waves of better and better results. Apparently there were people opposing these efforts (Mother Theresa was, horribile dictu, among them in a certain way) and opposing the expansion of these excellent programs.
In a country like ours, the gross failure to provide REAL, affordable (even if that means FREE) and EFFECTIVE birth control resources to women of child-bearing years has had such terrible results that there is probably no aspect of American life that has not been negatively affected by it.
What excuse can there possibly be for (a) failing to provide proper birth control resources and knowledge while (b) causing insurmountable difficulties for mothers of babies who resulted from unplanned or even poorly planned pregnancies; and (c) trying to pull out the stop-gaps that, while undesirable, can ameliorate the bad end results of this insanely anti-human system? A religious excuse?
@Malisha
And with the increased fertility rates that we can anticipate from limitations of abortion, birth control and counseling is there any word yet on when Akin and others will be submitting legislation to increase funding for food stamps, TANF, CHIPS, public education, and grants and loans for post secondary education?
@Malisha
Not exactly on point, but is there any word yet if Mr. Akin will be submitting legislation to fund research into his discovery for improved birth control with fewer side effects?
Ms. Thomson’s thought experiment does show the problems with not allowing a women impregnated by rape to abort. Unfortunately, there are many others who are not raped and do wish to abort. To me it comes down to the beliefs of various religions and that should not be the basis of making laws restricting a persons use of their own body. Many Christians of various creeds believe that
life begins at conception. Most Jews, however, believe that life begins at the first breath. Scientists have differing views of when life truly begins and many are swayed by their religious faith. The only fair way is for the individual woman to make their own choices about their bodies based on their own beliefs and to stop presuming to impose your values on others.I still believe, however, that those against abortion are too afraid to admit that they are against a woman’s independent sexuality and that is why they are extremists.
Bron, you said:
“nal: that is a very compelling reason to abolish welfare and other social programs as well.”
I’m going to disagree with you here. I think the leap you made from “A person should not be obligated to provide life to another when she does not volunteer her person and her nine-months-to-a-year resources to do so” to “None of us should be required to give up anything we can get ahold of so that anyone else can derive any benefit from any of it for any reason” is way too big a leap (not as if I agree with the original analogy anyway, but…)
Stay with me on this one because you and I (and possibly others, and just to start with, you and I are working hard to understand each other) need to go slow to get each other’s points.
When I was born, I immediately had to take a place within a room (OK, so far so good) and a hospital (ditto) and a family (OK, both good and bad luck here) and a household (mostly good luck for the moment and year) and a society (WOW!) and I had no real well developed ability to do so at that time. I could not hit the ground with my feet moving because I didn’t realize those things were my feet. It was a long, slow learning process.
Eventually I learned that things felt good (yum and yeah) and bad (zaaaaaaaa and raowwwwwwwww) and that I could get stuff and sometimes had stuff taken from me.
With language I learned that at times, “I hit him back FIRST.”
Then I went to school. I will admit right now that I did not deserve every single crayon I colored with. I had not earned every pencil I wrote with. One of my teachers gave me more attention than my parents’ taxes had financed.
I traveled on a road built by someone who got more benefits for the construction than my mother had gotten for teaching in South Bound Brook, New Jersey — UNFAIR! — but on that road I arrived at a company in New York where I worked several hours of unpaid overtime on a Thursday in April, circa 1973. I kept my mouth shut about it.
Now I have been denied the proper jurisdiction of a federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia and a tax rebate meant to stimulate my ability to help the economy, by purchasing some electronics, has been unlawfully seized by someone who got his citizenship fraudulently thanks to the uncharged perjury of a woman in Alexandria, Virginia who misused the services of child protective services to come to her house on a weekly basis and “talk to her” so she would stop beating her four-year-old with a hard plastic pancake-turner, leaving welts on his little thighs that were still visible when he went to government subsidy day-care. She got alimony of $825 per month from an air traffic controller whose Union was broken by Reagan soon after the hostages came home.
There are many “NOT RIGHTS” about all this, but we are in this together.
We who have been born are all in this together, man. And if we have to be in the sewers under the Warsaw Ghetto again at any time, I want you there beside me and doing what needs to be done so we can both get out, and if either you or I had not enough money (or food stamps) to stay healthy today or this week, that’s gonna weaken one (AND THEREFORE BOTH) of us on that fateful day, and Bron,
say it ain’t so.
Stay with me, my brother; let us give a little to help each other so that when we need each other, we are there. I may not single-handedly keep your kidneys functioning; I may not even do my proper share at making sure you’re OK on any particular day, even, maybe, on that last day. But I don’t want to say that any failure on anybody’s part in that most particular one-on-one way is the last sentence in the chapter, either.
I don’t expect Akin to get this, any part of this. But if I met him in a crowd and had no idea who he was or what he had ever said or done, I WOULD expect him to get this, every bit of it. Oh Lord, PLEASE don’t let me be misunderstood.
But you of course have the Constitutional right to say it.
Zara, TMI
nal:
that is a very compelling reason to abolish welfare and other social programs as well.
A woman/man has a right to his own body/life.
Good post.
I will admit I have not read Roe v Wade and if I did it might make a lot of sense to me.
But I I have never found the privacy issue particularly convincing.
It seems to me the key issue is person-hood.
If the fertilized egg is a person or entitled to the rights of an individual they what exactly is the relevance of privacy. I am not aware of any other context where privacy allows detrimental action against a person.
On the other hand, if the fertilized egg is inanimate then where is the need for an appeal to privacy.
It always seemed to me that the issue of privacy was a slick way to avoid dealing with difficult issues.
After that I don’t have any answers.
And then we have Frank Szabo
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/08/22/candidate-sheriff-calls-use-deadly-force-appropriate-to-stop-an-abortion