What I mean by terminating the pregnancy is aborting it (in the later states of pregnancy, it might be safer to deliver than abort, but that’s a decision I’ll defer to medical professionals), and why does it matter when this transition occurs? I’ll cheerfully stipulate that an ovum/zygote/embryo/fetus is never not human, though all those stages but the first (and including baby/infant/child/adult) are “a clump of cells”, a description that applies until decomposition after death.
Yes, I’m accusing you of sophistry. You’re making people “take responsibility” as if they had intended the consequences to occur.
In an auto accident, do you demand that the victim bleed to death, rather than be bandaged, because he must “accept the consequences?”
No, I’m specifically saying intention is not important. Society holds people responsible for actions that resulted in unintentional outcomes daily.
Of course not. That is a ridiculous suggestion. However, if at fault, he should be held liable for damages caused, regardless of whether or not he intended to have an accident. By driving a car, he accepts the risk and responsibility of engaging in that activity.
I'm not sure I fully follow your reasoning, but I think you are arguing that since we don't expect parents to be obligated to donate organs to their child, then we should not expect a mother to be obligated to 'give her body' in the form of pregnancy for their child. Is that correct?
If so, I think the difference in that scenario is that presumably the parent did not cause the malady that requires the child to need an organ, whereas the parent played an active role in causing the pregnancy. (That being said, I think most parents would voluntarily give their life to their child in such desperate circumstances).
A: “You must take responsibility for your pregnancy!”
B: “Okay, I’ll book an appointment with a licensed medical doctor and have a conventional D&C abortion, ending the pregnancy.”
A: “You can’t do that.”
B: “Well, are YOU taking responsibility for the pregnancy?”
A: “No.”
B: “Then don’t tell me how to handle my responsibilities.”
I’m saying I can’t irrevocably contract away my bodily autonomy anymore than I can sell myself into to slavery or sign a legally binding NDA or even revoke my ability to buy a gun.
Except, as noted, you want to deny him the ability to make a correction to the situation. You say, “You must take responsibility,” but you go farther and define exactly how they must do that – the pregnancy must be carried to term – without justification for that conclusion.
You’re operating from the belief that the unborn is a person…and this is a personal opinion, shared by many…and not shared by many. You use high-sounding words like “responsibility,” but your conclusion is based upon your opinions and beliefs, not upon any consensus.
The pro-choice viewpoint allows everyone to follow their own conscience, without having to do what someone else decrees to be right.
I agree with the gist of this, but would put it a little differently. Everyone agrees that killing a human being after they’ve been born is wrong, at least in most cases. A human fetus shares some characteristics in common with a “human being after they’ve been born”, and differs in other characteristics. So the question is, which qualities of the post-birth human are the ones that make it wrong to kill her, and to what degree are those qualities the ones shared by the fetus?
This boils down to “Exactly what is it about human life that makes killing humans wrong,” which is a hard question. It kind of drives me nuts that people on both sides of the abortion debate act like their side is obviously right, without even bothering to tackle this question.
Of course the earlier you go in pregnancy, the fewer qualities the embryonic human shares with a post-birth human. Even if I can’t identify exactly which qualities make human life precious, it’s hard to think of too many possible candidates which are shared by a single fertilized egg cell. Some possibilities include: (1) Contains human DNA, (2) has the potential to become a fully grown human, and (3) has a soul. But (1) is true of lots of our other cells that we’re not so attached to, (2) is true of a sperm and egg, collectively, even before they make contact with one another, and (3) isn’t supported by any empirical evidence, and might not even be a well-defined statement.
(For what it’s worth, I do think that intentionally or recklessly causing an unwanted miscarriage should be a serious crime, no matter how early in pregnancy – but because of the emotional effect it has on the parents, not because the embryo has incontrovertible intrinsic value.)
Regarding the alternative pro-choice argument – roughly, “even if a fetus has the same right to life as any other human person, I shouldn’t be obligated to keep it alive inside my body” – I agree with you that it’s not a very good argument. If I discover an uninvited baby in my house, we’d all agree it’s wrong for me to kill the baby, even if I really don’t want a baby in my house. Of course in that unlikely scenario I’d only have to keep the baby alive until the cops show up, not take on the far greater burden of carrying it around inside my body for 9 months. But suppose I call the authorities repeatedly, and they never show up. Suppose I try leaving the baby on someone’s doorstep, but somehow it ends up back in my house. Even if this infuriating situation goes on for months, would we ever say, “OK, now it’s morally permissible to kill the baby”? I think it more likely that almost everyone would say, “Wow, that’s an incredibly unfair situation you find yourself in, but you still can’t kill the baby, because it’s a baby.” And sure, having an unwanted baby hanging around your house for months is still not as bad as having an unwanted baby inside one of your internal organs for months. But I think there’s basically no situation, no matter how awful or unfair, for which intentionally killing a baby is a morally acceptable remedy. Of course, this is all only relevant if we concede that the fetus does have the same rights to life as a post-birth human – I don’t personally think we should concede that.
I agree with the sentiment expressed by several above that how the pregnancy came about is somewhat irrelevant. If we were to accept that an unborn fetus is the the moral equivalent of a baby, and we accept the argument that killing a baby (or intentionally causing its death) is simply not an acceptable solution, no matter how unjust the situation, then this would apply as much in the case of rape as consensual sex.
Again, I don’t think it’s at all clear that an unborn fetus is equivalent to a baby in the ways that matter (whatever those may be), but people who do buy into that line of reasoning and then carve out a rape exception – as many pro-life politicians seem to do – strike me as rather hypocritical. Unless what they’re trying to say is: “A fetus is a baby, and I’m OK with people killing babies if it spares rape victims substantial added suffering.” But in most cases I suspect what they really mean is more like: “A fetus is a baby, but I’ll pretend it’s not in cases where the logical ramifications of that belief would make me seem especially cruel.”
While I don’t subscribe to the “you had sex so now you’ve lost your rights” school of thought, I do think the organ donation analogy is interesting here. It’s true that we don’t force someone to give up their organs. even if they previously agreed to it – but at some point in the process of donating they lose their claim on those organs. At least, once your kidney (for example) is in someone else’s body, you no longer have a right to demand it back. But what triggers the loss of this right is not so obvious to me. Is it because it’s now attached to someone else? Is it because someone else is now actively using it to keep himself alive? Is it because it’s within the boundaries of someone else’s body, as defined by their skin, but outside the boundaries of your body? Or what?
My gut feeling is that once (1) you aren’t anatomically attached to the kidney, and (2) someone else is anatomically attached to the kidney, then it ceases to be your kidney and becomes their kidney. But suppose kidney transplants were done in a different order, where we left the kidney attached to the donor as we lifted it out of their body, and then we attached the recipient to the kidney before severing the connection to the donor. In that case, would there be a point where the kidney belonged to both of them equally? Does a “tie” automatically go to whoever had the kidney first? Or at the point where it’s hooked up to both of them, does the “tie” go to whoever would die if the kidney were disconnected from them? (Presumably the donor has a second functioning kidney, and the recipient doesn’t.)
As another analogy, if a pair of conjoined twins share some vital organs, can one twin demand that the organs on her side be disconnected from the other twin, on the basis that leaving them connected violates her bodily autonomy? Is that situation meaningfully different only because no one can claim “they were my organs first”? Or for some other reason?
If the fetus’s life doesn’t matter in the way a person’s does, then I suppose none of these questions are relevant to the abortion debate. But if we were to treat a fetus as “like a person in the ways that matter”, then I think they are relevant.
Except that the pro-choice viewpoint operates from the exact opposite belief that the unborn is not a person…and this is a personal opinion shared by many…and not shared by many. This is the exact thing I said in my first post on this thread, it depends on whether you view the fetus as a person or not.
The pro-choice viewpoint allows the parent to follow their conscience, while denying any right to life for another. It allows the parent to choose when person-hood is granted. What if a parent decides person-hood doesn’t begin until the child’s 4th birthday? (absurd, right?) 1 month old? 1 minute old? At what point is it no longer the parent’s right choose whether the life they created is a person? Is the consensus that this magically occurs upon exiting the birth canal?
I’m personally not sure when the fetus should gain person-hood. I’m willing to openly admit as much, but I think it wiser to err on the side of caution because the consequences of being incorrect about it not being a person (death of an innocent) is greater than being incorrect about it being a person (undesired pregnancy). A mitigating factor is that of the two lives involved, only one of them played a role in bringing about their situation.
Heck, I’ll gladly stipulate that personhood attaches at the moment of conception, and I’m still pro-choice. People can be legally killed under certain circumstances, I figure pregnancy is one of them.
One’s personal body is a little different than one’s house. Also, there are other ways to get a baby out of a house, but no other ways to get a fetus out of one’s body. Once you expand the metaphor to a baby attached to you by a tube, drinking your blood, you start to come closer to an exact analogy.
The pro-choice viewpoint allows you to hold your belief without anyone’s interference. The pro-life viewpoint mandates governmental compulsion. How about you just leave us alone to exercise our rights in privacy?
I totally agree with the conclusion, even given the stipulation.
I can’t buy into the stipulation, though, as I consider it absurd, in pragmatic terms, to call a 150-cell blastocyst a “person.”
(It somewhat parallels Plato’s question regarding how many body parts a man can lose – arms, legs, eyes, etc. – and still be a “man.”)
We do, but not to benefit others and not for an extended period of time with permanent health outcomes.
Strip search: Only upon being charged with a crime, but is not really a violation of a body, only a removal of possessions and personal privacy. Even cavity searches must be consented to, which is why the nurse in SLC would not do a blood draw on the unconscious patient. There is implied consent when you refuse a breathalyzer test in some states, but that’s another argument. Warrants for blood draws are only granted when there is evidence of a crime. Pregnancy is not a crime.
And yet, there are limits to what the police can do to people in their custody. They cannot sterilize prisoners, nor force-feed them, nor repeatedly tase or shock them, nor drug them involuntarily for extended periods of time. They also cannot impregnate or end pregnancies. The law respects bodily autonomy.
I’m not sure what the first means, but I think the laws preventing you from smoking illegal substances are violations of possession of those substances or public intoxication. But I’m not aware that you can be charged for being under the influence in the privacy of your own home. Even if you are intoxicated with children present, resulting charges would relate to an inability to care for minors in that state.
Also, I don’t believe that any state in the U.S. currently has laws on the books prohibiting suicide, but assisting suicide is illegal in most states. That’s a big difference and doesn’t really apply to bodily autonomy.
Equipment required to legally operate a vehicle does not violate bodily autonomy because you can voluntarily choose not to operate said vehicle.
Actions that are performed *with *a body is not consistent with actions performed *on *a body. I don’t see how this can be construed as violating bodily autonomy. Rather it seems more to me that it is a specific type of restriction of freedom. However, the government also respects the personal or religious beliefs of citizens who object to serving in combat and even to military service itself and offers a legal alternative service that does not conflict with those beliefs.
No. Sexual intercourse among humans is more often than not exclusive of procreation and is not intended to garner the same result of procreation in every single instance. Hence the existence of contraceptives. People have sex for other reasons.
The parental “special obligation” to children that we recognize does not include involuntary donation of organs or blood either. Why do you suppose that is?
You don’t say? Pregnancy doesn’t magically happen? Who knew?
Is that to say that unwanted pregnancies should be considered a punitive measure against those women who engage in sexual intercourse without intending to procreate? That’s an idea based upon some religious or patriarchal idea of morality.
Or are you suggesting that aborting an unintentional pregnancy is not taking responsibility for unintended consequences? How can this be? Women have no obligation to become pregnant – it’s a choice, right? **Trinopus **made an excellent point that engaging in behavior with unintended consequences does not mean that one shouldn’t or cannot address those consequences.
Does your position suggest that men and women who do not wish to be parents should refrain from sexual intercourse for most of their adult lives? That seems a little unrealistic, don’t you think? I’ve been married for 19 years and have no intention of getting pregnant or having any more children. But since I’m still of child-bearing age do you think I have a responsibility to deny my own sexual needs or those of my husband’s until I’ve completed menopause because of the possibility the contraceptive I’m using may fail? I’ve asked this question so many times and have yet to get an answer from the ‘Don’t-have-sex-if-you-don’t-want-kids’ crowd.
I find it interesting that you bring up the conjoined twins analogy having just listened to an NPR program that explored the ethical dilemma of the medical separation of African conjoined twins, one of whom had a serious illness that was also going to kill the healthy twin if they remained conjoined but would die without the function of shared organs. It was the classic trolley problem. It doesn’t really have anything to do with bodily autonomy, but nonetheless it does illustrate the difficult moral dilemmas of who lives and who dies and who gets to make those decisions.
In any case, I am also in agreement that if there are going to be exceptions to general prohibition on killing people, the incidental death of one person as a result of his or her removal from another autonomous person’s body should be included and the autonomous person is the sole arbiter of that particular dilemma. In the instance with the twins, the decision whether to separate and save one child was rightly left to the parents and abided by the medical staff involved with the case, some of whom opted not to participate out of their own sense of ethics. However, their recusal did not prevent the surgery nor did the American government insert itself into the case by charging anyone with murder of the ill child who died during the surgery. The personhood of that child was not ever in dispute and yet it’s ‘right to life’ was not defended.
Of the two beings involved, the pro-choice viewpoint only allows one to hold their belief without interference. We can’t ask the other how he/she feels about the situation.
If you spill milk, you clean it up. The cleaning is not for punishment, it’s to clean up the spill. Pregnancy is not to punish the mother for having sex! The problem I have is when the solution is to end another’s life. We don’t have to bring religion or God into the equation when people have opinions about ending a life.
Aborting an unintented pregnancy is not taking responsibility for anything. It’s the exact opposite. It’s avoiding responsibility. Unless one has taken medical measures to make pregnancy impossible, there is only the choice of whether to risk pregnancy or not. Certainly one can make choices to decrease the risks of pregnancy, but there is no choice in actually becoming pregnant after the risk has already been taken. It either happens or it doesn’t. Of course one should be free to address the consequences, just don’t end another person’s life to do so.
Of course men and women who do not wish to be parents should not be expected to refrain from intercourse! They should, however, be prepared to accept the risk of unintended pregnancy and do what they can to mitigate those risks ahead of time. Even when the man and woman are extremely careful in mitigating the risk of pregnancy, and a pregnancy occurs anyway, options other than ending a life are available.
I’m not saying that women have an obligation to become pregnant. But I’m saying that if the fetus has personhood, which is the hypothetical that my post is based on, then once a woman becomes pregnant, she has an obligation to carry the fetus to term, because the fetus’s right to live trumps the woman’s right to bodily autonomy.
As far as your second question goes, first, nobody has “sexual needs”. Sex isn’t like food or water. If you don’t have sex, you won’t die. People have sexual desire.
They want to have sex because they enjoy it, and it makes them happy, and it helps couples bond and all. However, assuming fetal personhood then, while you don’t have the obligation to refrain from sex, if you do, and the contraceptive you’re using fails, then you would have an obligation to carry the fetus to term.
Again, this all assumes fetal personhood. If the fetus isn’t a person, and doesn’t have any sort of moral or legal rights, then it’s irrelevant.
What’s so special about a fetus that gives it the right to trump bodily autonomy of another person that no longer applies to a two-year old or an adult who also requires a something from another living person to survive? If society can force a woman to continue a pregnancy to benefit another, then why doesn’t society force a parent to relinquish an organ or blood to his/her offspring? Or in the cases parents aren’t a match, anyone in society should share the burden, right? Why do people lose the right to trump another person’s bodily autonomy at birth? If the goal is to preserve life, then we’re missing the opportunity to save far more lives (and lives of consequence for that matter). That is the inconsistency I do not understand.
As you noted, there are other pertinent reasons couples who don’t wish to procreate engage in sex. Your binary choice is to refrain the activities supportive of a normal, natural, and nurturing relationship or accept an unwanted medical condition that may be a burden physically to the woman, to their family’s well-being, and strain the obligations society has to care for its citizens. To what end?
This is just a data point, but I’m 47 years old with two adult children. There’s not even a minute chance that I would continue an unwanted pregnancy at this point in my life. I do not want a child. I had complications in both previous pregnancies at the more ideal age and I’m much more susceptible to serious medical complications associated with late in life pregnancies. Finally, I am not financially committed to additional offspring which is also more susceptible to medical complications. I’ve waited a long time to be at this stage in our relationship where we get to focus on each other and I’m going to embrace it. I’ve made every responsible decision with regard to contraception and feel absolutely no obligation to bring another person into this over-populated world. So, am I selfish and callous because I emphatically say no to pregnancy and procreation at this point? Let me add that I am also opposed to capital punishment, regularly donate blood, and am listed as a post-mortem organ donor.
Pregnancy is a medical condition. With every other medical condition, we as a society demand that only our doctors and ourselves are allowed to make decisions with regard to that medical condition.
Children should, at the very least, come into this world wanted by those who created them to reduce the chances that they become adults in an overburdened system of a society that doesn’t really care about them. There are plenty of examples of that and the outcomes are very damaging. Valuing the life of a zygote/fetus higher than that of any other person has very little practical value if society doesn’t equally value the lives of children and adults who are lacking that which helps them survive and thrive. Can’t you see the inconsistency of the imperative of keeping a fetus alive but rejecting the imperative of an life-sustaining organ transplant because society permits us to dispose perfectly good organs with corpses, for instance?
Personhood is irrelevant because, as has been pointed out numerous times, there already exists in society acceptable reasons to kill another person, but there are no established legally acceptable reasons to violate bodily autonomy for the benefit of another person. Personhood seems to be relevant to you only for the person who resides inside another person’s body.