How do you want to examine this, from a legal/social viewpoint or an ethical one?
From a legal/social viewpoint I can’t see any great difference between this an any other law. There are all sorts of laws that make acts illegal and thus cost people money. Should the proponents of all such laws be required to pay those costs?
For example, there are laws that prevent me from poisoning endangered chupacabras living on my land. As a result, one day I get mauled by a chupacabra. Clearly this is down to the law in question,since if I had exterminated all the chupacabras in my locale, I wouldn’t have been mauled. Okay, let’s assume that’s true. Then…who is going to step up and pay for my medical? What if me and/or my family is already financially strapped, has no insurance or has crappy insurance? Should the Greenpeace be compelled to step in and pay for the costs incurred?
There are laws that prevent me from keeping firearms in my house. One day I get robbed and beaten, and I can demonstrate that if I had had a firearm, i could have prevented the robbery. Okay, let’s assume that’s true. Then…who is going to step up and pay for my medical? What if me and/or my family is already financially strapped, has no insurance or has crappy insurance? Should the Greenpeace be compelled to step in and pay for the costs incurred?
There are laws that prevent me from buying a kidney form a willing, healthy person and having it transplanted into myself. As a result I have undergo dialysis I run a high risk of nosocomial infection and even death before they find a deceased donor. So one day I get beaten up and as and as a result suffer kidney failure. Okay, let’s assume that’s true. Then…who is going to step up and pay for my medical? What if me and/or my family is already financially strapped, has no insurance or has crappy insurance? Should the AMA, who oppose organ trading, be compelled to step in and pay for the costs incurred?
And so on and so forth. There are endless laws that prevent people from doing things, and as a result end up costing them money. This isn’t in any way unique to abortion law. In general western societies just say “suck it up”. You can try launch a tort against the perpetrator if an illegal act is involved, but that isn’t enshrined in the laws themselves. the general principle is that laws are deigned to faciliat5e the smooth functioning of society, and that inevitably means that some small number of people will incur costs for the benefit of the greater number. Tough shit.
Now you may not think that fair, but it’s hard to see how it could be workable if every lobby group for a new law is personally liable for any costs associated with the law. Just the costs from banning CFCs alone would have sent Greenpeace bankrupt 20 years ago, never mind all the other practices they have lobbied to make illegal. I’m no fan of Greenpeace, but it’s definitely not a good thing to have society where it effectively becomes impossible for people to associate to affect reform.
We may not like the reforms that pro-life groups or conservation groups initiate, but I would like to think that we all agree they have to be allowed to *advocate *for those reforms.
Yes?
From an ethcial standpoint, there also isn’t anything very novel here.
The only difference is that in this case the problem can be circumvented by terminating the pregnancy which, from the pro-life POV, is murder. So the problem can be circumvented by murder. But if we discount the premise that murder is OK if it allows someone to avoid problems, then there’s just nothing new here. The pro-life POV is that it isn’t acceptable to kill someone because they are inconveniencing you or costing you money, even if that inconvenience is itself the result of a crime.
If someone takes something from you and sells it, the new owner can claim ownership . It can take years and tens of thousands of dollars to get the property back through the civil courts. Nonetheless I doubt that anybody would suggest that you should be able to kill someone who unwittingly bought your stolen property. Sure, you’ve been the victim of a crime, but the person who claims the property is totally innocent. You have no right to even punish them, much less kill them just because it will cost you time and money if they stay alive.
For the sake of argument, I believe that I people should have the right to kill anyone who claims my stolen property, regardless of if they have any complicity in the crime. I assume that everyone here disputes this position and would create laws to stop people from exercising this “right”.
Now, somebody steals my piece of medical equipment, let’s say it’s a dialysis machine. Whatever. Since I can’t afford anew one, I will now have to use the one at the hospital. I believe I should be able to just kill the person who bought mine, rather than going through a protracted court case to get it back. But you say that although the robbery was horrific, the purchaser should not have to die because life is sacred.
Okay, let’s assume that’s true. Then…who is going to step up and pay for the medical care and costs associated with this loss? What if there are complications from using a shared machine, a nosocomial infection and I need surgery, meds, and a long hospitalization? What if I am already financially strapped, have no insurance or has crappy insurance? Should the “pro-life” group, of which you are a members of this board are members, be compelled to step in and pay for the costs incurred? Should the robbery pay? (That’s assuming that they’ve been caught and proven guilty…and that they have the money to pay.)
From an ethical POV, it call comes back to when you consider human life to begin. If you consider human life to begin at conception then a rape victim has no more right to end that life because it is expensive and inconvenient than I have to kill someone who bought my stolen dialysis machine. You simply can’t kill a human being because they are inconveniencing you. It doesn’t matter what the degree of inconvenience is, I don’t think any of us believe that we should have the right to kill someone because they will cost us money.
Of course if you don;t believe that a foetus is a human life then this is all a load of dingo’s kidneys, but that’s the abortion debate in a nutshell. Your input about medical costs doesn’t change anything.
And, ultimately, if you don’t accept that an unborn child is a human life, then it’s just another law based on action, the same as the ownership of firearms or the killing of protected species or the trading of organs. You may think those laws are stupid and injust for inconveniencing people and causing them to incur medical costs, but the laws exist nonetheless and the abortion law is absolutely no different.
I doubt it. Any more than Greenpeace address the aspect of people being mauled by chupacabras, or the AMA addresses the aspect of people having needless dialysis or gun control groups address the issue of people being beaten during robberies. Any law is going to result in some people incurring costs. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t need the law. By and large advocacy groups don’t feel the need to address these issues because the underlying assumption of any law is “the greater good of society”. It’s assumed there will be costs associated with the law and it’s assumed the benefits outweigh those costs, so tough luck to those who lose. In the case of pro-life groups, the assumption is that the medical expenses of the woman involved is secondary to the survival of the child.
