One popular abortion analogy I’ve seen in some textbooks is the case of the “famous violinist.”
The argument starts out with the person submitting the case “accepting” things for the sake of argument:
The fetus is a person
All persons have a right to life
The mother has a right to bodily autonomy
The right to life is stronger and more stringent than the right to bodily autonomy
Conclusion: Aborting a fetus is morally impermissable.
The person submitting the case frames things this way so that when he/she (actuallys he) presents the case you have to call in to question the conclusion of above even if you accept 1-4 as fact.
The basic case is, you wake up one day and find that a group of musical enthusiasts have kidnapped you and attached you via some form of advanced symbiotic life support to a famous violinist. As long as the famous violinist is connected to you, he remains alive, if you disconnect yourself, he dies.
So again, under the criteria of the above list:
The violinist is a person
All persons have a right to life
You have the right to bodily autonomy
The right to life > bodily autonomy
Conclusion: You have to remain connected to the violinist.
If you accept the four “givens” for the sake of argument in the first case many people will concede the conclusion, even pro-choice people (assuming they are participating correclty and have in good faith accepted the first four things in good faith for the sake of argument.) However in the second case, in general, most people don’t accept the conclusion, which throws doubt on the conclusion reached above.
There are obviously problems with the comparison. Working within the context of the criteria of the situation, still, one certainly involves forceful connection. Nothing is said to say if the woman was forcefully impregnated or if she entered that arrangement of her own free will.
The author of the famous violinist case has more or less abandoned the idea in favor of the concept that fetal rights are like a contract, they only exist if the mother agrees to them.
I’m not referring to stuff that is ambiguous (like smoking or drinking), but to things that are more directly linked, like tacking crack or some other chemical that causes deformities, like thalidomide.
Do “It’s my body” purists believe that it’s simply a woman’s choice whether she takes thalidomide while pregnant and then goes ahead and has the baby?
The issue here is that of precisely what happens when. The exact threshold of “personhood” is currently 24 weeks (UK, 22 in some US states?). Though it is more complex than this, let us say that at exactly 24 weeks abortion constitutes murder (and harm constitutes assault) whereas at 23.9999 weeks, the organic matter in the woman’s womb is no more a person than surgical waste (which might nevertheless be very precious part of the woman’s body like, say, a hand, such that any harm to it from another party would still constitute criminal assault).
Given these premises, I suggest that the mother can do anything to the <24 week organic matter without penalty, just like throwing away a condom or using weedkiller. However, the instant that the foetus acquires personhood, then any prior abuse would then in that instant immediately constitute harm to that person, for which the mother is at least morally responsible (and, who knows, criminally liable?). Put simply - do whatever you like, so long as you don’t intend to keep it.
Sorry you misrepresent the law in the UK. The law says nothing about “personhood” of the foetus. British (Scotland, Wales, England, not N Ireland) law allows abortion in some cases up to full term. The 24 week threshhold has no meaning except to exempt doctors from prosecution if they complete all the hurdles required by the act and then abort a foetus at less than 24 weeks. If they do so beyond 24 weeks, then they will not get automatic protection and will have to argue it as a special case should the CPS decide that there is a possible criminal case to answer.
The crux of the OP is in that disclaimer you mention: “so long as you don’t intend to keep it”.
If someone does intend to keep the baby, does the 20 week fetus become more of a person and is no longer “surgical waste”? Or is it still surgical waste?
If she does intend to keep the baby, do you think there should be restrsictions on what the mother can do to the < 24 week fetus?
Hi, Pol. I’m suggesting that regardless of prior intent, the line of transition from cells to person is this stark (for this arguments sake - the law is less binary, as Pjen says). Whatever X-week is chosen (and I’m happy with 24), then pre-X=cells and post-X=person. (After all, this is the nature of all kinds of other laws, eg. consent at midnight on your X-teenth birthday.)
The point is that for all her intention the foetus might not reach the personhood threshold, wherever it is, through eg. miscarriage. It is only at X that any restrictions would apply retroactively. Again, this is similar to other kinds of prohibitions of negligence: an undesirable outcome is examined to find where blame lay in the past.
As for whether there should be such restrictions (or, more accurately, liability to prosecution or damages for said negligence), I don’t think anyone would truly be helped by it: the poor neglected kid would be doubly punished by having their mother made a criminal and all the fines, incarceration or care orders that entails. I know an alcoholic woman whose child was born blind and died recently from complications arising from her severe fetal alcohol syndrome - I cannot say that criminalisation would do (or have done) much good in this tragic case.
You might be positing a level of “it’s my body purists” that doesn’t exist; at least in this thread. I looked and didn’t see anyone advocating the position you describe. So far at least.
And as to thalidomide itself, you can’t get it any more and before the discovery of it’s danger it was just another useful drug and no blame could attach for taking it on medical advice.
As for things like crack, as I said, I don’t see anyone here advocating an unlimited right to take illegal substances, pregnant or not.
Are you saying that a woman who takes a lot of thalidomide before 24 weeks, which results in a limb deformity for the fetus, will be to blame for the limb deformity once the fetus reaches 24 weeks, but no blame can be placed on her before the 24 weeks have arrived?
Also, let me ask a question that in practice will never show up, but since we are exploring the limits here of the “It’s my body” and “it’s only surgical waste” argument, it might be helpful.
Assume there is a cult that tells women that they should amputate the right arm of their fetus, and these women have it done at week 15, when the fetus is still only “surgical waste”. Should the law do anything about this?
It seems so, so far. Let’s see. From past threads, I expected at least a couple of them.
Thalidomide is just an example. Let’s assume there is some legally obtained substance that, if you take before a certain week of your pregnancy, it will result in a limb deformity for the fetus, while not harming the mother. Should the law be OK with the woman taking this legal substance while pregnant?
Oh, I dunno, let’s say rail safety. A crash happens. The inquest looks for what might have been done or overlooked perhaps a long time into the past to cause the crash. The person or people responsible are then prosecuted for something they did a long time ago to cause a current inequity.
Yes. To try and strain a correspondence, rail safety negligence would also not be a crime if no trains were going to travel on that particular line ever again, but the moment the next train approaches that neglected piece of track …
Not until 24 weeks, IMO, regardless of when the amputation occurred. After all, they can go ahead and kill it before then!
Yes, but if the rail person did something that was legal * at the time he did it*, I don’t see how you can prosecute him, no matter what the consequences of that action.
So, you think the law should do something about these mothers, when 24 weeks arrives? But when they performed the amputation, it was within the law.
I’m trying to find an example of doing something that was legal at a particular time, and then be prosecuted for it at a different time when it is against the law.
I can’t find such an example. Maybe some lawyers can help us out here.
Did people who were slave owners before slavery was outlawed get prosecuted after slavery was outlawed?
If a slave owner before abolition could amputate a slave at will, and he did so, could he be persecuted for this after the abolition of slavery?
The violinist will certainly die if he is removed from me? But he will be harmlessly removed from me at a definite point (within, say, a two-week window) within the next year? Meanwhile, I can still carry on a normal life, or what if not 100% “normal” is near enough to it that there are teeming millions in the world who’d trade places with me in a heartbeat?
The question’s a no-brainer, and you can repeat that to me after I’ve been seized by the crazed violin fans.
Which is why my (admittedly strained) analogy was that of allowing a stretch of rail to fall into disrepair, which is perfectly legal if it is uncertain when or whether the next train will ever be allowed to traverse it. The neglect would only become criminal at the moment the next train is allowed onto it.
We could try another analogy if you like (someone legally laying traps and poison in their house but not removing them upon becoming a parent, say?) or it may be the case that this is pretty unique (because a non-person becoming a person is pretty unique, even if your “non-person” is the living sperm and egg).
No - I said they’re responsible but didn’t advocate criminalisation.
Note that there have been many attempts to seek compensation for, effectively, slavery having been legal in the past. Even so, analogies are not in themselves arguments, and just because we can;t agree on an appropriate analogy for my position regarding foetuses does not logically impugn the position itself.
Sorry, to clarify, I missed the ‘amputation’ part and thought you just meant drug abuse or the like. For argument’s sake: yes, I would advocate criminal proceedings against the amputaters, at 24 weeks and no earlier.
I already said in post #12 that I don’t think a pregnant woman who intends to carry the fetus to term has unlimited freedom to risk harm to the fetus. The problem, as Voyager immediately pointed out, is; What do you do about it? For one thing women sometimes don’t know for as much as a month, and in some case longer, that they are pregnant. In that case women who have the possibility of becoming pregnant would be well advised to take in nothing but distilled water and bean curd from home grown beans. And not too much of those.
I don’t see the use in playing a hypothetical game about estoteric, legal substances that someone might take. It’s hard enough to determine what to do in actual cases and it’s possible to dream up all sorts of situations that can’t be handled by any reasonable course of action.
We know that our society does not always follow 4). For instance, say there is a person who will die without a kidney, and your kidneys match. You are not required by law to donate a kidney to save that person. The issue is not the risk to you, but your bodily autonomy. Thus, we judge bodily autonomy > right to life in at least some cases, even where the entity at risk is clearly a person.
On NPR this morning I heard a story about an acne medicine that cause miscarriage and birth defects in a very large number of cases. They are setting up a network so that pharmacies prescribing this drug to women can check that the woman has been counseled, and also check that there is a negative pregnancy test before treatment begins. The representative interviewed said that they will do everything they can to reduce the birth defect rate to as low a number as humanly possible. Even, here, though, no one seems to be calling for taking this drug to be made illegal for pregnant women. This trivial case of bodily autonomy seems to be trumping the health of the fetus.
I’m sure that no one would argue that it is unethical for a doctor to refuse to prescribe a dangerous drug for a pregnant woman, unless there is an overriding need.
Well in the abortion debate none of 1-4 is really agreed upon by everyone. The basis for the case is that you have to accept 1-4 and then analyze whether or not the conclusion is acceptable even if you DO accept 1-4. Basically it’s a test to see if you agree with the anti-abortion logic even if you accept the anti-abortionists criteria for the sake of argument.
To be fair, the argument is not that there are no moral issues in disconnecting the violinist; it is that the state does not have a right to forceably imprison (of sorts) the woman because doing so will help someone else out.
And, credit where due, that essay is “A Defense of Abortion”, written by Judith Jarvis Thompson. An excerpt is available herein pdf. Personally, as one who supports abortion, but has some moral problems with it, I think it’s a well-reasoned argument.
We could substitute Acutaine - a very powerful anti-acne drug. Most physicians won’t even perscribe Acutaine to women of child bearing age because the birth defects are so severe.
However, lets assume that a woman gets some from a website or somesuch. Further, lets assume that she knows that most likely her fetus will be horribly damaged by taking it. She takes it anyway. Her fetus is born horribly deformed. Well, what are you going to do? Put her in jail? To me that seems absurd. I think her actions are horrific and morally reprehensible, but not illegal. It is her body, and her pimples in question. If they’re so bad that she’s suicidal about it, then I don’t think I have any place telling her that she shouldn’t take a medication that will help.