Someone suggested that since I hinted at it in the previous post (the comment about protecting embryos), I should go ahead and post my opinions about abortion. I know that a post on this topic is incredibly unlikely to change anybody’s mind, but perhaps some might find it interesting. And, I’ve already posted on politics and religion and haven’t managed to alienate everybody yet, so I have to keep trying!
First, let me say that I think a pregnancy is a very special thing and
the chance to bring a human being into the world should be taken very seriously. I hope I’ve made it clear that I value human life tremendously, especially that of children, and I think there is plenty of room in our society for more children who will be raised well by eager, competent, parents (and I think there are many such candidates for adoption if the parents don’t qualify on this score). So, I’m all for taking pregnancies to term and delivering babies.
But, it seems to me, if you take people’s rights seriously you have to take the rights of the pregnant woman seriously and acknowledge that the decision to continue a pregnancy must be hers (at least at the early stages). At that point, she’s the only human being involved. A fertilized egg might be a potential human being, but until its brain begins to operate as born humans’ brains do, it isn’t a human being yet.*
So, should the law prohibit abortions after that point, assuming we could analyze fetal brain activity well enough to determine if this sort of activity is present?
No.
While I think this would be the right test to determine if the fetus is human, I don’t think it’s the right test to determine whether the state should prohibit abortions. I think that test should be viability: when the baby could be delivered alive with excellent chances for the safety of both the mother and child.
To understand why, consider this thought experiment:
Suppose somebody had a fatal disease, and the only way for them to be cured would be for a particular person, you, to be hooked up to a machine for nine months while some kind of transfusion process occurred. While hooked up to the machine, your autonomy would be severely limited; you couldn’t do everything you wanted, you would be ill part of the time, you’d have to limit what you consumed, etc. At the end of the transfusion you’d have to undergo a separation procedure that would be traumatic, painful, and somewhat dangerous.
Should you be forced to submit to this process? If you decided to go ahead, should you be forbidden from separating early? Even if it would mean certain death for the dependent person?
I think the answer is that, even if it costs a human life, you should be free to separate from the machine. And, I think this is similar to the situation of a pregnant woman. It’s her body, she should be able to control it, even if a dependent human will die if she chooses to end her pregnancy before it is viable. But, once the other person is viable, I don’t think one should be able to separate in such a way to ensure his death; in that case, the separation should be done so as to preserve his life.
I know that some people think that these situations are not analogous. They say they are different because the woman caused the fetus’ dependency. This is true, in a way, but it isn’t so simple. It’s not the case that she caused the fetus to change from an independent person to a dependent one. On the contrary, she caused it to change from a non-existent state to a dependent one. If she owes it something, it’s to return it to its state of non-existence.
So, using this argument, I think we can side-step the question of when the fetus becomes a human being and declare that it’s only after the fetus becomes viable that abortion would be murder. Until that point, I think it is the, possibly regrettable, legitimate exercise of individual liberty.
*As an aside, I thought I’d just mention how incredibly unpersuasive I find the “argument” that a fetus is a human being because we can recognize fingers and toes in a fetal image. This is an absurdity of Pythonian proportions:
“How do you know she’s a witch person?”
“SHE LOOKS LIKE ONE!”
A Reasonable Man 
OK, is this one any different?: The parents live on a remote island that used to be a chemical weapons testing ground. A chemical pervading the environment there is harmless to adults but will kill children within a certain time unless they have the treatment you outlined. The parents knew all this at the time of conception. Their child was born on the island and has never left it.
Another variant: the same, but this time merely leaving the island would save the child’s life. Are they obliged to pay his boat fare? Are they obliged to tell him of the danger?
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Gil, you’re on a good roll. Here’s another Bravo! from me. 🙂
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Thanks, Dawn!
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I think the point David’s trying to make is that the woman has chosen to get pregnant indirectly, by having sex. (Even if birth control has been used, it’s not 100 percent effective and she should know that). So the analogy is closer to that of a person who has knowingly and willfully put another person in a position of danger and who has the choice to save that person’s life but chooses to end it. That’s wrong in my book.
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Tim,
I dispute that having sex is choosing to get pregnant, even indirectly.
But, beyond that, it’s not accurate to characterize it as having “wilfully put another person in a position of danger”. There was no such other person at the time of the act. Nobody was “put” there. Nobody was placed into a worse state than before. I think that’s a crucial difference from your characterization.
Even if I agree with you that choosing to end the life is wrong, I don’t think it’s the kind of wrong that’s best handled by the state. It’s not murder. Non-criminal cultural norms get enforced pretty effectively without the state. The percentage of late-term abortions is quite low, after all.
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Gil said:
Someone sneaks into a baby food factory and secretly poisons a batch of baby food that he knows is due to be marketed three years later.
Three years later, 380 babies die in agony.
He is arrested and charged with 380 aggravated murders. He claims it was only damage to property because “There were no such people at the time of the act. Nobody was ‘put there. Nobody was placed into a worse state than before.”
Should the law agree?
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David,
Ok, ignore “at the time of the act”.
In my example, no person was harmed so as to make him dependent (he was never independent). In your example, healthy, babies were poisoned.
The point isn’t that it was done before there was a victim. The point is that fertilizing an egg and allowing it to become a person is NOT harm (I think it’s a big improvement!), but putting poison into a jar that you expect will be eaten by a child IS harm.
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David,
Giving the person the disease would change the thought experiment, but in a way that would make it diverge from the pregnancy example.
The woman does not cause a pre-existing, healthy, independent person to become a dependent person. She causes a bunch of cells to become a dependent bunch of cells, and later a dependent person. This is very different. She didn’t make him worse off at all.
As for the alternative scenario, I think the hypothetical changing the subject to your child with a genetic disease would change things so that you would be more likely to want to undergo the process. But, I don’t think it generates an obligation of the sort that justifies legal enforcement.
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David,
I guess what you’re suggesting is that a woman has obligations to her child that encompass, at least, enduring a process similar to pregnancy to save his life.
While I hope that most women would want to take this action, I just don’t think she has such an obligation. I think obligations must be chosen, or earned by harming someone wrongly. I don’t think having sex qualifies as either choosing such an obligation, or harming someone wrongly.
What are the limits of the obligations you think it imposes? Must a mother donate an organ? Must she dive into a stormy ocean in an unlikely attempt to save her drowning child?
Where does the obligation end?
And, more appropriately to the abortion debate, which of these obligations should be enforced by the state, virtually at gunpoint?
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I’m not quite getting these arguements aginst Gil’s position so let’s be clear.
Is it a question of when human life starts or a question of responsiblity?
Are you saying that a rape victim should be able to have an abortion up until the child is viable but a non rape victim has to make the decision much earlier?
Well then maybe there should be degrees of responsiblity. Like a woman who was on the pill can have an abortion up until the sixth month, but a woman who never even bothered to use birth control needs to have an abortion in the first three months or carry it to term.
But why stop there? Any woman who doesn’t have her tubes tied when she reaches puberty knows that there’s a possiblity that she might get raped and have an unwanted pregnancy so maybe she should only get up until eight months and one week.
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David,
I’m trying to understand your theory.
I think you agree that a woman isn’t obligated to take a pregnancy to term while the fetus is still pre-human. So, it can’t be the sex act alone that creates the obligation to allow the process that has begun to complete and result in a new, physically independent, human. So, this obligation must spontaneously appear when the fetus becomes human. Why? Because she was negligent by not aborting it before it became human? That doesn’t make sense to me.
It seems to me that this theory that the mother has this obligation is invented ad hoc because she’s the one in a position to save the baby. It’s as if we invented a reason that a person who is the only candidate for the transfusion machine has an obligation to the sick person, not because there was any contract or harm, but just because he’s the only one who can do the saving. It’s also like suing a big company, not because it was negligent but, because it has deep enough pockets to compensate unfortunates, and a plausible (but invalid) argument can be made that it should have prevented a problem.
Do you think somebody who agrees to try being connected to the transfusion machine, but doesn’t promise to complete the process, should be forbidden from changing his mind and disconnecting? If so, why?
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Gil,
The issue of abortion, of suicide, or even your thought experiment, comes down to one question: Which do you value more, human life, or the right of an individual to choose?
To draw any kind of line in the development of a fetus and claim it to be human after this point and call it murder if aborted, is a tenuous proposition. One in which not everyone will agree upon.
At first, you draw the line on brain activity–“A fertilized egg might be a potential human being, but until its brain begins to operate as born humans’ brains do, it isn’t a human being yet.” Brain activity is a nebulous criteria. What about an adult in a very deep coma with a minimum of brain activity? By your definition, the adult is no longer human because his brain is functioning at a capacity less than “born humans’ brains”.
Then you settle upon drawing the line on the viability of the fetus. What about that grey area of premature babies that need to be placed on life support, say two or three months premature and the survival rate is 50-50? Are they human enough? What about X number of months premature and the survival rate is 1%? Where is the dividing line on viability? It seems to be a nebulous area too.
Creating your definition of when a fetus is considered a human being, and labeling the termination of a fetus as murder or not, is just a way for you to soften the collision between your value of the individual to choose over the value of human life.
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Mark,
That’s a fargin trick question!!!
To me, valuing human life entails valuing an individual’s right to choose. I think that’s an essential part of being human and if I didn’t respect it, it would be far less meaningful for me to claim to value human life.
If you have the only DNA we have found that could save a sick individual by donating some of your bone marrow, or an organ, should we force you to do it? Would that be what’s required to value human life more than an individual’s right to choose?
If so, then I choose the right to choose.
I’m not saying that lots of women having lots of abortions is ideal. But I think that if you really value human life, you have to leave them the liberty to make those choices while you make your own arguments peacefully.
I’m confident that free people will improve their theories over time and make better and better choices.
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Gil: I was only asking, not arguing for a particular position, but what I am getting at is that I’m not convinced by your claim that “we can side-step the question of when the fetus becomes a human being” (which, to me, means ‘has human-type thoughts”).
As it happens, it seems quite plausible to me that no such thoughts occur before birth, or even for some time after. But it is also clear that we don’t understand the nature of thought, so I think it is morally incumbent on us to show caution and that to some extent this should be reflected in laws and regulations. And it can equally well be argued that, given that same uncertainty, we should avoid draconian regulation of abortion, because of how plausible it is that, when we do understand the facts better, it will turn out that abortion is perfectly OK, and so laws against abortion are punishing completely innocuous behaviour.
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Gil,
In my classroom, I have a list called “The Math Students’ Bill of Rights.” There are about ten items in list like the right to ask any question, to learn at my own pace and not feel stupid if am slower, etc. Next to that list is something called “The Math Students’ Bill of Responsibilities.” This list is about twice as long as the other, and lists things like the responsibility to do the assignment, to ask questions, to come to class, to take notes, etc. This illustrates that there are usually a whole bunch of responsibilities that go with each right that an individual has.
So also, with the right to choose comes the responsibility of the consequences.
Your DNA example and thought experiment are only partially analogous to the issue of abortion in determining what level the state has the right to force someone to choose life. The analogies fall apart when you look at responsibility.
For the case of abortion, incest and rape aside, a woman is free to choose to engage in sexual intercourse. And one of the possible consequences of sex is getting pregnant. Are you going to absolve a woman of the responsibility to the consequences of her actions?
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David,
I don’t disagree with what you’ve said, but I don’t follow what it has to do with your not being convinced by my argument.
My argument is that even under the most generous assumptions about when human life begins there are still good reasons to leave the decision up to the mother until the point of viability.
Your questions seemed to indicate that you were challenging this on the grounds that the mother has obligations to the fetus that I haven’t really seen a good argument for (where “good” means “convincing to me”).
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Mark,
I recognize that many people assert that the right to engage in sex requires the responsibility to carry a pregnancy to term. I can understand how this might follow from scriptural interpretation, or a utilitarian calculation, but it doesn’t follow logically for me.
I’m all for people being responsible for what they do, and the consequences of their actions. But, for me, the way to determine what those responsibilities are is not to look it up in the bible or to ask an authority. It’s to reason about it. And this reasoning has, thus far, led me to the conclusion that a woman is not obligated to carry a pregnancy to term.
I think that once it becomes independently viable and a procedure to separate her from the fetus does not impose great risk on her, then she does have a responsibility to allow that procedure rather than a more convenient procedure that would kill the fetus (just as you would have such a responsibility to help save the life of a guest, invited or not, in your house). But until that point, it seems to me that she should be able to decide whether or not to endure further pregnancy. Having sex is not an implicit contract with a potential fetus to carry it to term, nor is it harm that causes an independent person to become dependent.
By the way, I suspect that many of the “responsibilities” on your Math list don’t follow logically from the rights, either. But that’s another story.
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Gil,
I am disappointed that you brought up the Bible. If you reread any of my comments in this thread, I have carefully avoided any allusion to any external authority. I know better to bring anything like that into a discussion with you. 🙂
(You may recall an email discussion we had in July where I wrote, “I had developed a set of morals and ethics where I valued human life and the dignity of the individual without invoking God.”)
How can you separate the sex act with the possible outcome of a pregnancy? They are not mutually exclusive or independent events. It is a case of cause and effect.
If you say that a person is responsible for his or her actions, then you are being inconsistent in your logic to disconnect the choice to have sex with its possible consequences. If you choose “the cause”, then you must be held responsible for any “effects.” Contract or no contract, the responsibility that goes with it cannot be separated from either.
Your logic is consistent if you claim that a fetus is not a human being. That conveniently removes a value judgement between human life or the right of an individual to choose.
When is a fetus a human being? This is the heart of the discussion. And we will not change anyone’s opinion here.
But, I see a serious flaw in choosing viability as a litmus test for being human. There are no guarantees on the viability of a fetus at any given stage of development. How do you test viability without extracting the fetus? How many full term babies were healthy and alive in the womb before birth but died upon delivery? How many premature babies born at 28 weeks survive? When is a fetus viable? Are you going to play percentages and gamble on the life of a possible human being?
And if you are not 100% sure of the viability of a fetus, then you MUST face your value judgement between human life or the right of an individual to choose.
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What about this?
You’re driving on the road as responsibly as possible (obeying all laws etc.) When a rhino comes charging out of a field into the side of your car (which is actually considered good luck in Haiti.) You go spinning into a pedestrian injuring him to the extent that he has to be on Gil’s transfusion machine and you’re the only one who can save him.
Have you given up your right to choose by virtue of the fact that you were on the road at all, knowing that there’s always a chance that you might injure or kill someone no matter how responsibly you drive. Sort of like a woman on the pill getting pregnant.
Disregarding your argument that this is different because of the whole bringing a non-entity into the state of being a dependent entity thing, (which I agree with) what do you think your rights should be in this situation?
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Mark,
Sorry to disappoint you. I only brought up the bible as a generally bad source of moral authority, not because of any personal reference.
I was just saying that it isn’t at all clear to me that the consequences generate the responsibility that you seem to think is self-evident. I think NQSRLB makes a good point about this (and I got the Caddyshack reference!).
And, I agree that there are problems with legislating a viability standard. But, I think the first task is to try to figure out, theoretically, when it actually should be considered a crime, and only then to consider what the law should say. It seems wrong to just choose conception, or birth, or 5 months, because it’s easy to test for. Perhaps the medical community can create a mechanism for determining whether viability is reasonable for particular cases, and the law should enforce this.
The exact circumstances will probably change as technology improves, so the test should take this into account. I don’t know what the best law is, but I’m pretty sure that we won’t find it if we don’t look.
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Whoa, I must be missing something. Why would it be hard to legislate the viability standard.
I thought that viability was the proposed cut off. If the baby is viable, then, if I were pregnant, I should be able to remove the child from my body and immediately put it up for adoption. Why is this hard to legislate? Just remove the child; if it lives, it was viable, if not, not. Both cases would be legal.
If viability does not mean “if I remove the child, it will survive,” then Gil’s transfusion argument still holds, it seems. If the other person is able to live on his own, but can’t survive the disconnect, that doesn’t change the argument that you should be able to disconnect. Or am I wrong?
By the way, the transfusion argument originated, I think, with Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “violinist argument” in her “A defense of abortion,” and deals with many issues and counterarguments. It is an ethical discussion instead of a legal one, but may shed some light.
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Bill,
I’m no medical expert, but I assume that there are different procedures with different levels of risk and expense. If there’s a procedure that would be less of a risk/ordeal for the mother but gives the fetus no chance of survival, I’d think that would be the best choice if the fetus isn’t viable. So there should be a medical decision to determine which procedure is appropriate for a given situation.
And, thanks for the “violinist argument” reference. I really don’t remember when I first heard/read/thought of my argument. I could have thought of it independently. There aren’t many new ideas.
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Gil,
Does the viability criterion apply sufficiently in the following cases?
A. It becomes possible in 2021 to remove a fertilized egg before implantation and transfer it to a surrogate mother.
B. Ditto, but assuming the first woman was raped.
C. Mother is isolated and starving in desert-bound poverty, so that, independently of her choices, baby remains unviable even 4 months after birth. Is it OK to kill the baby? What about if by killing the baby she has a chance to get to a source of food, water and safety along with her other children?
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Bill,
I don’t quite agree. While I’m confident that the mother doesn’t have the sort of obligations to the fetus that would justify a criminal punishment for ending the pregnancy early, I think it’s reasonable to expect that we will endure a slight inconvenience to prevent great harm (like death) to others when we’re the only one in a position to help. So, I’d expect somebody to disconnect from the machine in a way that avoided killing the other person if that way didn’t involve much additional risk/ordeal. And, remember, no late-term abortion is ordeal-free.
My definition of “viability” was not when it’s theoretically possible for the fetus to survive regardless of the risk/imposition to the mother. But, closer to something like when her doctor thinks it’s reasonable for her to choose this option (taking into account both the chances for the fetus’ survival and the risks to the mother). I would think the chances for both to fully recover should be excellent.
I realize that it’s difficult and dangerous to formalize this sort of thing (slippery slopes, and all that). Hopefully, the market will come to the rescue. Perhaps those pro-lifers who are willing to protest against abortion will be willing to put their money where their mouths are and provide financial incentives for women to choose the viability preserving option.
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Tom,
A and B are interesting. I was assuming that personhood would precede viability, but you’re right that this won’t always be the case. We might even be able to incubate a fetus to birth outside of any womb.
I guess that as long as somebody else was willing to bear the cost of the process and the marginal risks to the mother were minimal, then I suppose she should choose the option that allowed the fetus to survive.
Again, perhaps we wouldn’t have to legislate this at all if those who were so concerned for preserving the fetus offered the mother enough of a financial incentive for her to choose this option voluntarily.
As for C. As cruel as it sounds, I don’t think the mother has an obligation to take heroic measures to preserve an unwanted child. I think she does have the obligation to take reasonable steps to get it to others who are willing and able to assume such responsibilities; but if that’s impossible, the choice is hers and the baby is not owed what’s necessary to keep it alive.
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The rhino/car accident scenario outlined a few comments back is a coincidence. The driver of the car is not the initiator or primary cause of the accident. (I didn’t know that rhinos were indigenous to the Caribbean nation of Haiti?)
In Bill’s counter example of the unlocked door and the burglary, the choice to unlock the door facilitated the burglary. It was not the initiator of the cause of the burglary.
Pregnancy, although we tend to think this way, is not an accident or a coincidence. Sex does not facilitate a pregnancy. To choose to engage in sex is to initiate a cause, and its effect may or may not be a pregnancy. Since the participants initiated the cause, they must be held responsible for the effects.
All these scenarios and thought experiments are interesting case studies for cause and effect and responsibility. But all of them cannot perfectly model sex and pregnancy because they take sex out of its context. It is a biological fact that sex is for procreation. And to engage in sex as recreation does not absolve the participants of the responsibilities of the effects.
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Gil,
Comments like “…if those who were so concerned for preserving the fetus offered the mother enough of a financial incentive for her to choose this option voluntarily” is shifting responsibility from the mother to someone else.
Which individual is accountable for the mother’s choice to engage in sex?
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Mark,
“Pregnancy, although we tend to think this way, is not an accident or a coincidence. Sex does not facilitate a pregnancy. To choose to engage in sex is to initiate a cause, and its effect may or may not be a pregnancy. ”
Two points. First, change my hypothetical: the burglar overhears me telling someone that I’ve left my door unlocked, and on that information burgles my house. Does that make me the “initiator of a cause”?
Second, if two people have sex with good, effective birth control, then I find it obvious that pregnancy is an accident. Can you explain a little more what you mean?
For example, if people are using a condom that doesn’t break, then there would be no chance of pregnancy, and thus sex would not “initiate a cause” of a pregnancy; sex with a condom would be totally unrelated to pregnancy.
If the condom breaks, that would be the “initiating” event, in your words (although I’m not at all sure if this is a helpful term in this discussion; feel free to prove me wrong).
“It is a biological fact that sex is for procreation. ”
Almost 100% wrong, it seems, in that almost every sex act on the planet is _not_ for procreation.
A question for Mark: are you arguing a legal point or an ethical point? I agree with some of your reasoning at an ethical level, but not at a legal level.
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Gil,
We seem to be almost in agreement; abortion should be illegal only if abortion and birth have approximately the same amount of risk/ordeal/inconvenience.
However, the following might get you into trouble.
“I think it’s reasonable to expect that we will endure a slight inconvenience to prevent great harm (like death) to others when we’re the only one in a position to help.”
Ethically, I totally agree. Legally, not so much. There are lots of people we can help with little inconvenience to ourselves, but we shouldn’t be legally forced to. For example, we could spend $10 a month to save children’s lives in poor countries.
Your “we are the only one in a position to help” clause doesn’t seem to work. Consider the two following situations.
– You can spend a penny to save someone’s life, and no one else could save that person’s life.
– You can spend a penny to save someone’s life, but you also know that I could save the person’s life with a penny, but have decided not to.
How can your legal responsibility be different in the two cases above?
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Bill,
In response to the first point: Yes, you are responsible for initiating a chain of cause and effect events. But, you are not responsible for the choice the other individual makes to burgle your house within that chain of events. (In other words, you are not causing the burglar to choose to steal from you.) By introducing a burglar, an individual free to make their own choices, your scenario diverges from the study of cause and effect in sex and pregnancy.
In response to the second point: The use of any birth control implies a contract or promise between the users and the manufacturer. If the birth control device fails, then that is a breach of contract on the manufacturers part. But, the manufacturer has an escape clause in this contract because they do not guarantee their product to be 100% reliable. They employ a use-at-your-own-risk warning to avoid implicit responsibility. Thus, responsibility falls back to the individuals who chose to engage in sex with an unreliable birth control device. The act of sex still initiates the cause of pregnancy.
In response to my statement, “It is a biological fact that sex is for procreation.”, you wrote, “Almost 100% wrong, it seems, in that almost every sex act on the planet is _not_ for procreation.”
What biology class did you take? Do not confuse the motivation behind why an organism engages in sex with the biological function of sex.
And finally, I am debating an ethical point on abortion. Individuals are responsible for their choices. A woman cannot be absolved of her responsibility to the pregnancy as others in this comment thread have suggested. I am not qualified to debate the legal issues that these may incur. If you want to debate whether the state has a right to legislate moral issues, then perhaps Gil should start a different post/comment thread.
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Gil,
According to your transfusion argument, I should be able to unhook myself from the transfusion machine at any time in a manner that gives me the minimum risk/ordeal to myself, regardless of the effect of the disconnect on the other person. Is that not so?
If someone hooks me up, against my will, to another person, then I shouldn’t be under a legal obligation to take any unnecessary risk or suffering (that is, not necessary to the disconnect procedure), to help that person.
Your transfusion argument seems to say that viability is not the correct cut-off point, unless you have further arguments, like a parent’s legal obligation to their viable children. The cut-off point is when an abortion that kills the child has the same or more risk/ordeal (to the mother only) as removing the child without killing him or her. Then, and only then it seems, would it not run afoul of your argument, and the abortion would be illegal.
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Bill,
I agree. Legally, she shouldn’t be forced to choose a riskier option to preserve the fetus.
I hope technology saves the day and makes that option no more risky.
But, it seems to me, that the law should forbid her choosing an option that’s no safer to her. but guarantees the death of a fetus that medical experts consider viable.
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Mark,
You said, “If you say that a person is responsible for his or her actions, then you are being inconsistent in your logic to disconnect the choice to have sex with its possible consequences. If you choose “the cause”, then you must be held responsible for any “effects.” ”
I think I have a counterexample (it is again part of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A defense of abortion”).
If I choose to leave my door unlocked, and someone comes in and burgles my house, I am not held legally responsible for the burglary. I can still legally send the police after the burglar and have him imprisoned, even though I, in a real sense, was one of the “causes” of the burglary.
If you buy this argument, and you buy the idea that it is similar to the abortion situation, then it is quite logical to say that, although I was a cause of the pregnancy, I need not take legal responsibility for all the effects, and should be able to legally end the pregnancy.
This can lead to interesting ethical rules a person might follow. Some people might think that it is ethical to get an abortion if they used birth control, and unethical if they didn’t. I’m not sure if I buy this, but it seems reasonable (using some sort of “negligence” idea from the law).
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Mark,
Rhinos are not indigenous to Haiti. That’s why it’s extra good luck if one hits you.
You say,
“By introducing a burglar, an individual free to make their own choices, your scenario diverges from the study of cause and effect in sex and pregnancy. ”
If your criteria for absolving the robbed person of responsibility is that another individual is more responsible, are you saying that the rhino is the more responsible party thereby absolving the driver who actually hit the pedestrian? Let’s say it was an ice slick that caused the spin, (also good luck in Haiti, but Haiti’s a whacky place) does the ice take the blame?
Then I say it’s the extra hearty sperm’s fault for penetrating through the birth control and the mother is blameless for the accident.
Perhaps biologically, procreation is the reason for sex, but why should biology get the trump card? One of the greatest things about humans is that we fight, and often beat, biology every time it gets in our way.
I’ve noticed religious people like to talk about biology when it suits their cause, like when it comes to abortion or gay unions and things like that, but if I were to say that biology intended for men (married or not) to plant their seed in as many woman as possible, I think the moral biologists would abandon my side.
Biologically, our human brains have figured out a way for us to have lots of great sex without any unwanted babies so who are we to question biology?
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Gil,
Being not quite so reasonable as you, I disagree with you on one point. I think I have the right to kill any parasite living in my body, be it a baby or ring worm or whatever.
You would honestly pass a law that would allow that state to extract a fetus from a woman against her will (at gunpoint, as you like to say) if it could be grown safely elsewhere?
To me this is just as bad a violation of individual liberty, if not worse, than if they were to extract money from me at gunpoint to pay for that baby to be grown elsewhere. And no it’s not my baby. Wait a minute, mister, I didn’t even kiss her.
But what do I know? As you know, I would allow late term abortions up until the child is financially self-sufficient.
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Mark,
The “Good luck in Haiti” stuff is a reference from a line that comes up near the end of Caddyshack. It had nothing to do with rhinos or ice. I think NQSRLB used some license with those.
Here’s a tip:
Anyone who didn’t remember the line, or hasn’t seen Caddyshack in the last six months should see it.
It won’t resolve the abortion debate, but on your death-bed you will receive total consciousness.
So, you’ll have that going for you.
Which is nice.
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Don’t tell tell me this isn’t a record breaker for you in the comments department now. (for all of you out there, I joked to Gil that he only picked this hot button topic because he’s been scoring a lot of goose eggs lately.)
You’ve certainly picked a real firestorm.
… but I don’t think the heavy stuff’s going to come down for quite a while.
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Mark,
“In response to my statement, “It is a biological fact that sex is for procreation.”, you wrote, “Almost 100% wrong, it seems, in that almost every sex act on the planet is _not_ for procreation.”
What biology class did you take? Do not confuse the motivation behind why an organism engages in sex with the biological function of sex.”
Sorry if my statements are stupid, uninformed, or insulting; I do not mean them to be so.
I’m not talking biology, I am talking either psychology (i.e. most people _do_ have sex for pleasure, not procreation) or philosophy (i.e. most people _should_ have sex for pleasure, not procreation). Ethical (and legal) decision-making is much closer to these two fields than it is to biology, it seems to me.
But even at the biological level, sex gives a (high) chance at pleasure and a (low) chance of procreation. What argument do you use to prioritize the “procreation effect” over the “pleasure effect”. making one primary and the other secondary. I don’t see it as self-evident (again, I may just be uninformed or stupid, but I don’t see it).
I do know my evolutionary theory, and sexual reproduction’s role in it, but that is about our genes, not our minds or ourselves.
As for the legal vs. ethical issue, I was under the impression that most of the arguments on this thread are about whether abortion should be legal, not ethical. In other words, if someone else is about to have an abortion, should we step in and prevent it by force.
For example, ethically speaking, I will not participate in any abortion that is not in both the mother’s and baby’s best interest (caveats abound here, but this is fairly accurate).
Legally speaking, I think that no one should forcibly prevent a person from having an abortion, unless it is safer/more convenient for the mother to give birth than to have the abortion.
Which kind of argument are you making? You can see that the two positions can be radically different, yet not contradictory.
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“You would honestly pass a law that would allow that state to extract a fetus from a woman against her will (at gunpoint, as you like to say) if it could be grown safely elsewhere?”
Not quite, but almost. The mother has the right to remove the unborn child, not necessarily to kill it. She might need to kill it in order to remove it, but if she can remove it just as easily without killing it, it should be illegal to kill it.
This isn’t as nonsensical as it appears, believe it or not. Similar logic applies elsewhere. For example, in a self-defense situation, you have the right to stop your attacker, not to kill him. You might have to kill him in order to stop him, but if you can stop him just as easily without killing him, it is illegal to kill him.
The full argument goes something like this.
1. Parents are guardians of their children, in that they have a legal responsibility to act in their child’s interest.
2. A guardian can give up guardianship. No one has the right to force someone else to be a guardian.
3. To give up guardianship, you must make a (possibly anonymous) public announcement, so that other would-be guardians can offer to take guardianship of the child. This public announcement can take the form of leaving a child on a convent’s steps, or at a foundling hospital (not a dumpster, as it doesn’t give people the chance to offer to be guardian. That would be abandonment).
The same logic works with an unborn child.
1. The parents are the prima facie guardians at conception.
2. The mother can give up guardianship. In fact, to have an abortion, she must give up guardianship, unless the abortion is in the child’s interest.
3. The mother must make a public announcement (again, possibly anonymously), so that other people can take up guardianship.
If no guardian comes forward, the mother can do as she likes; she no longer has the responsibility of acting in the child’s interest.
If a guardian comes forward, he or she might offer inducements, financial or otherwise, to convince the mother to take the baby to term. However, the mother is no longer the guardian, so she can decide to remove the baby; not necessarily to kill it, just to remove it. We can’t force the mother to endure any more pain/risk/inconvenience from removing the child that she would have endured from an abortion, but otherwise we can use force to stop her from killing the child. With our current technology, almost all abortions are less harmful to the mother than birth, so almost all abortions would be legal (experts might contradict me here).
“To me this is just as bad a violation of individual liberty, if not worse, than if they were to extract money from me at gunpoint to pay for that baby to be grown elsewhere.”
First, we can’t inflict more harm to remove the child than the abortion would.
Second, the mother, nor the taxpayers, would be paying for this, the new guardian would.
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And what about Gil’s transfusion argument? If the transfusion procedure was perfectly safe and would only take a half hour instead of nine months, now the state has the right to force you to do this? Does viable mean, viable after a state-forced procedure?
Is it because the woman has to perform some procedure to extract the baby and the state can now say, “since you’re under the knife anyway, pull it out alive?” What if a woman doesn’t even want to go to the hospital and elects to take an abortion pill, should this be illegal? If a police officer sees this happening should he wrap his paws around the woman’s throat and force her to spit it out, like they do on COPS when a crack dealer tries to swallow the merchandise?
Would this mean that abortion is only justifiably legal now because of the time factor? Meaning that it’s reasonable for the state to force you to endure a half hour procedure but not a nine month pregnancy. Or is it simply the safety factor, because with current technology it’s safer for a woman to have an abortion than to go through childbirth?
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NQSRLB,
“If the technology existed where you could extract an embryo safely from a woman, starting at one day after the egg was fertilized up until term, and grow the baby elsewhere, then abortion should be illegal?”
Yep; if the procedure is safer/more convenient/etc. than an abortion, the mother must choose the method of removal that doesn’t kill the child.
In practice, the safer/more convenient/ etc. judgment would be difficult to make. I would say that the presumption would be that the mother is choosing the safest/most convenient/etc. procedure for her (the mother). The new guardian would have to show that she wasn’t.
“I think if this technology existed and became mandatory over abortion, it would become so common that you would start to see a supply side surplus in the adoption department.”
I think (though I’m not sure) that if there is no guardian for the unborn child, then abortion should be legal. This is because no one has the right to a guardian, and a child with no guardian will die very soon anyway. So abortions would only be stopped if there was a new guardian already there.
“And if the state mandated this forced extraction then I believe the state would elect to pay for the procedure and the upbringing of the unwanted children, meaning I would pay for it.”
Again, the child doesn’t have the right to a guardian. If the government did this, it would be acting illegally. No one should be forced to pay for the support of a child.
“If the transfusion procedure was perfectly safe and would only take a half hour instead of nine months, now the state has the right to force you to do this?”
If it takes an hour to disconnect otherwise, yes. If it takes no time to disconnect, no. At least in this hypothetical, with time as the only factor.
“Is it because the woman has to perform some procedure to extract the baby and the state can now say, “since you’re under the knife anyway, pull it out alive?””
Pretty much; does this not make sense? The mother can say “Get it out,” she can’t say “Kill it.” It seems to me that she shouldn’t have that right.
“What if a woman doesn’t even want to go to the hospital and elects to take an abortion pill, should this be illegal?”
For this to be illegal, you would have to show that the removal procedure was more convenient than taking a pill; this would be a tough burden of proof. So this wouldn’t, in all likelihood, be illegal.
“Would this mean that abortion is only justifiably legal now because of the time factor? Meaning that it’s reasonable for the state to force you to endure a half hour procedure but not a nine month pregnancy.”
If half an hour is a real inconvenience, then no, I wouldn’t force someone to go through it. If I could somehow prove that it wasn’t a real inconvenience (say that the mother simply says “Nope, I couldn’t care less about that half hour”), then yes, I would use force to stop the abortion in order to save the child (who, remember, already has a guardian, and can be saved at no inconvenience to the mother).
“Or is it simply the safety factor, because with current technology it’s safer for a woman to have an abortion than to go through childbirth?”
That, and the fact that, with today’s technology, most fetuses can’t survive when removed, so removal and abortion are the same.
Let’s say we have a perfectly safe, perfectly convenient procedure (the mother just makes a phone call, and Scotty beams out the child), we have a perfect artificial womb (so the child can survive after removal), and we have a (privately funded) charity that offers to act as guardian to any unborn child (and pay for all of the above). Then, I think, most abortions should be illegal.
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Bill,
It’s an interesting position, and I believe a fairly original one. I could be wrong but I don’t think I’ve heard of someone’s pro-choice position being contigent on abortion remaining a safer procedure for the mother than childbirth.
If the supreme court were to agree with you, it would put someone like me in the awkward position of hoping that abortion technology always stay one step ahead of live child extraction technology, so that control over one’s body can remain with the individual.
Would you hope the opposite? Would you like to be pro-life with only the relative dangers of childbirth keeping you from it?
What if childbirth became so safe that the odds of a mother dying or being seriously hurt became one in a billion, but the odds of the same during an abortion was one in a billion and one? It’s just hard for me to buy that this is the yardstick by which to measure it.
Gil, is this your position also? If it is I’ve never heard it expressed by you before. It would have made an interesting blog to start the whole thing from.
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Yes, that’s my position, too.
But we’re not comparing the safety of childbirth to that of abortion. We’re comparing the safety of live extraction vs. dead extraction. Because, we’re saying that nobody has the right to impose the cost on the mother to continue the pregnancy. It’s just that if she chooses to end it, she can’t choose to kill the fetus if it could be removed alive with no additional cost (physical, financial, risk) to her.
Basically that’s the libertarian position. Nobody should coercively impose costs on others.
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NQSRLB,
Thanks for your responses, by the way.
“If the supreme court were to agree with you, it would put someone like me in the awkward position of hoping that abortion technology always stay one step ahead of live child extraction technology, so that control over one’s body can remain with the individual.”
You clearly object to my conclusion. I guess I want to know where you disagree with my (long, tedious, and quite possibly wrong) argument.
“Would you hope the opposite?”
Yes; I would hope that technology would advance so that if one person wants a child out of him or her, and another person wants the child, that both could be easily, safely, conveniently satisfied.
I guess I don’t see the horrible violations that would happen as a result of this abortion policy, either at our current technology level or at some Star Trek tech level. Can you give a concrete example of a situation that worries you? (I’m completely serious here; I am blind to the potential problems).
“Would you like to be pro-life with only the relative dangers of childbirth keeping you from it? ”
I consider pro-life (and pro-choice) too simple a position to capture the subtleties of the abortion situation. I am pro-liberty. I think the mother has the absolute right to remove the child at any time (after relinquishing guardianship). No pro-life person would come close to agreeing with this.
“What if childbirth became so safe that the odds of a mother dying or being seriously hurt became one in a billion, but the odds of the same during an abortion was one in a billion and one?”
One in a billion risk is too small to worry about (I have a five in a million chance of dying tomorrow, for example). I would treat this as if there were no risk at all in either case, and, assuming that removal and abortion are equally painful, inconvenient, costly, etc., I would use physical force to stop the abortion.
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I do understand your position and it seems reasonable in a practical sense. My issue, I suppose, is more a philosophical one. Who does my body belong to? Is it: for the most part, mine, or is it mine period?
“Yes; I would hope that technology would advance so that if one person wants a child out of him or her, and another person wants the child, that both could be easily, safely, conveniently satisfied. ”
Here’s my point. Yes, if both parties are satisfied, you’re absolutely right. I’m talking about the mother not being satisfied with this arrangement. For any reason.
As far as practicality, let’s say a woman wants to take an abortion pill at home because she doesn’t want to be seen walking into a live-fetus-extraction facility. I say she should be allowed to do this even if the pill is more dangerous than the procedure.
When it comes to, “pull it out alive, or kill it first” I can see how unreasonable it might seem to kill it first if there is someone out there who wants it, but I maintain the mother’s right to be unreasonable in this case, much like people who elect to not be organ donors. Just because someone wants it doesn’t mean they have the right to it.
And as far as paying for it, would the mother be compensated? How much is fair since she doesn’t even want to sell it?
“One in a billion risk is too small to worry about (I have a five in a million chance of dying tomorrow, for example). I would treat this as if there were no risk at all in either case, and, assuming that removal and abortion are equally painful, inconvenient, costly, etc., I would use physical force to stop the abortion. ”
So, it’s not the relative dangers between abortion and childbirth, it’s that you have decided that childbirth, at present, is too dangerous to be forced but you’ll let us all know when it’s safe enough for a gun to be put to our heads over it.
I know that probably sounded snotty. I didn’t mean it to be. I’m actually enjoying this debate.
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NQSRLB,
Is it your position that somebody on your property has absolutely no rights?
Should it be your decision whether to allow people to leave or to feed them to the hogs? Should the state not enforce their right to leave alive?
I’m just wondering in case you invite me over some time.
P.S. I’ve been told that you might need to crush the skull yourself to allow the hogs to get their mouths around it. Otherwise, they can (and will) eat the entire body.
Just a helpful big-brotherly tip.
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NSQRLB,
“Who does my body belong to? Is it: for the most part, mine, or is it mine period?”
The mother’s body is hers, period. The child’s body is its, period. The child has no right to be inside the mother. The mother has no right to destroy the child (except in order to remove it).
“For any reason.”
Almost any reason is okay, just not “I’d rather have it dead than alive.” She simply doesn’t have that right.
I again compare it to self-defense. If I attack someone, they have the right to stop me. If they had two perfect “stopping” methods, one that killed me and one that didn’t, it would be illegal for them to choose the “killer” method, despite the fact that I have no right to attack them.
If the “killer” method was safer for them, they could use it; they need not take more risk to themselves to spare my life. But if the only difference is that they just wanted me to be dead, then however reasonable this desire is, it would be illegal.
“let’s say a woman wants to take an abortion pill at home because she doesn’t want to be seen walking into a live-fetus-extraction facility.”
From this description, it seems that the pill is overall a better deal for the mother than the facility, so the pill would be fine.
Two caveats. First, the mother couldn’t take the abortion pill without giving up guardianship, which requires some sort of public announcement. The only exception would be if the abortion were in the child’s best interest (imaginable, but not common).
Second, the fact that the mother would rather take the pill is evidence that the pill is, in an overall sense, better for the mother. If I tried to prove otherwise, I would have to a huge burden to overcome. So, most of the time, the mother’s decision would be final.
” Just because someone wants it doesn’t mean they have the right to it.”
The issue isn’t that someone else has the “right to the child”, it’s that the child has the right not to be destroyed (unless necessary for removal). Organs do not have such a right.
Also, owning property (your organs) is different from being a guardian (of a child). You can destroy property you own, you can’t destroy a child you are guardian of (unless it is in the child’s best interest).
“And as far as paying for it, would the mother be compensated? How much is fair since she doesn’t even want to sell it?”
If the abortion were legal, then the mother would pay for it. The new guardian might offer a contract to the mother (e.g. “If you bring the child to term, I’ll pay you $50,000. If you abort, you pay me $100,000”). The mother would have to agree; before she does, she has no obligation to carry the child if she is not its guardian.
If the abortion were illegal (i.e. a new guardian has come forward, the child can be removed without killing it, and the mother is no worse off under the removal procedure than the abortion procedure), and the mother decided to remove the child, then the mother would pay for removal, the new guardian would pay for everything else.
“So, it’s not the relative dangers between abortion and childbirth, it’s that you have decided that childbirth, at present, is too dangerous to be forced but you’ll let us all know when it’s safe enough for a gun to be put to our heads over it.”
Sorry, I was too brief before.
We all have an amount of money that we would accept to take a risk of death. For me, it is $15 per micromort (a micromort is a one in a million chance of death). So, if you pay me $15, you can inflict a one-in-a-million chance of death on me. (Note: don’t try to inflate this too much; you can’t kill me for $15 million). Everyone can assign this kind of value _for themselves_, called a micromort value.
We can look at a person’s actions and learn about their micromort value. Most everyone has a micromort value between $0 and $20. So, a one in a billion chance of death is only a few cents, and the law usually doesn’t concern itself with such trifles. I probably inflict this much risk on someone when I change the radio station while driving.
So, it isn’t me that decides when something is “too dangerous,” each person must decide for themselves. If you think a one-in-a-billion chance of death is significant, then you should act like it. You should live in a concrete bunker to avoid meteorites. You should almost never drive, and when you do you should wear a helmet. The fact that a person doesn’t do this is evidence that he or she (not me) considers the risk insignificant.
So it is about the relative risks, but it needs to be significant. And who decides if it is significant? The mother does. If she is lying, the new guardian would have to prove it in order to have the police stop the abortion.
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What he said!
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I notice when debating with me, both Gil and Bill refer to the fetus as a child. So I think I’ve got it now.
It sort of comes down to the question of when does life begin, or more accurately, when do full human rights begin (meaning rights equal to the rights of the mother.) In my simplistic view, the answer is not when it could survive independent of its mother, but when it is surviving independent of its mother.
So, if technology reaches a place where they can safely take a fetus at conception and grow it elsewhere, then, according to you guys, at conception the fetus has the full rights of a human. I’m assuming that’s the earliest you’ll go and won’t decide that if my sperm can be safely removed alive, I no longer have the right to flush it down the toilet. Not that I’ve ever done that. We’re talking theory here.
But if you think about it, conception is a pretty arbitrary place to start. We have the technology now to safely take sperm from a man and an egg from a woman and grow it all into a baby in another woman who is perfectly willing to pay. What if demand exceeds supply? Why should people have the right to kill these innocent children when there are mothers out there desperate to have them? You could say it comes down to the inconvenience factor. But what if you had your Star Trek machine that could transport eggs and sperm from people without them having to veer from the course of their daily lives? Is it now okay to take it all against their will?
You could say birth is an arbitrary place to pick as well. Don’t ask me if I think a woman should have the right to an abortion after her water breaks. You’re not going to like the answer. I know, I’m a monster. But whenever it comes to a host’s rights versus a parasite’s rights, I’ll err on the side of the host.
I think Gil has more rights in my house than a fetus does in a woman’s body. He was a human when he came in and he’ll be a human when he goes out, if he’s lucky. It might be safer to get him out by killing him rather than asking him to leave (Gil can have quite a temper if provoked, so it might be best to sneak up on him with a shotgun.) But, sadly, I don’t think I have the right to kill him unless he’s directly threatening my life (much more so than the current threat that childbirth has for a mother.) It’s not so much about which method of extraction is safer or more convenient for me, but about not violating his rights as a human being.
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NQSRLB,
I think I may have agreed too soon that my position was the same as Bill’s.
I think his position is that if a live-extraction procedure is available and less burdensome than the most convenient dead-extraction procedure (and there are willing guardians available), then a woman should be forced to endure the live-extraction procedure from as early as the time of conception.
My position is that this is not the case until the fetus becomes human (i.e. its brain has started functioning as a human’s does, it can learn, etc.).
My transfusion machine example was to argue that until such a procedure is possible, the woman should be able to abort the fetus regardless of whether or not it’s human yet. I was assuming that humanness precedes viability for my argument. Since someday viability will come first, whether or not the fetus is human yet will become an issue again.
What I don’t understand is how you can morally distinguish between a human fetus in a woman’s body, and an unwanted human in your house (let’s say it’s a burglar who fell down the stairs and can’t leave without help). In both cases, I think the person should be removed alive if this can be done as conveniently as any other removal, and the property owner should not have the option of killing him first.
I don’t understand why it would matter whether the person was “a human when he came in”. What matters is that he’s a human now.
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