A Defense of Abortion
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- Опубліковано 11 лют 2017
- In this video, Professor Thorsby discusses Judith Jarvis Thomson's essay "A Defense of Abortion". The argument proceeds on the supposition that a fetus has a right to life and is a person; yet despite that it still follows that abortion is morally permissible.
![Medical School Interview - Medical Ethics - Abortion [DEBATE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/oLlhAcpWM3o/mqdefault.jpg)
What are the implications of the relationship between rights and duties as the moral complexity increases? Though acknowledging this relationship initially (between Rights and Duties) as the conversation progresses through Thomson’s essay, it seems as though any focus on Duties is totally lost, and there is a soul focus on rights? Would love some reflection on that.
Man, human being really does his best to do atrocities.
Great work Mark! Can you do a video on Don Marquis' critique?
I think the abortion question is difficult to resolve because there are three interested parties in all abortions (other than cases of rape): the baby, the mother, and the father. The interested parties may and often do have completely conflicting interests. The pro-abortion position resolves this by saying the mother's interest trumps the interests of all other parties and therefore elective abortion should be legal. The anti-abortion position generally takes the position that the baby's interests trumps the interests of all other parties, so therefore all elective abortions should be illegal. Only by looking at all competing interests can you come up with a more reasoned approach to the issue. Few seem to do this.
Thompson really ate and she left no crumbs! Periodddt 💅💅💅
Using the acorns vs trees objection requires you to bring personhood into the equation on your end of the argument. Also, viability is not arbitrary and can be scanned for with current medical equipment. Also, the doctrine of double effect does not come into effect in a case where the mothers life is not in danger - the intention is not to clear her womb; it's to cut short what's in her womb for various reasons that will effect her after it leaves the womb.
There are also far too many objections to Thompson's thesis including tacit consent, responsibility, strangers vs offspring, killing vs allowing to die, and intending vs foreseeing. I think Marquis' essay is the most philosophically sound, to date.
"The doctrine of double effect does not come into effect in a case where the mothers life is not in danger"
- IMO, the intention is to 1) stop the immediate physical, psychological, financial tolls the pregnancy has on the woman's body; 2) reduce the physical, psychological, financial tolls the pregnancy would lead to in the future.
"Strangers vs Offspring" :
I don't think there is a philosophical difference here. Your offsping has a greater emotional value, but not a greater moral value. Both stangers and relations (offspring, families, friends) are living human persons.
"Killing vs allowing to die":
In the early stage of pregnancy, abortion are achieved by a medication that disconnect the placenta from the uterus. The fetus remain alive, up until it dies (Then, a second medication trigger a delivery). The medication figuratively unplug the fetus. Are you considering this "killing" or "letting die"?
Abort him : You murderer !
Give biirth to him, in order to work, get sick and die anyway : You are a good person !
Question #1:
Adult pigs are extremely cognitively complex with a wide range of emotions and a high level of intelligence. Newborns, however, have very little intelligence and operate off a basic set of primitive reactions. Why do we give the newborns more rights than adult pigs?
My View:
The newborn should have rights and the pig should not.
An organism must exhibit or have the potential to exhibit symbolic abstract thinking or higher consciousness (essentially attributes which make homo sapiens unique or rational) in order to have value or “human” rights. Those organisms who have only the potential would include (at least) the human unborn/newborns. These organisms should be given a right to not be intentionally killed and a right to natural and ordinary care.
Question #2:
Analogy: A woman has consensual sex. She becomes pregnant but is not aware of the fact until birth (known as cryptic pregnancy). She gives birth in a cabin during a terrible storm. She has plenty of food but no formula. Does she have any legal obligation to breastfeed the newborn to keep it alive. What if she was raped instead? Would that change your answer?
My View:
In both cases the woman has a legal obligation to breastfeed her newborn. She has a natural and ordinary obligation to care for the child until it is viable in another’s care.
By natural care, the distinction I am making is that her breast milk is biologically intended for her offspring, so the care is natural. This analogy parallels well to pregnancy in all but the degree of care (both involve bodily autonomy violations but in differing degrees). However, I hold the view that parents should not be forced to donate blood despite the relatively low degree of violation in bodily autonomy. I hold this view consistently because the care would be artificial (the parent’s blood is biologically not intended for the child). Therefore, the principle of natural care seems to be the only consistent principle in application.
By ordinary care the distinction I make is that the woman’s life will not be endangered by continuing the care. This is opposed to extra-ordinary care in which a woman has no obligation under law to breastfeed/continue the pregnancy. To make my analogy into extra-ordinary care a slight modification is needed. Now imagine the same situation, however, now the woman has no food and has a good risk of starving to death if she chooses to breastfeed the newborn. While it would be an honorable feat to accomplish, I do not think the woman should have any obligation to breastfeed the newborn. The same would apply to pregnancy.
Conclusion: The Unborn should have the same rights as newborns, this includes the right to natural and ordinary care by the mother until another can provide such care.
Other conclusions:
Human organisms who no longer have the biological potential to exhibit rationality have no rights.
Women who are forced surrogates have no legal obligation to continue pregnancy/breastfeeding (Voluntary surrogates and wet nurses have accepted the role of the mother meaning they have consented that their womb/breast milk are now meant for the child).
A lactating woman who finds a random starving newborn in the woods has no legal obligation to breastfeed that newborn (Her only duty is to contact the authorities if possible).
Question #3 (Just for fun):
A man has protected consensual sex (it’s that 1/100 time when the condom fails). The woman tells him she is pregnant and is going to keep the baby. He wants nothing to do with the baby and is willing to give up any custody rights. He wants the woman to abort or adopt but she will not! Currently the law says he must still pay child support to that woman even though the only thing he consented to was sex. Do you agree with the law? If so, would you not say that the government views consent to sex as also consent to be responsible for the needy human who might be produced from said sex?
This question does not lie at the core of my argument but is a simple example of how the government currently views consent to sex as something more than just consent to sex.
My goal in this post is to prove that the unborn have rights and that one of those rights includes access to a mother’s body for natural and ordinary care. Therefore, the conclusion is that abortion should be illegal. Reducing the abortion rate, while a positive thing, is not my main goal. Giving the unborn the rights they deserve is my ultimate goal and the purpose of this post.
1. Just because YOU believe humans are superior to animals and you can give your reasons, does not make you correct. If life is sacred, all lives should be sacred. Following that, war should be illegal. Or at the least, those dropping bombs should have a legal obligation to evacuate every living person from the area before doing so, which doesn't happen. Innocent children die everyday, because of war. Our government is definitely guilty of killing massive amounts of innocent children. Who is answering for that act of murder?
2. Your second argument is a case of neglect. It involves a living being in this world. Of course the mother should take care of the child even if it's not her child. If she has the ability to save it's life, she should. That argument is relative to one's view on whether a fetus is a living being or not. I don't anyone thinks a baby already born is still a fetus.
3. If a man gets a women pregnant and he didn't intend to, even if the condom broke, it's his responsibility, because he could've done more to avoid impregnating a woman. He could've not had sex at all or he could've gotten a vasectomy. It's his share of the responsibility. Paying child support pales in comparison to carrying a child, birthing it, and raising it by yourself. Also this argument makes no sense, because it's either the child is born and the man pays child support or the woman has an abortion. If men want to dictate what women do with their bodies, considering pregnancy, they should all be required to have vasectomies unless they're actively trying to have a baby.
If anyone is going to force anyone to have a baby, they should resolve to take care of that baby financially if the parents are incapable. In other words, if any government is going to force someone to have a baby, that baby should have the right to free healthcare and basic needs, which is hardly the case in our current society.
I respect your thoughts, very interesting video.
15:20 very intresting, ive never heard this before i love it. Im pro life. The problem with that example you are using is you aren't actually ewuating it to abortion. The sand is sand no matter if its one grain or a pile.. yes, its not a "pile" of sand if its only a grane or two, but its still sand... What you are trying to relate is the sand becoming a pile / the unborn becoming a human.. but its already a human so what you should have been relating was *Development*. The unborn is human but not developed to its stage that can function how its supposed to for the outside world.
Pro lifers are saying that dehumanizing the human just because its less developed is wrong. Its still a human even though they have 4 cells or sum. Just like sand is still sand even tho its not a pile. Humans are still human even tho they are less developed. We belive all humans are valuable and worthy of life☺️
But Mark, I would really like you to respond to this: what if I love the violonist and I don't want him to die and so I chose to be tied up to him and before I did I knew that it needed to at least last for 9 months before I could untie myself and he'd be magically healed after 9 months and knowing all this I chose to tie myself to him and then after 5 months I'm sick of it and I chose to untie myself while knowing he will die. Her argument still stands, his right to life is not violated because I have the right to my body and my intention is keeping my body integrity and not to kill him, but you gotta admit I'm a pretty shitty person who just did a pretty shitty thing so is the moral permissibility enough to still make me a moral person considering the fact that I obviously immorally broke my word and my virtue and did this to a person I love and promised it to? (also considering the fact that before I chose to do this for him he was in a peaceful coma completely unconscious and when I chose to do this it revived his senses and when I chose to walk out and cut the chord he felt the same pain as someone being killed?) I think someone could make the argument that this unvirtuous act is heavier than what the moral permissibility allows and also that the immorality of willfully and knowingly creating a mind that feels pain and then making it suffer death is much too immoral for what the moral permissibility allows (considering it's a moment after the feotus developped nerves for pain). I don't know if it's a good argument against it but I think it's a pretty tough and worthy counterargument
Her argument is great, but it does have limits. Its strongly limited to rights discourse, and doesn't touch on these other subjects you are mentioning (what it means to be a good person, virtues, etc.) It seems like you're not arguing against what she's said, but rather what she didn't.
So where do morals come from?
They don't exist
@@solomontruthlover5308 😶what did I just read
@@ZachBusta I don't think morality exist
@@ZachBusta wanna talk about it? I can give you my number
@@solomontruthlover5308 you’re an atheist right? And no it’s not that deep I don’t need your number lol😂
This bullshit hurts my head
Great work but to be honest, for the most of these points I had the same opinion anyways. I have just one problem. Burglars decide to break into your house. A fetus doesn't choose to do so. And this makes this point really problematic to me. Because yes, the person chose to corpulate just like they chose to leave the windows open. But Then there is another intelligent mind vs some cells doing their thing. The burglars commit a crime. The fetus doesn't commit a crime.
Other interesting thoughts I'd be interested in now are types of abortion. Imagine paid Mothers who are willing to take over the baby so it's not killed but transplanted instead. So it actually isn't even against any life and pro choice at the same time. For that scenario even the age of the fetus isn't as important as it is for other types.
Does a fetus need the conneciton to an actual mother or would a tank do the same trick? How may we explore something like this? Would it be sufficient if we tested it on rats or maybe apes? If we did something like that and it works, would we even need mothers anymore? And what do ethics say about things like these?
PS: I'm not suggesting anything. I'm just curious about the possibilities.
Hello there,
"Does a fetus need the conneciton to an actual mother or would a tank do the same trick?"
- At viability, the fetus can complete (not without risk) his development in an incubator. I see this as a better alternative compared to abortion : we are achieving what he was calling "the minimal decent samaritanian".
As for the burglar example, I rather use the "car accident" example:
- A man and a woman are in a car. One is driving.
- While on the highway, one tire explodes. The car crashes.
- The passenger is injured. She won't die, but will need painkiller. Does he/she have a right to it?
- Driving is the sexual intercourse.
- Driver and passenger are the partners.
- The car crash is the pregnancy.
- The exploding tire is the unexpected reason why there was conception.
- The access to pain killer is the access to abortion.
@@candidthinker1638 Lets change this up a little... let's say there is a 3yr old in the back sit. He survived and he is fine but he has a terrible deadly allergy to codeine. All you have is codeine in powder form . The windscreen is now broken after the crash and it is a windy day. Most likely the kid will inhale some codeine if you open the container in which you are keeping your codeine. Should you have the right to open it putting his life at risk knowing you are not going to die??
It is not the case that everyone, or even most people, agree that you as a person has the right to decide what will happen your body. I everyone really believed that, then there wouldn't be any illegal drugs for example. Thus it might be the case that you can sometimes legitimately be prevented from doing something to your body if that act has detrimental consequences to others.
You don't own your body, you are your body (and mind), there is a difference. You cannot own a person, even if that person is yourself, that would be slavery.
Just because a killing isn't "unjust" it doesn't follow that the killing is permissible. The execution of a mass murderer might be just, but that doesn't mean that I (or any person) am allowed to kill mass murderers. This is because (in the example given) there is a difference between what the mass murderer deserves to have happen to him and what others have the right to do to him. In more general terms justice (in the context of killing others) has at least two aspects to it, desert and authority, thus a killing is only just if the person which is to be killed deserves (in a broad sense) to be killed and if the person doing the killing have a license to kill in that instance.
I agree with much of what you say, it was primarily the argument given in the video above which I had a problem with. If, as you say and contrary to what is assumed in the video, a fetus isn't a person, then of course the arguments against abortion which assumes that a fetus is a person should be rejected.
That said, what you seem to insinuate in your reply is that a law (a ban or regulation) is unobjectionable if that law is in the interest of the state or country enacting it. In that case since it is plausibly sometimes in the interest of the state to have a higher birthrate, it would in such a case be justified to make (some) abortions illegal. Perhaps this wasn't the point you were trying to make, it seems more likely that you were simply making the point that whatever the reason for a ban or regulation, it can only (with perhaps a few important exceptions) be justified in order to prevent harm to a person (who is a citizen). How such a principle is to be justified would then be the question. For example would that mean that laws against animal cruelty are unjustified or are such laws the exceptions which prove the rule?
Bodily Autonomy is generally a precondition for preserving human dignity but it isn't absolute and can be dispensed with during medical emergencies and sometimes in some criminal investigations. Absolute bodily autonomy also isn't compatible with the 'harm principle' discussed above. It is also, for example, plausible that bodily autonomy can sometimes be violated in order to save the life of an animal, and if that is granted, then why can't the same be said for a fetus?
The reason why states render certain drugs illegal is not because they don't want people to harm their body (that they hold that you don't have the ultimate right to decide what will happen to your own body) but mostly because of multiple cultural reasons, because it breeds crime and because it's against the economic interests of the corporations that buy the politicians off. They wouldn't make alcohol and tobacco legal if they really didn't want people to harm themselves.
Nah