Refuting Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" (Part 6)

Judith Jarvis Thomson

Click here to read part 1.
Click here to read part 2.
Click here to read part 3.
Click here to read part 4.
Click here to read part 5.

This is the continuation of my dissection of the "ultimate pro-abortion argument". If we can prove this argument wrong, we can prove any pro-abortion argument wrong. This series will probably have roughly nine parts to it, because it is naturally divided up into sections. This section is relying on a premise created in the critical sections part 4 and part 5.  I have put the "important parts" in italics if you don't wish to/don't have time to read the whole thing, though I would urge you read the whole thing. My comments are (in parentheses and underlined).

Judith Jarvis Thomson: A Defense of Abortion
From Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1971).

(Reprinted in "Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics," 5th ed., ed. Ronald Munson (Belmont; Wadsworth 1996). pp 69-80

...
5.

(Notice that in this section, she is going to try to make abortion permissible in any circumstance whatsoever. However, this argument is useless, because she’s relying on the premise she created earlier that says people have an absolute right to bodily autonomy, which they do not.)

There is room for yet another argument here, however. We surely must all grant that there may be cases in which it would be morally indecent to detach a person from your body at the cost of his life. Suppose you learn that what the violinist needs is not nine years of your life, but only one hour: all you need do to save his life is to spend one hour in that bed with him. Suppose also that letting him use your kidneys for that one hour would not affect your health in the slightest. Admittedly you were kidnapped. Admittedly you did not give anyone permission to plug him into you. Nevertheless it seems to me plain you ought to allow him to use your kidneys for that hour--it would be indecent to refuse. (However, if you allow Thomson’s former argument, it is not morally wrong. The mother has an absolute right to bodily autonomy.)



Again, suppose pregnancy lasted only an hour, and constituted no threat to life or health. And suppose that a woman becomes pregnant as a result of rape. Admittedly she did not voluntarily do anything to bring about the existence of a child. Admittedly she did nothing at all which would give the unborn person a right to the use of her body. All the same it might well be said, as in the newly amended violinist story, that she ought to allow it to remain for that hour--that it would be indecent of her to refuse. (But not immoral.)



Now some people are inclined to use the term "right" in such a way that it follows from the fact that you ought to allow a person to use your body for the hour he needs, that he has a right to use your body for the hour he needs, even though he has not been given that right by any person or act. They may say that it follows also that if you refuse, you act unjustly toward him. This use of the term is perhaps so common that it cannot be called wrong; nevertheless it seems to me to be an unfortunate loosening of what we would do better to keep a tight rein on. Suppose that box of chocolates I mentioned earlier had not been given to both boys jointly, but was given only to the older boy. There he sits stolidly eating his way through the box. his small brother watching enviously. Here we are likely to say, "You ought not to be so mean. You ought to give your brother some of those chocolates." My own view is that it just does not follow from the truth of this that the brother has any right to any of the chocolates. If the boy refuses to give his brother any he is greedy stingy. callous--but not unjust. I suppose that the people I have in mind will say it does follow that the brother has a right to some of the chocolates, and thus that the boy does act unjustly if he refuses to give his brother any. But the effect of saying, this is to obscure what we should keep distinct, namely the difference between the boy's refusal in this case and the boy's refusal in the earlier case, in which the box was given to both boys jointly, and in which the small brother thus had what was from any point of view clear title to half. (The difference between the “chocolate” example is that if the younger boy doesn’t get any chocolates, it will not harm him in any way whatsoever. So, in the eyes of the law, the older boy does have an absolute chocolatey right to the chocolates that were given to him. However, nobody has an absolute right to bodily autonomy when having an absolute right to bodily autonomy would harm someone else.)



A further objection to so using the term "right" that from the fact that A ought to do a thing for B it follows that R has a right against A that A do it for him, is that it is going to make the question of whether or not a man has a right to a thing turn on how easy it is to provide him with it; and this seems not merely unfortunate, but morally unacceptable. Take the case of Henry Fonda again. I said earlier that I had no right to the touch of his cool hand on my fevered brow even though I needed it to save my life. I said it would be frightfully nice of him to fly in from the West Coast to provide me with it, but that I had no right against him that he should do so. (Henry Fonda is of no relation to the woman (unlike her unborn child), and Henry Fonda did not bring her into existence.) But suppose he isn't on the West Coast. Suppose he has only to walk across the room, place a hand briefly on my brow--and lo, my life is saved. Then surely he ought to do it-it would be indecent to refuse. Is it to be said, "Ah, well, it follows that in this case she has a right to the touch of his hand on her brow, and so it would be an injustice in him to refuse"? So that I have a right to it when it is easy for him to provide it, though no right when it's hard? It's rather a shocking idea that anyone's rights should fade away and disappear as it gets harder and harder to accord them to him. (Absolutely, if you digress that people have an absolute right to bodily autonomy, the only thing that matters in the world is you and your body, therefore nobody can inconvenience you in any way. See where this is going?)



So my own view is that even though you ought to let the violinist use your kidneys for the one hour he needs, we should not conclude that he has a right to do so--we should say that if you refuse, you are, like the boy who owns all the chocolates and will give none away, self-centered and callous, indecent in fact, but not unjust. And similarly, that even supposing a case in which a woman pregnant due to rape ought to allow the unborn person to use her body for the hour he needs, we should not conclude that he has a right to do so; we should say that she is self-centered, callous, indecent, but not unjust, if she refuses. The complaints are no less grave; they are just different. However, there is no need to insist on this point. If anyone does wish to deduce "he has a right" from "you ought," then all the same he must surely grant that there are cases in which it is not morally required of you that you allow that violinist to use your kidneys, and in which he does not have a right to use them, and in which you do not do him an injustice if you refuse. And so also for mother and unborn child. Except in such cases as the unborn person has a right to demand it--and we were leaving open the possibility that there may be such cases--nobody is morally required to make large sacrifices, of health, of all other interests and concerns, of all other duties and commitments, for nine years, or even for nine months, in order to keep another person alive. (Yes they are, especially if that person is their own child, because nobody has an absolute right to bodily autonomy.)

(And once again, I'm re-posting an example I came up with a few sections ago, that shows how nobody has an absolute right to bodily autonomy. There are many more examples here, and in earlier posts.

A mother is raped, gets pregnant, and there are complications: something about the violent rape causes complications that in turn cause the unborn child extreme pain while he is developing. However, his pain will stop once he is born, and someone suggests inducing premature labor. Unfortunately, because of other pregnancy complications, inducing labor will kill his mother. In this way, the mother is more dependant on the baby's body than the baby is on hers. She must stay pregnant in order to live. However, in our hypothetical situation,the court rules in the baby's favor and the mother dies.

If this were a real situation and a real pregnancy complication, the baby's pain would be very tragic. But that does not give the baby an excuse to kill his mother, even though the baby did not give the mother permission to use his body. It is not his mother's fault. It's the rapist's, because of the violence during which the baby was conceived.)

Blue Roses


I posted last Friday about loving your enemies. I decided to expound on that theme in a post today, explaining love's practical purposes.

(Yes, I'm a Trekkie)

I love logic. Because, logically, if you explain something and eliminate and/or prove wrong all the opposing arguments, you must be right. Right? Logic makes perfect sense, and if you're logically proved wrong, then you are wrong. That's why I've studied pro-abortion arguments for several years now, coming up with logical answers to p)rove them wrong. I've gotten to the point where I'm now studying pretty ridiculous (aka, desperate) pro-abortion arguments.




Unfortunately, logic won't always work. Because of blue roses.

There are no such things as blue roses. The general populace can agree to that. But suppose there's a man who has been born blind, and his mother told him that roses are blue. If you present a bouquet of roses to this blind man and tell him (correctly) that the roses are red, he won't believe you. You can enter a full-fledged logical debate with him, going through the science of eyesite and pigments, and also mentioning that, since he is blind, he has no way of seeing that roses are blue. It won't matter. Roses are blue simply because the blind man has already decided that they are.

The same is with pro-abortion advocates. If they are already positive that abortion is fine, no matter how illogical that conclusion is, you aren't going to logically change their mind. Because, to them, the roses are blue. That's also why graphic pictures of aborted babies aren't always effective. The pro-abortioners find the pictures offensive; they aren't sure why they do (I suspect because it's the human subconcious knows that it is a dead baby it is looking at, which is disturbing enough in itself, and because they subconciously know that the picture is helping prove them wrong), but they do. Pictures, in themselves or coupled with logic, isn't a guarantee for a change of mind.

In many stories of former abortion advocates, their conversion was precedented by a change of heart. Something spiritual had to change before their minds would change. I'm not talking about people becoming Christians, though that sometimes is the change. Here's my point: it's very hard to change peoples' hearts if you don't love them. You can debate them all you like--no love required there--but you won't get any spiritual response. You can only show the photos effectively when people are ready, spiritually, to see them. The story of Kristen Walker illustrates this specifically.

So feel free to debate, show photos, yell slogans, and all that other stuff. Just make sure you love too.

For Love


I recently wrote a letter to a close friend of mine talking about love. It seems that I've been hearing about love everywhere now, whether it's God's love for us, our love for puppies, or love for our enemies. Particularly, love for all the abortion people. I've spoken briefly about my feelings toward pro-abortioners in my post about generalization "They're All Devils". I've developed since then; I can honestly say I'm starting to feel love towards these people. Not my love. I'm not capable of that. God's love.

I'll try to explain why. And how. Though it may be unexplainable.

Maybe it's because of Abby Johnson and her book Unplanned. I finished re-reading it a few hours ago. But then, maybe she's easy to love, because she's on our side now. She's obviously a very loving, warm-hearted person, and that's what drove her to first work at Planned Parenthood as a volunteer: a heart for people in crisis. She followed all the talking points and everything, and called peaceful, praying pro-lifers harrassers, but still, that's all behind us now, right?

Besides, there are all the negative things. The pro-abortion blogs and articles, where they freely spew filth and can make innocent ears quickly grow older. There are the disgusting clinics, stories of cold-hearted nurses and doctors, moving from one patient to the next as quickly as they can. The obvious lies. The protests to absolutely anything that might make the public think of the fetuses as human.

Except...that isn't all there is to it. There are the stories of kind nurses and doctors. There are the people who claim to have no regret. There are the pro-abortion blogs that tell stories of women relieved and thankful, of clean facilities, and kind-hearted people. The war zones. The disgust towards violent anti-choicers...and they're right. The sacrifice of funds and living space and time and energy. Low salaries. And they keep going.

But there's no doubt we're in a war. Hitler could have been the kindliest, warmest, most loving person in the world, but that doesn't make him right.

I read a website that had stories upon stories written by former abortion advocates (and yes, some actual abortionists). There are videos. People in tears. Perhaps this is what convicts me to pray for the pro-abortioners.

They're lost. They are so lost. And it breaks my heart. I hear stories all the time about what goes on in those clinics, even if they are sanitary and completely law-abiding and never send women to the hospital from botched abortions. Nightmares, alcohol, and marijuana.

Maybe there's a clean, law-abiding, safe, never-send-women-to-hospital, alcohol-and-marijuana-free clinic where no workers ever have nightmares about their jobs. They're all warm and friendly too and love the women they serve. They're truly pro-choice, and make as many adoption referalls and give as much parenting help as they give abortions. Even if this clinic existed, it doesn't make them right. It doesn't make them not lost. It doesn't make them non-empty. It simply doesn't compute.  I don't care how much they tell me they are perfectly happy champions of women, because I know it's not true. Abortion = no God = emptiness.

I'm reminded of Frank Peretti's book Prophet. Where a man begins to hear the anguished screaming of lost souls during his everyday life.

It doesn't matter if they will never be "converted". It doesn't matter if they participate in two hundred abortions a day. Love them for love's own sake. Why? We are commanded to. And they are God's children. Hitler was God's son. They are all God's children just as much as the children they are killing. Screaming at them, degrading them, and telling them to go f-bomb themselves isn't right, and it doesn't even work. Calling them baby-killers doesn't work. So please don't do it. Pray for them. Wish them a good day. You may never see the seeds you plant germinate, but plant them anyway. Love.


All images found via Google Images. Video taken from YouTube. No copyright infringement intended.

Refuting Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" (Part 5)

Judith Jarvis Thomson
(I apologize for this late post!)

Click here to read part 1.
Click here to read part 2.
Click here to read part 3.
Click here to read part 4.

This is the continuation of my dissection of the "ultimate pro-abortion argument". If we can prove this argument wrong, we can prove any pro-abortion argument wrong. This series will probably have roughly nine parts to it, because it is naturally divided up into sections. THIS SECTION IS CRITICAL. I have put the "important parts" in italics if you don't wish to/don't have time to read the whole thing, though I would urge you read the whole thing. My comments are (in parentheses and underlined).

This is where Mrs. Thomson begins to use twisted logic and faulty examples to "prove" that abortion is permissible and moral. Be aware as you read it that she is setting the stage to convince you later that the woman has a right to do whatever she wants with her unborn children, not matter what the situation.

Judith Jarvis Thomson: A Defense of Abortion




From Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1971).

(Reprinted in "Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics," 5th ed., ed. Ronald Munson (Belmont; Wadsworth 1996). pp 69-80.)

...

4.

There is another way to bring out the difficulty. In the most ordinary sort of case, to deprive someone of what he has a right to is to treat him unjustly. Suppose a boy and his small brother are jointly given a box of chocolates for Christmas. If the older boy takes the box and refuses to give his brother any of the chocolates, he is unjust to him, for the brother has been given a right to half of them. But suppose that, having learned that otherwise it means nine years in bed with that violinist, you unplug yourself from him. You surely are not being unjust to him, for you gave him no right to use your kidneys, and no one else can have given him any such right. But we have to notice that in unplugging yourself, you are killing him; and violinists, like everybody else, have a right to life, and thus in the view we were considering just now, the right not to be killed. So here you do what he supposedly has a right you shall not do, but you do not act unjustly to him in doing it

The emendation which may be made at this point is this: the right to life consists not in the right not to be killed, but rather in the right not to be killed unjustly. (This, in itself, is true, and a reason I support the death penalty. However, there’s a difference in killing somebody because they forfeited their own right to life, and killing somebody because s/he poses an inconvenience to someone else.) This runs a risk of circularity, but never mind: it would enable us to square the fact that the violinist has a right to life with the fact that you do not act unjustly toward him in unplugging yourself, thereby killing him. For if you do not kill him unjustly, you do not violate his right to life, and so it is no wonder you do him no injustice.

But if this emendation is accepted, the gap in the argument against abortion stares us plainly in the face: it is by no means enough to show that the fetus is a person, and to remind us that all persons have a right to life--we need to be shown also that killing the fetus violates its right to life, i.e., that abortion is unjust killing. And is it? (Yes.)

I suppose we may take it as a datum that in a case of pregnancy due to rape the mother has not given the unborn person a right to the use of her body for food and shelter. Indeed, in what pregnancy could it be supposed that the mother has given the unborn person such a right? It is not as if there are unborn persons drifting about the world, to whom a woman who wants a child says I invite you in." (It is not possible to consent to an act but not to the results. It's impossible to consent to a successful surgery. You can only consent to surgery and hope it is successful. It's impossible to consent to only having sex if you don't get pregnant. You can only consent to sex and hope you don't get pregnant.)

But it might be argued that there are other ways one can have acquired a right to the use of another person's body than by having been invited to use it by that person. Suppose a woman voluntarily indulges in intercourse, knowing of the chance it will issue in pregnancy, and then she does become pregnant; is she not in part responsible for the presence, in fact the very existence, of the unborn person inside? No doubt she did not invite it in. But doesn't her partial responsibility for its being there itself give it a right to the use of her body? If so, then her aborting it would be more like the boys taking away the chocolates, and less like your unplugging yourself from the violinist--doing so would be depriving it of what it does have a right to, and thus would be doing it an injustice. (Indeed.)

And then, too, it might be asked whether or not she can kill it even to save her own life: If she voluntarily called it into existence, how can she now kill it, even in self-defense? (Because now the child is actually a threat now, though it isn’t her or anyone else’s fault.)

The first thing to be said about this is that it is something new. Opponents of abortion have been so concerned to make out the independence of the fetus, in order to establish that it has a right to life, just as its mother does, that they have tended to overlook the possible support they might gain from making out that the fetus is dependent on the mother, in order to establish that she has a special kind of responsibility for it, a responsibility that gives it rights against her which are not possessed by any independent person--such as an ailing violinist who is a stranger to her. (The mother has no more a responsibility or attachment to her own child, who is there by a completely natural process, than she does to a stranger unnaturally hooked up to her? What if the mother woke up to find her own child hooked up to her? What then? Would it be fine and legal to unplug herself and kill her own child?)

On the other hand, this argument would give the unborn person a right to its mother's body only if her pregnancy resulted from a voluntary act, undertaken in full knowledge of the chance a pregnancy might result from it. It would leave out entirely the unborn person whose existence is due to rape. (Exactly, which is why this argument cannot be used.) Pending the availability of some further argument, then, we would be left with the conclusion that unborn persons whose existence is due to rape have no right to the use of their mothers' bodies, and thus that aborting them is not depriving them of anything they have right to and hence is not unjust killing. (Yes it is. This is assuming that the mother has an absolute right to bodily autonomy, which she (and everyone else) does not. I point to the example I gave in part 4. Here is an idea I heard about here, who got the idea from a pro-abortion blogger who goes by the name Paul W. Let’s say a woman got pregnant from rape, and decides she doesn’t want to give birth, so she just leaves the child in her womb for the rest of her life (which is of course impossible, but let’s just pretend it can be done). The child becomes aware of its surroundings and wants to come out, but she doesn’t let him. He just sits there his entire life until the woman dies. Did the woman do something wrong? Is it wrong for the woman to treat an innocent person as her slave? Not if she has an absolute right to bodily autonomy. Here’s another example. For some medications, such as for acne or morning sickness, it is illegal, or at least difficult to get a prescription, for it, because it harms the fetus. Not the mother. The fetus. If the mother has an absolute right to bodily autonomy, why do these laws exist?)

And we should also notice that it is not at all plain that this argument really does go even as far as it purports to. For there are cases and cases, and the details make a difference. If the room is stuffy, and I therefore open a window to air it, and a burglar climbs in, it would be absurd to say, "Ah, now he can stay, she's given him a right to the use of her house--for she is partially responsible for his presence there, having voluntarily done what enabled him to get in, in full knowledge that there are such things as burglars, and that burglars burgle.'' It would be still more absurd to say this if I had had bars installed outside my windows, precisely to prevent burglars from getting in, and a burglar got in only because of a defect in the bars. (The burglar has malicious intent. She has every right to kick him back out of her house.)  It remains equally absurd if we imagine it is not a burglar who climbs in, but an innocent person who blunders or falls in. (She could still kick that person out. It won’t kill him.) Again, suppose it were like this: people-seeds drift about in the air like pollen, and if you open your windows, one may drift in and take root in your carpets or upholstery. You don't want children, so you fix up your windows with fine mesh screens, the very best you can buy. As can happen, however, and on very, very rare occasions does happen, one of the screens is defective, and a seed drifts in and takes root. Does the person-plant who now develops have a right to the use of your house? (Yes it does. In this very bizarre world, if that’s where people came from, it would be difficult, but yes the person-plant [notice how she’s dehumanizing the person by calling him a seed and a plant) would have a right to your house. However, I hope you can see how absurd this example is, by noticing how there is a vast difference between opening a window to air out a room and having sex for intense personal pleasure.) Surely not--despite the fact that you voluntarily opened your windows, you knowingly kept carpets and upholstered furniture, and you knew that screens were sometimes defective. Someone may argue that you are responsible for its rooting, that it does have a right to your house, because after all you could have lived out your life with bare floors and furniture, or with sealed windows and doors. But this won't do--for by the same token anyone can avoid a pregnancy due to rape by having a hysterectomy, or anyway by never leaving home without a (reliable!) army. (This is stupid. Anybody can prevent some sort of violence by doing any number of things, but then you wouldn’t have a life. This is twisting the argument, making it as if it’s your fault you were raped. It’s not, and everybody knows that. It’s the person who raped you who is in the wrong. People do not have an absolute right to bodily autonomy when someone else’s life is at stake. Sorry.)

It seems to me that the argument we are looking at can establish at most that there are some cases in which the unborn person has a right to the use of its mother's body, and therefore some cases in which abortion is unjust killing. There is room for much discussion and argument as to precisely which, if any. But I think we should sidestep this issue and leave it open, for at any rate the argument certainly does not establish that all abortion is unjust killing. (Yes it does, because there is no such thing as an absolute right to bodily autonomy. Let me repost the example I gave in part 4.

A mother is raped, gets pregnant, and there are complications: something about the violent rape causes complications that in turn cause the unborn child extreme pain while he is developing. However, his pain will stop once he is born, and someone suggests inducing premature labor. Unfortunately, because of other pregnancy complications, inducing labor will kill his mother. In this way, the mother is more dependant on the baby's body than the baby is on hers. She must stay pregnant in order to live. However, in our hypothetical situation,the court rules in the baby's favor and the mother dies.

If this were a real situation and a real pregnancy complication, the baby's pain would be very tragic. But that does not give the baby an excuse to kill his mother, even though the baby did not give the mother permission to use his body. It is not his mother's fault. It's the rapist's, because of the violence during which the baby was conceived.)
(I would like to give a special thank-you to this video, from which I took and/or paraphrased ideas and arguments against abortion for this section.)
Image found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.

180


It's a phenomenon sweeping the internet world and the abortion debate.

180 is a short half-hour movie documenting Ray Comfort as he talks to people on the street. He starts off asking if they knew who Hitler is, and talking about the Holocaust. He asks them tough questions. For example, paraphrasing: "If the Nazis gave you a rifle and told you to shoot dying Jews, and if you didn't they would kill you with the Jews, would you do it?"

He gets them to re-examine their beliefs, and consider right and wrong in the world. Then he gives them something else.

Abortion.

It's amazing some of the reactions and conversations he has.

The title "180" signifies a "180" turn. Turning around 180 degrees.

He speaks to them and they change their minds.

He talks to them for a few minutes and pro-choice people change their minds about abortion.

This is a movie every person needs to watch, pro-choice or pro-life.

Ray also gets into something else. Morality often comes up in these conversations. What happens after you die? Do you think you're a good person? Do you think there's a Heaven? Do you think you'll go there?

His questions and simple statements also bring amazing reactions from these people.

The reactions from people watching the movie are amazing as well. Look in the comments on YouTube and you see plenty of people slamming 180 and cussing it out, and you also see people amazed at how their views have just been switched. The folks at LivingWaters have received thousands of emails about how someone, or someone's friend, or someone who just witnessed on the street and used 180, have changed their minds. This is amazing, and an incredible tool. Do not miss it.

If you want to help spread the word about 180, please read this.

2012 Republican Presidential Candidates Summary

 
Here is my compilation of what seem to be the basic beliefs of the 2012 Republican Presidential candidates. I divided this list up by the following five categories: abortion, the economy, health care, foreign policy, and marriage. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

The way chose things to list was to list only things about the candidates that differed from the other candidates. For example: repealing Obamacare. I do not say "would repeal Obamacare" because it's a given that Republican candidates would repeal Obamacare (or at least convince people they would). So I only mention repealing Obamacare if either 1) there was something unique about how/why a candidate would repeal Obamacare, or 2) if a candidate would NOT repeal Obamacare.

I gathered my information from various articles, debates, and the candidates' campaign website. If I did not list much about what a candidate believes under a certain topic, it isn't (usually) because I'm being lazy, but because I simply couldn't find anything unique or specific about that candidate under that certain topic...or I simply couldn't find much information. I also sometimes give links throughout the list that go to what I found very helpful/detailed articles about the candidate under that topic. Sometimes they are from candidates' websites, sometimes they aren't.

I did my best to not write biased, but I'm only human.



ABORTION
Michele Bachmann
            ~Would advocate “Personhood” amendment to Constitution, and then use 14th amendment to ban abortion
Mitt Romney
            ~Would not sign Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life Pledge
            ~Previously strongly pro-abortion, claiming pro-life conversion in 2004…the following done after he says he converted:
            ~Supported legalization of RU-486 (the abortion pill)
            ~Implemented “Romneycare” health care when Governor of Massachusetts, which funded abortion
            ~Supports embryonic cell research
            ~Repeatedly flip-flopped on whether he was pro-life or pro-choice, depending on where he was running.

Ron Paul
            ~Repeal Roe v. Wade
            ~Define personhood as from conception with “Sanctity of Life” act
            ~Wouldn’t support abortion as president, but believes banning it should be left up to the states
Rick Santorum
            ~Does not believe rape and incest should be an exception if abortion is made illegal
            ~“Rick was the author of legislation outlawing the heinous act known as partial-birth abortion and he championed the fight to pass the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act” and the “Unborn Victims of Violence Act.”
            ~Supports Federal banning of abortion
Jon Huntsman
            ~Would not sign Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life Pledge
            ~Believes abortion is acceptable in the cases of rape and incest
           ~ “He wasn’t a governor who was pushing, cheerleading those who were opposed to reproductive rights. He wasn’t a governor that spearheaded either an anti-choice or reproductive rights agenda.”—Karrie Galloway, executive director of Planned Parenthood of Utah
Rick Perry
            ~Signed legislation as Governor of Texas that de-funded Planned Parenthood
            ~Supports the creation of a “human life” amendment to the Constitution
Newt Gingrich
            ~Supports federal funding of abortion in cases of rape or incest
            ~Once stated that life begins at implantation (as opposed to conception), and then amended it later to conception

ECONOMY
Michele Bachmann
            ~Repatriate corporate profits
            ~The most pushy candidate about repealing Obamacare
            ~Repeal unnecessary regulations and cut unnecessary taxes
            ~repeal Dodd-Frank
            ~Open up foreign trade
Mitt Romney
            ~Cut corporate income tax rate to 25%
            ~Implemented universal “Romneycare” when governor or Massachusetts, but says wouldn’t do that as president because it should be left up to the states
            ~Cutting non-security discretionary spending by 5%
            ~Give control of “retraining” programs back to the states
            ~Sanctioning China for unfair trade practices
            ~Cut and cap federal spending to 20% of the GDP
Ron Paul
            ~Very gung-ho about auditing the Fed
            ~Supports sound money
            ~Has plan for cutting 1 trillion of spending during 2013
            ~Cut five cabinet departments (Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior, Education)
            ~End foreign wars
            ~End foreign aid
            ~Lower corporate tax rate to 15%
*Very good, easy-to-read plan summary, along with his exact plans for spending and budgeting (actual dollar amounts for different areas), and graphs: http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/ron-paul-plan-to-restore-america/ 
Rick Santorum
            ~Forget “green jobs” and start using our vast natural resources
            ~Cut corporate tax rates “in half”
            ~Return size of government to 18% (of GDP?)
            ~Balanced budget amendment
Jon Huntsman
            ~Reduce corporate tax rate to 25%
            ~Have a “tax holiday” (unsure what this means and how long it would last—his website does not specify)
            ~Enact comprehensive patent reform
            ~Privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Rick Perry
            ~Income flat tax of 20%
            ~Reduce corporate tax rate to 20%
            ~Full audit of every regulation passed since 2008
            ~Fix Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—and allow people to opt out
            ~Cap federal spending at 18% GDP
            ~Balanced budget amendment
            ~Simplify tax code so that taxes can be paid using a bit of paper the size of a postcard
Newt Gingrich
            ~Reduce corporate tax rate to 12.5%
            ~Optional flat tax rate of 15%
            ~“Strengthen dollar by returning to Reagan-era monetary policies”
http://www.newt.org/solutions/jobs-economy

FOREIGN POLICY
Michele Bachmann
~Opposes our Libyan involvement
~Supports sanctions on Iran
Mitt Romney
~ “In his first 100 days, put our Navy on the path to increase its shipbuilding rate from nine per year to approximately fifteen per year.”
~ “Maintain robust military capabilities in the Pacific.”
~ “Maintain robust military capabilities in the Pacific.”
~Supports sanctions on Iran, and other methods to make sure they don’t get a hold of a nuclear weapon
~Sanctions on North Korea
~Does not specify what he will do in Afghanistan
Ron Paul
~Make top priority securing our own borders
~ “Avoid long and expensive land wars that bankrupt our country by using constitutional means to capture or kill terrorist leaders who helped attack the U.S. and continue to plot further attacks.”
Rick Santorum
~Don’t call it “war on terror”…call it what it is! War on radical Islam!
~ “authored and passed the“Iran Freedom and Support Act” in the face of Democratic and Bush State Department opposition, which authorized Federal monies to support pro-democracy movements in Iran and keep the tyrannical dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from obtaining a nuclear weapon”
~ Was on the Senate Armed Services Committee for eight years
~Does not support withdrawing from Afghanistan
~Not too concerned about foreign aid, since it’s “less than a half a percent” of the federal budget
~Supports military strike on Iran
Jon Huntsman
~ “Maintain” the best military
~ “Our foreign policy is only as good as our ability to project power”—fix economy, defend borders, etc.
~ “War on Terror” can’t be fought in any one country; we have to move around as the terrorists move around; be “quick on our feet” and able to deploy on a moment’s notice
Rick Perry
~ Would reset all of our foreign aid to all countries to zero—including Israel—and then build from there.
~Very gung-ho about putting up a fence along the boarder—did so in Texas
Newt Gingrich
~”Incentivize math and science education in America to ensure the men and women of our Armed Forces always have the most advanced and powerful weapons in the world at their disposal.”
~ “Understand our enemies and tell the truth about them.”
~Re-do the Visa program
~ “Allow foreigners who want to spend money, invest and create jobs in America to do so.”
~Should have an “earned citizenship”program for illegals

HEALTH CARE
Michele Bachmann
            ~Most pushy candidate on repealing Obamacare
            ~Supports the Ryan Plan for Medicare reform
Mitt Romney
            ~Implemented similar-to-Obamacare (though less extreme) “Romneycare” when governor of Massachusetts
            ~Let states do whatever they want/decide what’s best for them
Ron Paul
            ~Give various tax credits, deductions, and exemptions for medical expenses and those with terminal illnesses.
            ~ “Ensure that those harmed during medical treatment receive fair compensation while reducing the burden of costly malpractice litigation on the health care system by providing a tax credit for “negative outcomes” insurance purchased before medical treatment."
Rick Santorum
            ~Supports Ryan Plan
            ~Once voted yes on expanding Medicare to help seniors afford prescription drugs; now says that vote was a mistake, because the money isn’t used effectively
Jon Huntsman
            ~Leave things up to the states
Rick Perry
            ~Reform Medicare and Medicaid
            ~ “the best way for the federal government to improve health care in the near term is to stimulate job creation so more Americans are covered by employer-sponsored health plans”
Newt Gingrich
            ~ “make health insurance more affordable and portable”
            ~ “Create more choices in Medicare”
            ~ “Reform Medicaid by giving states more freedom and flexibility”
            ~ “reward quality care”


MARRIAGE
Michele Bachmann
            ~Supports Constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman
Mitt Romney
            ~Supported gays serving openly in the military
            ~Supports federal amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman
Ron Paul
            ~Doesn’t personally support homosexuality, but believes the states should make their own laws, and the federal government should ignore the issue altogether.
Rick Santorum
            ~ Supports Constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman
Jon Huntsman
            ~Supports civil unions
            ~Believes choices about gay people should be left to states
            ~Thinks this country could “show a little more equality” when it comes to gays
Rick Perry
            ~ Supports Constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman
Newt Gingrich
            ~ "I certainly think that we have every right to defend traditional marriage...whether it's by passing a law or a constitutional amendment."
All images found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.

Refuting Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" (Part 4)

Judith Jarvis Thomson

Click here to read part 1.
Click here to read part 2.
Click here to read part 3.

This is the continuation of my dissection of the "ultimate pro-abortion argument". If we can prove this argument wrong, we can prove any pro-abortion argument wrong. This series will probably have roughly nine parts to it, because it is naturally divided up into sections. THIS SECTION IS CRITICAL. I have put the "important parts" in italics if you don't wish to/don't have time to read the whole thing, though I would urge you read the whole thing. My comments are (in parentheses and underlined).

This is where Mrs. Thomson begins to use twisted logic and faulty examples to "prove" that abortion is permissible and moral. Be aware as you read it that she is setting the stage to convince you later that the woman has a right to do whatever she wants with her unborn children, not matter what the situation. At this point in time, she is speaking only about times where the woman has been raped and the pregnancy has complications, though she is not at risk of losing her life.
Judith Jarvis Thomson: A Defense of Abortion



From Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1971).

(Reprinted in "Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics," 5th ed., ed. Ronald Munson (Belmont; Wadsworth 1996). pp 69-80.)
...
3.

Where the mother  life is not at stake, the argument I mentioned at the outset seems to have a much stronger pull. "Everyone has a right to life, so the unborn person has a right to life." And isn't the child's right to life weightier than anything other than the mother's own right to life, which she might put forward as ground for an abortion?

This argument treats the right to life as if it were unproblematic. It is not, and this seems to me to be precisely the source of the mistake.
 
For we should now, at long last, ask what it comes to, to have a right to life. In some views having a right to life includes having a right to be given at least the bare minimum one needs for continued life. But suppose that what in fact IS the bare minimum a man needs for continued life is something he has no right at all to be given? If I am sick unto death, and the only thing that will save my life is the touch of Henry Fonda's cool hand on my fevered brow. then all the same, I have no right to be given the touch of Henry Fonda's cool hand on my fevered brow. (There is an extreme difference between this example and being intentionally murdered. A more relevant example would be if Henry Fonda brought Mrs. Thomson into existence (intentionally or accidentally), and then decided he didn’t want to bother caring for her, so he killed her so he doesn’t have to.) It would be frightfully nice of him to fly in from the West Coast to provide it. It would be less nice, though no doubt well meant, if my friends flew out to the West coast and brought Henry Fonda back with them. But I have no right at all against anybody that he should do this for me. Or again, to return to the story I told earlier, the fact that for continued life the violinist needs the continued use of your kidneys does not establish that he has a right to be given the continued use of your kidneys. He certainly has no right against you that you should give him continued use of your kidneys. For nobody has any right to use your kidneys unless you give him this right--if you do allow him to go on using your kidneys, this is a kindness on your part, and not something he can claim from you as his due. Nor has he any right against anybody else that they should give him continued use of your kidneys. Certainly he had no right against the Society of Music Lovers that they should plug him into you in the first place. And if you now start to unplug yourself, having learned that you will otherwise have to spend nine years in bed with him, there is nobody in the world who must try to prevent you, in order to see to it that he is given some thing he has a right to be given. (She is again distorting the argument. Nine years confined to bed is vastly different than nine months confined to bed. Here is the only situation where this argument would be relevant: if the woman was raped, and the pregnancy is so difficult that she will indeed have to be confined to bed for nine months (though not in serious danger of dying). In all other crime cases, like murder, or rape where pregnancy does not result, the deed is already finished, and nothing else can be done for the victims, except catching and punishing the perpetrator. Rape victims who do become pregnant are, in this way, unique, if you have the view that at least part of the problem can still be “fixed”. Namely, killing a child. But what good is this? Mrs. Thomson admits the pro-life premise in her argument, that a pregnancy is a child. So Mrs. Thomson supports the killing of a child if a woman is raped and confined to bed for nine months. How is this at all beneficiary to the mother, besides letting her get out of bed? (I would argue that abortion is not in any way beneficiary, carrying detrimental mental and physical effects with it, but that’s an argument for another time. )Naturally, the mother will need help if she has no way to support herself, but lack of money is never a reason for killing a child. And there are people that will help the mother. She can be given references to them while the investigation is underway. A murder is not the answer. Mrs. Thomson, if you admit the pro-life premise, any argument you present is useless.)

Some people are rather stricter about the right to life. In their view, it does not include the right to be given anything, but amounts to, and only to, the right not to be killed by anybody. But here a related difficulty arises. If everybody is to refrain from killing that violinist, then everybody must refrain from doing a great many different sorts of things. Everybody must refrain from slitting his throat, everybody must refrain from shooting him--and everybody must refrain from unplugging you from him. But does he have a right against everybody that they shall refrain from unplugging you frolic him? To refrain from doing this is to allow him to continue to use your kidneys. It could be argued that he has a right against us that we should allow him to continue to use your kidneys. That is, while he had no right against us that we should give him the use of your kidneys, it might be argued that he anyway has a right against us that we shall not now intervene and deprive him Of the use of your kidneys. I shall come back to third-party interventions later. But certainly the violinist has no right against you that you shall allow him to continue to use your kidneys. As I said, if you do allow him to use them, it is a kindness on your part, and not something you owe him. (Relating her violinist example to the bed-ridden raped mother, you do not “owe” the violinist/child anything. This is true. The reason being there has been no agreement, no contract. The violinist/child cannot possibly have had any contact with you before this happened. You did not agree to this. Neither did the violinist/child. This means one thing: the violinist/child is innocent. You are innocent. Who is guilty? The music society/rapist. They are the ones to be punished.)

The difficulty I point to here is not peculiar to the right of life. It reappears in connection with all the other natural rights, and it is something which an adequate account of rights must deal with. For present purposes it is enough just to draw attention to it. But I would stress that I am not arguing that people do not have a right to life--quite to the contrary, it seems to me that the primary control we must place on the acceptability of an account of rights is that it should turn out in that account to be a truth that all persons have a right to life. I am arguing only that having a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another person s body--even if one needs it for life itself. So the right to life will not serve the opponents of abortion in the very simple and clear way in which they seem to have thought it would.

(Mrs. Thomson’s whole argument so far hinges on the fact that it is not fair to the mother to be forced to be pregnant when it is not her fault. It is not fair to be forced to be ripped apart when it isn’t your fault that you were conceived either.

Let's digress for a moment and come up with a parallel, though fantastical, example. A mother is raped, gets pregnant, and there are complications: something about the violent rape causes complications that in turn cause the unborn child extreme pain while he is developing. However, his pain will stop once he is born, and someone suggests inducing premature labor. Unfortunately, because of other pregnancy complications, inducing labor will kill his mother. In this way, the mother is more dependant on the baby's body than the baby is on hers. She must stay pregnant in order to live. However, in our hypothetical situation,the court rules in the baby's favor and the mother dies.

If this were a real situation and a real pregnancy complication, the baby's pain would be very tragic. But that does not give the baby an excuse to kill his mother, even though the baby did not give the mother permission to use his body. It is not his mother's fault. It's the rapist's, because of the violence during which the baby was conceived.)