My Letters

There's still a chance to help send one million letters to the White House and Supreme Court! Here are a few that I've written. You are free to adopt them, but please adopt and do not copy; add your own heart to your letter.

#1

To whom it may concern:
I am writing to voice my concerns about abortion.  An abortion clearly violates the fourteenth amendment: "nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". Every single abortion kills a human bing, violates the fourteenth amendment, and the very foundation of this nation: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Some may argue that the unborn, while human, are not people, but that is a dangerous road to take: who are we to define what a "person" is, if not a human being? We have tried that before, with blacks here in the U.S., and with the Jews in Nazi Germany; both of these led to terrible injustices. And now we are attacking the unborn, stripping them of their personhood, with no logical foundation for our claims except our own selfishness. This hidden holocaust is hidden no longer: the American people are waking up, and are horrified to realize their is the blood of over fifty million children on our hands. I urge you to join the fight against abortion.
Please, I am **** years old and this is not the country I want to inherit.

Sincerely,
Grace *********

#2

To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing to voice my concerns about abortion.
Abortion advocates claim that abortion is about women's rights, but that does not make logical sense. Sexism has been dead for decades in the U.S. I am not against women having equal rights: I myself am a young woman, and an ambitious one! Abortion is not about women's rights. Women are physically different from men, and thus able to bear children, but being "different" does not mean they are legally "unequal". Even if we pretend that Nature has made women "unequal" (the ability become pregnant is not an inequality), that does not mean we are obliged to try to erase Nature's "mistake"--ESPECIALLY if it comes at the cost of a human life.
Abortion itself is sexist. It is insulting to women to tell them that they have to be "fixed"; that they need the right to murder their own children in order to be "equal" to men. Our fertility is not a curse. Children are not a curse. If a woman does not want to have children, that is her decision. I will not stop her. However, once a woman becomes pregnant, it's too late to choose to not have a child--she already has one, and it should not be legal for her to kill her own offspring, born or unborn. It is her responsibility to carry the child, give birth, and then, if she wishes, put the child up for adoption. I urge you to stand up against this new Sexism in America, and stop the murder of our children.
Please, I am **** years old, and this is not the country I want to inherit.
 Sincerely, 

Grace *********

 #3

To Whom It May Concern,
I am writing to voice my concerns about abortion.
Abortion is the greatest tragedy to ever occur in all of human history. The death casuality is enormous, 50,000,000+ in the U.S. along in the last few decades, but worse than that, the deaths are legal, by our own hands, and the slaughter doesn't even fix the problem it claims to need fixing: instead, it creates dozens more, and hurts everybody in the world, not just the life that it brutally ends.
The first obvious victim is the woman who undergoes the abortion. She is lied to about the humanity of the unborn, is not given all of the facts, and is frequently denied her right to see the ultrasound before her abortion. She is fed propaganda, in a bizarre new kind of Sexism, that says she can't be equal to a man unless she has the right to murder her own child, within her own body. She is not told about the possible increased risk of breast cancer, increased risk of miscarriages and premature births, post-traumatic stress disorder, or any of the other risks.
Abortion also victimises the father, who gets no rights. He has no say in whether his son or daughter lives or dies.
Abortion victimizes the aborted child's siblings, or future siblings; what would have been her best friend, her cousins, her husband, every life she would have touched. Gone. She leaves a hole before she is even born.
Abortion victimizes the abortionist and the abortion workers. They are deceived into thinking they are doing something wonderful for women, and by the time they find out what they've done, it's too late: they have partaken in the slaughter of millions. It must be horrific to suddenly realize what evil you have caused.
I urge you to join the fight against this terrible holocaust that is ripping apart the fabric of our nation. Please, I am **** years old and this is not the country I want to inherit.
Sincerely,
Grace *******

Notice I looked at abortion from three different angles. That's easier to do than trying to write a concise letter touching on all of them. Also, I obviously left out my age and my last name. That's in case any internet creepers happen upon my blog. :) (Note to the internet creepers: obviously my age does not have four digits, and that is not the length of my last name. The number of asterisks was completely random, so don't waste your time.)

If you hurry, you can still have them postmarked in March! The instructions for mailing them are here. (By the way, the Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally I co-organized was awesome. 250+ people showed up for my local rally, which was more than I expected! And last I checked, over 60,000 people showed up to rallies nation-wide--they're still counting! I hope you were able to attend one...NOW GO MAIL A LETTER!)

HURRY!

All images found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.

And We're Paranoid?

I must say, we saw this coming. I didn't expect it quite so fast, but here it is.
Direct taxpayer funding of abortion is now in place. I know, it was supposed to be illegal, wasn't it? But hey, who cares? The Obama administration sure doesn't.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is (surprise, surprise) responsible for this. It is also responsible for the HHS contraception mandate. Gasp! As explained on LifeSiteNews:

The Department of Health and Human Services this month issued a final rule regarding the exchanges required under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The rule provides for taxpayer funding of insurance coverage that includes elective abortion through a direct abortion subsidy. 

To comply with the accounting requirement, plans will collect a separate $1 abortion surcharge from each premium payer. As described in the rule, the surcharge can only be disclosed to the enrollee at the time of enrollment, and insurance plans may only advertise the total cost of the premiums without disclosing the abortion surcharge.

What really gets me is the last sentence. You can't disclose the abortion surcharge? You aren't allowed to know you're paying for abortion? Excuse me??

The pro-abortion side likes to tell the pro-life side that we're all paranoid. Hahaha, legalized contraception won't lead to abortion on demand! What religious idiots!

Yeah. Except that happened. And infringing on freedom by forcing payment for contraception also lead to infringing on freedom by forcing payment for abortion. DIRECTLY funding abortion. THIS is why we have to continue to protest the HHS contraception mandate, and any infringement on freedom. Don't expect the government to just stop there. They're going to keep going. Guaranteed. Proven by history. You have to actively fight for your freedom if you expect to keep it.

And by the way, the Obama administration has now broadened the contraception mandate to include college insurance, as well as employers. And, you guessed it, there's no conscience exemption.

I encourage you to find a local Stand Up For Religious Freedom rally to attend on March 23. There are over 100 locations now. There's even one in Alaska and one in Hawaii! All you have to do is go stand there with a sign. The bigger the crowds, the bigger the impact.

On the bright side, the Obama administration is digging its own grave. I have to wonder what the heck they're thinking. I, and everybody else I know, is absolutely LIVID. We don't want to pay for other peoples' sex lives, and certianly not for murder! If there is anything that will get people out to the polls come November, this is it! I almost hope the administration continues to do such stupid, un-American things. It could be a blessing in disguise.

By the way, have you sent a letter?

All images found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.

Defining Person (Part 1)

I have dealt before with the concept of personhood and how it relates to abortion (if fetus=person, abortion=murder), but after reading more materials I wanted to get a little deeper and a little more organized in discussing personhood.

Before you can decide if a fetus is a person or not, you have define "person".

Everybody (except perhaps weirdly twisted philosophy students) would call this a person.
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>

Smart, Pretty, Successful
Businesswoman

This is also a person.
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>

Homeless Drunk

Even this is a person.
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>

Hitler

How does Dictionary.com define "person"? (So sophisticated, I know.)

1. a human being, whether man, woman, or child: The table seats four persons.

2. a human being as distinguished from an animal or a thing.

3. Sociology: an individual human being, especially with reference to his or her social relationships and behavioral patterns as conditioned by the culture.

4. Philosophy: a self-conscious or rational being.

If we relied on the first three definitions, there would be no argument. Human being = person. But we've become too smart to be satisfied with such a simplistic definition, and thus we must get into the abstract (and often arbitrary). I say "abstract", because there are multiple definitions of "person", both current and past definitions, that don't just stop at "human being". In other words, person = human being, but human being =/= person.

There are many, many different definitions of "person" other than "human being", which, frankly, gets into the realm of the ridiculous. But I will be covering many of them, starting with the simplistic, then going into the more convincing, and then into the ridiculous.

What's the difference between this human being
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>

Smart, Pretty, Successful
Businesswoman

and this human being?
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>

3-Day Old Embryo

The first obvious difference is the physical appearence. However, while physical appearence may indicate a difference in personhood status (as the physical appearence of a daisy and a rose indicate different species), physical appearence or physical facts does nothing to prove the personhood of one or the other, because personhood does not have to do with the physical world. Personhood is an abstract concept. A rose is a symbol of love, but love is an abstract concept. In our minds, a rose = love, but in the real world a rose is nothing but a rose.


This
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>

Lady Cassandra (Doctor Who)

and this
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>

Horta (Star Trek)

look vastly different from this
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>

Pretty, Smart, Successful
Businesswoman

but that means nothing to the abstract concept of personhood.

Another difference is their environment. A fetus is in her mother's womb. A businesswoman moves all around, going into many different environments and doing many different things. Our current laws, illogically, follow this mindset. A 23-week-old premature, but otherwise healthy, baby can be born and immediately taken into intensive care and everything done to save her life. A 23-week-old "unwanted", but perfectly healthy, fetus (notice the difference in the terminology) that poses no danger to the mother, can be aborted.

23-Week-Old Preemie

It gets even more confusing. Sometimes, if a 23-week-old fetus survives the abortion, attempts are made to save her life...and succeed. Why? All that changed was the fetus's location. At least be consistent, abortion advocates. If there's nothing morally wrong with aborting a 23-week-old "unwanted" fetus, logically, there's nothing morally wrong with killing a 23-week-old "unwanted" fetus. The fetus did not change. The mother did not change. The staff did not change. The only thing that changed was that the fetus is now one foot away from where she was five minutes ago.

In my next post I will get into deeper definitions of personhood that branch off of the two addressed here: namely, level of development and dependency.

(I have also decided to, for now, go to one written post per week, on Fridays. Tuesdays may feature videos, suggested articles, or short news updates. This will allow me to organize my time better and have higher-quality posts.)

All images found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.

Refuting Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" (Part 9)

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.
Click here to read part 6.
Click here to read part 7.
Click here to read part 8.

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 is the last segment in this series. My comments are (in parentheses and underlined).

In this section, Ms. Thomson sums up her previous arguments which, since I have refuted them in previous sections, are still invalid.

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," 5^th ed., ed. Ronald Munson (Belmont; Wadsworth 1996). pp 69-80
...

8.

My argument will be found unsatisfactory on two counts by many of those who want to regard abortion as morally permissible. First, while I do argue that abortion is not impermissible, I do not argue that it is always permissible. There may well be cases in which carrying the child to term requires only Minimally Decent Samaritanism of the mother, and this is a standard we must not fall below. (But where is that mark? I think that you're a Minimally Decent Samaritan when you don't kill your unborn children for convenience. You can't just point to your own version of Minimally Decent Samaritanism and declare that's the right thing. If something directly hurts someone else (like abortion, born murders, rape, robbery, beatings, sexual abuse, etc.) then it's wrong. Period.) I am inclined to think it a merit of my account precisely that it does not give a general yes or a general no. It allows for and supports our sense that, for example, a sick and desperately frightened fourteen-year-old schoolgirl, pregnant due to rape, may of course choose abortion, and that any law which rules this out is an insane law. (No it's not. A law outlawing murder is not insane in any circumstances.) And it also allows for and supports our sense that in other cases resort to abortion is even positively indecent. It would be indecent in the woman to request an abortion, and indecent in a doctor to perform it, if she is in her seventh month, and wants the abortion just to avoid the nuisance of postponing a trip abroad. (It would be just as indecent to perform an abortion on the terrified, raped fourteen year old girl, because in both cirtumstances the result is a dead baby.) The very fact that the arguments I have been drawing attention to treat all cases of abortion, or even all cases of abortion in which the mother's life is not at stake, as morally on a par ought to have made them suspect at the outset.

Second, while I am arguing for the permissibility of abortion in some cases, I am not arguing for the right to secure the death of the unborn child. It is easy to confuse these two things in that up to a certain point in the life of the fetus it is not able to survive outside the mother's body; hence removing it from her body guarantees its death. But they are importantly different. I have argued that you are not morally required to spend nine months in bed, sustaining the life of that violinist, but to say this is by no means to say that if, when you unplug yourself, there is a miracle and he survives, you then have a right to turn round and slit his throat. You may detach yourself even if this costs him his life; you have no right to be guaranteed his death, by some other means, if unplugging yourself does not kill him. (Totally unrelated, as abortion when the fetuses do not survive are wrong. However, why not turn around and slit the baby's throat? There's nothing different between a 23-week-old fetus being killed in an abortion, and a 23-week-old fetus surviving an abortion and then having his neck slit. The result is the intentional slaughter of an innocent life. THERE. IS. NO. DIFFERENCE.) There are some people who will feel dissatisfied by this feature of my argument. A woman may be utterly devastated by the thought of a child, a bit of herself, put out for adoption and never seen or heard of again. (But, naturally, she'll be completely at ease if she makes sure her kid dies.) She may therefore want not merely that the child be detached from her, but more, that it die. Some opponents of abortion are inclined to regard this as beneath contempt--thereby showing insensitivity to what is surely a powerful source of despair. All the same, I agree that the desire for the child's death is not one which anybody may gratify, should it turn out to be possible to detach the child alive. (So remind me...why do you say abortion is okay?)

At this place, however, it should be remembered that we have only been pretending throughout that the fetus is a human being from the moment of conception. A very early abortion is surely not the killing of a person, and so is not dealt with by anything I have said here. (No it's not. There are very clear arguments for the personhood of the unborn, which I will probably delve into soon.)

Image found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.

Refuting Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" (Part 8)

(I apologize for the missed posts. My school kind of took over last week. And I actually didn't realize I'd skipped two posts when I got on today - I had it in my head for some reason that I'd only missed one. In the future, if I don't post, you may assume it's because school is taking up all of my time.)

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.
Click here to read part 6.
Click here to read part 7.

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. My comments are (in parentheses and underlined).

In this section, Mrs. Thomson is continuing to attempt to redefine morality so she can get rid of morality and justify abortion.This in itself is a great indicator that her overall argument of absolute bodily autonomy (covered in previous sections) is bogus, because if it were true, she would have no need to try to erase our morality. It would already, morally, make sense. This section, specifically, tries to dispose of personal responsibility.

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," 5^th ed., ed. Ronald Munson (Belmont; Wadsworth 1996). pp 69-80
...

7.

Following the lead of the opponents of abortion, I have throughout been speaking of the fetus merely as a person, and what I have been asking is whether or not the argument we began with, which proceeds only from the fetus's being a person, really does establish its conclusion. I have argued that it does not. (You haven’t proved anything because you’re assuming that people have an absolute right to bodily autonomy, which we do not, so the argument that abortion should be illegal because the fetus is a person still stands. But whatever.)

But of course there are arguments and arguments, and it may be said that I have simply fastened on the wrong one. It may be said that what is important is not merely the fact that the fetus is a person, but that it is a person for whom the woman has a special kind of responsibility issuing from the fact that she is its mother. (This is true.) And it might be argued that all my analogies are therefore irrelevant--for you do not have that special kind of responsibility for that violinist; Henry Fonda does not have that special kind of responsibility for me. (This is also true.) And our attention might be drawn to the fact that men and women both are compelled by law to provide support for their children. (Indeed they are.)

I have in effect dealt (briefly) with this argument in section 4 above; but a (still briefer) recapitulation now may be in order. Surely we do not have any such "special responsibility" for a person unless we have assumed it, explicitly or implicitly. If a set of parents do not try to prevent pregnancy, do not obtain an abortion, but rather take it home with them, then they have assumed responsibility for it, they have given it rights, and they cannot now withdraw support from it at the cost of its life because they now find it difficult to go on providing for it. (No, they took responsibility for the child when they risked bringing the child into existence.) But if they have taken all reasonable precautions against having a child, they do not simply by virtue of their biological relationship to the child who comes into existence have a special responsibility for it. (Yes they do.)They may wish to assume responsibility for it, or they may not wish to. (It doesn’t matter what they “wish” to do. You may “wish” to leave your infant in the woods so that she dies if you wanted an abortion but were not able to get one, but the law does not care what you “wish” to do. It never matters what you “wish” to do; we’re talking about right and wrong.) And I am suggesting that if assuming responsibility for it would require large sacrifices, then they may refuse. A Good Samaritan would not refuse--or anyway, a Splendid Samaritan, if the sacrifices that had to be made were enormous. But then so would a Good Samaritan assume responsibility for that violinist; so would Henry Fonda, if he is a Good Samaritan, fly in from the West Coast and assume responsibility for me. (You did not bring the violinist into existence, Henry Fonda did not bring you into existence, and you and Henry Fonda are not directly responsible for the intentional killing of your own offspring.

The hard truth, Mrs. Thomson, is that the world doesn't let us choose our own responsibilities. Some responsibilities are more or less optional, like taking the responsibility to turn in schoolwork assignments on time, but we can't pick and choose all of our responsibilities. It doesn't work like that. You can't say, "Well, I didn't ever take responsibility for this girl's well-being, so there's no reason I can't rape her." Similarly, you can't say, "Well, I never took responsibility for this baby (either 'because I was raped' or 'because I didn't mean to get pregnant' will do here), therefore there's no reason I can't kill her." Like it or not, the stability of the world depends on morals, including responsibility.)

Roe vs. Wade

Lord, forgive us, for we know not what we do.

50,000,000 dead

Feminists Are Evil

Okay, not really. But there is more than one thing that really irks me about feminism. Or, actually, not "real" feminism. But this other weird religion-like blame-game-thing that people have assaigned to the name of "feminism" and then kicked "real" feminism (which can no longer be called feminism because "feminists" stole the name) out the door.

Confused yet? Sorry. I'll back up.

Would it surprise you if I told you I was a feminist? What pops into your head when you hear the word "feminist"? Most likely a pro-abortion pro-welfare anti-death-penalty pro-Obama leftist. If that isn't what popped into your head, PLEASE hold onto your own idea of a feminist. You are a jewel.

Feminism used to be a truly pro-woman movement. I would have loved to live in the time period where women were fighting for suffrage and the like--I betcha I would've been marching alongside them all. I believe with all my heart that women should be given equal opportunities and not discriminated against because of their gender.

But that's no longer what the feminist movement is about. You remember this poster?

Well, it's no longer about "We Can Do It". The feminism machine has turned into a roaring monster. It's turned from "We Can Do It" to "You'd Better Help Us Do It Or Else".

Oh please.

Take maternity leave, for example. You know, the few weeks off your bosses can give you when you give birth. I'm not sure if there are laws that require employers to give women maternity leave, but I do know that feminists are fighting for them. And they don't want discrimination against women? It's perfectly valid to not want to hire a woman if she plans on getting married and having kids soon. It makes sense. It isn't discriminating against women. It's a legitimate business concern. This is called C-A-P-I-T-A-L-I-S-M. You don't always want to hire people who will need extra time off because they're busy having babies. All I ask is that women aren't discriminated against...because they're women. Not because of nature. If the employers hire women and give them maternity leave, fine. But don't force them to.

And abortion. Is there a more insulting law in existence? People will call me anti-women because I hate abortion (which can't possibly make sense unless I have really low self-esteem as to hate my own gender) , but they are the anti-women people. In order for women to "succeed in the world" they have to be allowed to kill their own children?

NO.

Feminists are now the anti-women people. How ironic.

Besides, who decided that "succeeding in the world" means you have to have a career? There's nothing wrong with just getting married and having kids and being a stay-at-home mom, but somehow feminists have managed to twist motherhood into something less than a career. It's not.

I want equality, people. Not special benefits. That's called sexism. Only this time it's directed at men. Especially if they're white.

Refuting Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" (Part 7)

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.
Click here to read part 6.

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. My comments are (in parentheses and underlined).

This section is, put lightly, sickening. Mrs. Thomson is attempting to redefine morality, therefore get rid of our sense of morality, therefore justify abortion. This in itself is a great indicator that her overall argument of absolute bodily autonomy (covered in previous sections) is bogus, because if it were true, she would have no need to try to erase our morality. It would already, morally, make sense.

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," 5^th ed., ed. Ronald Munson (Belmont; Wadsworth 1996). pp 69-80
...

6.

We have in fact to distinguish between two kinds of Samaritan: the Good Samaritan and what we might call the Minimally Decent Samaritan. The story of the Good Samaritan, you will remember, goes like this (It makes my blood boil when people use the Bible when arguing for abortion. But I digress.):

A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.

And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.

But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was, and when he saw him he had compassion on him.

And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

And on the morrow, when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, "Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee." (Luke 10:30-35)

The Good Samaritan went out of his way, at some cost to himself, to help one in need of it. We are not told what the options were, that is, whether or not the priest and the Levite could have helped by doing less than the Good Samaritan did, but assuming they could have, then the fact they did nothing at all shows they were not even Minimally Decent Samaritans, not because they were not Samaritans, but because they were not even minimally decent.

These things are a matter of degree, of course, but there is a difference, and it comes out perhaps most clearly in the story of Kitty Genovese, who, as you will remember, was murdered while thirty-eight people watched or listened, and did nothing at all to help her. A Good Samaritan would have rushed out to give direct assistance against the murderer. Or perhaps we had better allow that it would have been a Splendid Samaritan who did this, on the ground that it would have involved a risk of death for himself. But the thirty-eight not only did not do this, they did not even trouble to pick up a phone to call the police. Minimally Decent Samaritanism would call for doing at least that, and their not having done it was monstrous.

After telling the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus said, "Go, and do thou likewise." Perhaps he meant that we are morally required to act as the Good Samaritan did. Perhaps he was urging people to do more than is morally required of them. At all events it seems plain that it was not morally required of any of the thirty-eight that he rush out to give direct assistance at the risk of his own life, and that it is not morally required of anyone that he give long stretches of his life--nine years or nine months--to sustaining the life of a person who has no special right (we were leaving open the possibility of this) to demand it. (So you are suggesting that you don’t do anything wrong if you just stand there and watch someone be stabbed to death? There’s a difference between legally required and morally required, lady!)

Indeed, with one rather striking class of exceptions, no one in any country in the world is legally required to do anywhere near as much as this for anyone else. The class of exceptions is obvious. My main concern here is not the state of the law in respect to abortion, but it is worth drawing attention to the fact that in no state in this country is any man compelled by law to be even a Minimally Recent Samaritan to any person; there is no law under which charges could be brought against the thirty eight who stood by while Kitty Genovese died. By contrast, in most states in this country women are compelled by law to be not merely Minimally Decent Samaritans, but Good Samaritans to unborn persons inside them. (There’s a difference between  deliberately murdering someone and standing by and letting someone be murdered…as is obvious from the fact that the murderer was prosecuted but the onlookers were not.) This doesn't by itself settle anything one way or the other, because it may well be argued that there should be laws in this country as there are in many European countries--compelling at least Minimally Decent Samaritanism. But it does show that there is a gross injustice in the existing state of the law. And it shows also that the groups currently working against liberalization of abortion laws, in fact working toward having it declared unconstitutional for a state to permit abortion, had better start working for the adoption of Good Samaritan laws generally, or earn the charge that they are acting in bad faith.

I should think, myself, that Minimally Decent Samaritan laws would be one thing, Good Samaritan laws quite another, and in fact highly improper. But we are not here concerned with the law. What we should ask is not whether anybody should be compelled by law to be a Good Samaritan, but whether we must accede to a situation in which somebody is being compelled--by nature, perhaps--to be a Good Samaritan. We have, in other words, to look now at third-party interventions. I have been arguing that no person is morally required to make large sacrifices to sustain the life of another who has no right to demand them, and this even where the sacrifices do not include life itself; we are not morally required to be Good Samaritans or anyway Very Good Samaritans to one another. (Morally, yes, we are.) But what if a man cannot extricate himself from such a situation? What if he appeals to us to extricate him? It seems to me plain that there are cases in which we can, cases in which a Good Samaritan would extricate him. There you are, you were kidnapped, and nine years in bed with that violinist lie ahead of you. You have your own life to lead. You are sorry, but you simply cannot see giving up so much of your life to the sustaining of his. You cannot extricate yourself, and ask us to do so. I should have thought that--in light of his having no right to the use of your body--it was obvious that we do not have to accede to your being forced to give up so much. We can do what you ask. There is no injustice to the violinist in our doing so. (Certainly not as much injustice as done to the unborn child, as we’ve already established, since the parallels between the hypothetical violinist situation and the real woman-child situation do not line up.)

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," 5^th ed., ed. Ronald Munson (Belmont; Wadsworth 1996). pp 69-80.)
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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.)

Refuting Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" (Part 3)

Judith Jarvis Thomson

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

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. I have not put the "important parts" in italics this time, because this section is relatively short. My comments are (in parentheses and underlined).

This particular section is, for the most part, correct. Things get stickier in the later sections, but this one is pretty much a logical argument--it's the way Mrs. Thomson says these things that is unsettling. Her conclusion isn't incorrect--it's the manner in which she gets there that is wrong. 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. At this point in time, she is still speaking about times where the mother's life is in danger.

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," 5^th ed., ed. Ronald Munson (Belmont; Wadsworth 1996). pp 69-80.)

...

2.

The extreme view [that abortion is not permissible even to save the life of the mother] could of course be weakened to say that while abortion is permissible to save the mother's life, it may not be performed by a third party, but only by the mother herself. (But since it is not immoral to kill one person in order to prevent both of them dying, it doesn’t matter who performs it.) But this cannot be right either. For what we have to keep in mind is that the mother and the unborn child are not like two tenants in a small house which has, by an unfortunate mistake, been rented to both: the mother owns the house. (Not directly, perhaps. Usually though, the mother has already risked allowing another person into her house, so therefore it is not the other person’s fault that he is now in the same house as the mother.) The fact that she does adds to the offensiveness of deducing that the mother can do nothing from the supposition that third parties can do nothing. But it does more than this: it casts a bright light on the supposition that third parties can do nothing. Certainly it lets us see that a third party who says "I cannot choose between you" is fooling himself if he thinks this is impartiality. If Jones has found and fastened on a certain coat, which he needs to keep him from freezing, but which Smith also needs to keep him from freezing, then it is not impartiality that says "I cannot choose between you" when Smith owns the coat. (Except that Jones wouldn’t be in danger of freezing if it weren’t for Smith. And usually Smith isn’t in danger of freezing—only Jones is.) Women have said again and again "This body is my body!" and they have reason to feel angry, reason to feel that it has been like shouting into the wind. Smith, after all, is hardly likely to bless us if we say to him, "Of course it's your coat, anybody would grant that it is. But no one may choose between you and Jones who is to have it." (Unborn children don’t steal their mothers’ bodies.)

We should really ask what it is that says "no one may choose" in the face of the fact that the body that houses the child is the mother's body. It may be simply a failure to appreciate this fact. (No one may choose because choosing is murder. The mother must decide what’s best when it’s either her life or her unborn child’s life at stake.) But it may be something more interesting, namely the sense that one has a right to refuse to lay hands on people, even where it would be just and fair to do so, even where justice seems to require that somebody do so. Thus justice might call for somebody to get Smith's coat back from Jones, and yet you have a right to refuse to be the one to lay hands on Jones, a right to refuse to do physical violence to him. This, I think, must be granted. (Like doctors refusing to perform abortions. Even if it wouldn’t be murder, they should indeed have the right to do this. As it is murder to choose “Jones”…then nobody is morally allowed to make that choice.) But then what should be said is not "no one may choose," but only "I cannot choose," and indeed not even this, but "I will not act," (In the case of the mother’s life in danger, yes. She (with the help of the father) are the only people who can make that choice.) leaving it open that somebody else can or should, and in particular that anyone in a position of authority, with the job of securing people's rights, both can and should. So this is no difficulty. I have not been arguing that any given third party must accede to the mother's request that he perform an abortion to save her life, but only that he may. (Thank goodness for that, at least.)

I suppose that in some views of human life the mother's body is only on loan to her (What?? No, the mother’s body is only on loan to the child, not the mother!—unless Mrs. Thompson is talking about a religious view (our bodies are God’s), which I suppose she may.), the loan not being one which gives her any prior claim to it. One who held this view might well think it impartiality to say "I cannot choose." But I shall simply ignore this possibility. My own view is that if a human being has any just, prior claim to anything at all, he has a just, prior claim to his own body.(Unless that person has already willingly (albeit perhaps accidentally) loaned out her body.) And perhaps this needn't be argued for here anyway, since, as I mentioned, the arguments against abortion we are looking at do grant that the woman has a right to decide what happens in and to her body. But although they do grant it, I have tried to show that they do not take seriously what is done in granting it. I suggest the same thing will reappear even more clearly when we turn away from cases in which the mother's life is at stake, and attend, as I propose we now do, to the vastly more common cases in which a woman wants an abortion for some less weighty reason than preserving her own life.

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