Hitler Would Be Proud

It would have been hard to miss the storm over President Obama's birth control mandate. You know, the new law that will begin forcing employers to cover contraception costs in their employees' health insurance. So if you didn't miss it, and you don't want to hear my rantings, please just read the following paragraph.

The outrage over the mandate erupted because it ignored any conscience rights of religious institutions, such as Catholic hospitals, who don't want to be forced to provide contraception. After the pressure was put on the Obama administration, they "revised" the mandate, so that instead of the employers paying for the contraception, the insurance companies are forced to provide it for free. Except this doesn't fix anything. Because the employers are still paying for the insurance. They are still paying for their employees' access to contraception. THIS FIXES NOTHING. Don't be fooled by this false revision. Keep the pressure on Washington. You can sign a petition here. (If the petition gets 25,000 signatures by March 12, then Washington has to give an official response!)

The main problem with this mandate is that it violates the first amendment right to freedom of religion. You can't order people to give away carrots to anybody who wants them if carrots violate your religion. This doesn't just go for "religious institutions" either. This goes for all employers who don't like birth control.

Naturally, there is a limit to religious freedom. If, for example, your religion requires you to sacrifice virgins to your god every year, you have to be stopped. Or if your religion requires you to not perform a life-saving heart transplant...too bad. But contraception is not life-saving or necessary. It is not a right. There is no reason to force people to give contraception to others. There's no reason to prevent people from getting contraception either, as long as it isn't an abortifacient. I don't like contraception myself, but I don't mind if you use your privilege to access and use it, so long as it doesn't impede another's right not to provide it or another's right to live.

If, in a very rare (and perhaps bizarre) circumstance, some contraception or abortion is necessary to save someone's life, then their right to life is trumped by another's right to not provide these now life-saving services, as the normal intent for both contraception and abortion (preventing having babies and killing babies) have changed into "preventing dying".

Even if this didn't impede first amendment rights, this doesn't even make sense economically. Forcing insurance companies to provide "free" contraception just makes the price of the insurance in total go up. The employers still have to pay for the insurance, so the employers are spending more on their employees' insurance, which tightens financial strain on the workplace, which, eventually, coupled with other things, leads to laid-off employees. Government mandates forcing themselves into the free market system always have bad results.

Then, President Obama had the gall to say that the birth control was "free" because it costs less than the babies that would result, therefore saving us money. WHAT?!? Since when were human lives worth only as much as the money they require?! Is abortion next, then? What about disabled people? I mean, hey, if it saves us money, why not go around killing people that cost more than they provide? That's called eugenics, and sounds quite a bit like Hitler's euthanasia program. And if it contradicts your religion to provide euthenasia for expensive less-than-worthy people, too bad, because we have a right to kill people over whom we have control.

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.)