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.)

Unborn Angels

I'm normally not a fan of rap. In my opinion, it hardly counts as music, with a very few exceptions ("Jesus Freak" by dc Talk being one of them). However, I came across this song the other day. Is it great music? No, probably not, technically speaking. But the lyrics were what got me (that, and the beautiful piano).

It reminded me how desperately prayer is needed for everybody dealing with abortion. Abortion, by now, hurts every single person in the world, and they may not even know it.

We need to pray for the abortionists and abortion workers, that they can be touched, and realize how wrong abortion is. They live in such darkness. The ones there that truly care about women need their eyes to open so they can see that they're hurting these women, and so they can see how to truly help them.

We need to pray for the pro-life activists, so they can stay emotionally strong.

We need to pray for politicians, that they will pass laws against abortion.

We need to pray for all the brother-and-sister-less people in the world, whose siblings have been aborted.

We need to pray for all the friend-less people in the world, whose best friends have been aborted.

We need to pray for all the men and women, whose spouses have been aborted.

We need to pray the countries and causes whose leaders have been aborted.

We need to pray for the fathers whose children have been aborted.

We need to pray for the mothers whose children have been aborted.

We need to pray for the children, asking God to send his guardian angels to comfort them as they are being aborted.

Image found via Google Images. Video from YouTube. 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," 5^th 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.)

Video on Phill Kline Ethics Hearing

This interview was conducted Tuesday, I believe, and is a pretty good summary of how Mr. Kline's hearing is going, and what exactly the hearing is on.

Rape vs. Life

Quick, kill him! He has rapist genes!

Two of the hardest issues to think about in the pro-life movement are rape and incest (referred to here as simply “rape”)—the two times where the woman did not have a choice to get pregnant. It then seems cruel to force her to take responsibility for something that isn’t her fault. People that are generally considered radically pro-life usually say that they are against all abortion, except in cases where the life of the mother is in danger or the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest.

It’s true that it isn’t fair that the mother had no choice in the matter. But it’s even less fair to let her abort the child in those instances. People who make the exception for rape and incest are looking at the problem out of proportion. If a fetus is a child, then it is murder to abort her no matter what the circumstances of her conception. Rape and incest don’t change that. You can’t sensibly say that it isn’t okay to kill the fetus in most circumstances, but it is okay to kill the fetus in cases of rape or incest, unless you don’t truly believe that the fetus is a child in the first place.

A common argument for abortion in cases of rape and incest is that the baby will have rapist genes. This is saying that it’s okay to kill this particular baby because he’s a potential rapist. Eugenics, in other words. Strictly speaking, we’re all potential rapists. Even if we’re more genetically inclined to certain kinds of evil than other people, it still comes down to the choice of the individual. If we managed to track down everyone who was genetically inclined to a crime and kill them, the population of the Earth would go from three billion to zero. Besides that, plenty of people from rough homes with rough genes grow into good people. Many also do not, unfortunately. But environment has much more to do with how people turn out than genetics.

Even if the “rape gene” was truly a deciding factor in whether someone becomes a rapist, that suggests that humans are merely evolved animals that can’t think for themselves (which many people do believe) and therefore isn’t really capable of making the decision to not rape—but if that’s the case, then there’s nothing wrong with rape (because we’re all animals anyway), and therefore absolutely no reason to abort rapist-gene-babies. Hmm. Contradict, much?

It’s a personal choice, raping. Non-genetically-inclined people can still make the choice to rape people. You can’t eliminate the “rape gene” and assume that will eliminate rapists.

Why don’t we focus more on stopping current rapists and getting “rapist babies” (who are just as beautiful as any other baby) into good homes, and forget the easy way “out” that won’t work anyway?

Images found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.