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Abba
Guest
Irrational, indeed! What rhetoric! Judith Thomson needs to keep it real. Philosopher? Give me a break. I wouldn’t want to have what she is having for it would make me have a delusional view of reality and make me think that it is real.
In what planet is it rational to equate a man who is a total stranger being plugged to a woman’s body with a baby fertilized with the woman’s ovum? It is not the same for a woman to get pregnant under any circumstance after intercourse as for a woman to gain consciousness and find herself with a man and total stranger plugged to her. The reality is that a female can get pregnant after menstruation if intercourse occurs - it’s called life. This is incomparable to the horror story of an unknown violinist being plugged in to one’s body for survival. Thomson appears to have watched one too many spooky movies. At least she did not use an ‘alien’ as an example. Weird, and this is being called ‘philosophy’?
It appears more as a rationalization of reality, illogical and delusional.The question she is trying to answer is: if someone needs me to survive am I oblige to assist? Thomson is trying to present an alienation between mother and child by comparing with a kind of alien invasion that which is not application. Why is it not applicable? Because, the baby is not an alien but a product of nature even when the intercourse was unwelcomed. The child is innocent and has a right to live.
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Lochias
Guest
Justifying abortion against a human child in the womb that committed no crime is justifying murder for the sake of convenience based on age.
Killing the child does not “un-rape” the mother, and I defy any of the defenders of child-murder here to prove otherwise.
Killing the child does not “un-rape” the mother, and I defy any of the defenders of child-murder here to prove otherwise.
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Mulligan2
Guest
I have never heard anyone make that claim. Do you have a source for your “un-rape” comments?
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on_the_hill
Guest
I think un-rape is being used to capture the notion that the abortion can be viewed as an attempt to put everything back to normal, as if the rape hadn’t happened.
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Dryden77
Guest
Maybe you’ve misunderstood the scenario. The Violinist – the man we’re attached to – isIrrational, indeed! What rhetoric! Judith Thomson needs to keep it real. Philosopher? Give me a break. I wouldn’t want to have what she is having for it would make me have a delusional view of reality and make me think that it is real.
In what planet is it rational to equate a man who is a total stranger being plugged to a woman’s body with a baby fertilized with the woman’s ovum? It is not the same for a woman to get pregnant under any circumstance after intercourse as for a woman to gain consciousness and find herself with a man and total stranger plugged to her. The reality is that a female can get pregnant after menstruation if intercourse occurs - it’s called life. This is incomparable to the horror story of an unknown violinist being plugged in to one’s body for survival. Thomson appears to have watched one too many spooky movies. At least she did not use an ‘alien’ as an example. Weird, and this is being called ‘philosophy’?
The question she is trying to answer is: if someone needs me to survive am I oblige to assist? Thomson is trying to present an alienation between mother and child by comparing with a kind of alien invasion that which is not application. Why is it not applicable? Because, the baby is not an alien but a product of nature even when the intercourse was unwelcomed. The child is innocent and has a right to live.
a) as free of malice as a baby
b) as much a product of nature as a baby
c) as much a product of intercourse as a baby
d) possessed of the same rights – including the right to live – as a baby
And yet you write: “Why is it [the scenario] not applicable [in the case of abortion following rape]? Because, the baby is not an alien but a product of nature even when the intercourse was unwelcomed. The child is innocent and has a right to live”
Doesn’t a grown man (he’s not an alien) have a right to live too? Are adults less protected by Catholic moral teaching than fetuses…? The answer to both questions is No.
The moral distinction you’re trying to draw between a helpless innocent fetus and a helpless innocent adult is anything but clear.
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Dryden77
Guest
Quick self-correction: When I wrote, “Doesn’t a grown man (he’s not an alien) have a right to live too? Are adults less protected by Catholic moral teaching than fetuses…? The answer to both questions is No,” I meant to say that “the answer to the first question is Yes and the answer to the second is No.” Sorry for the hasty typing.
Anyway, I repeat: The moral distinction you’re trying to draw between a helpless innocent fetus and a helpless innocent adult is anything but clear.
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Dryden77
Guest
Abortion in the case of rape wouldn’t be carried out to “un-rape” the victim but rather to remove a foreign object that has been placed in the victim without her consent.
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Dryden77
Guest
Is it a sin for US troops to shoot child suicide-bombers who approach a checkpoint? Some of these kids are so young they have no idea what they’re doing. They don’t even know they’re carrying explosives in many cases. Sometimes they’re given a package and told to take it to the soldier, and when they reach the soldier the insurgents detonate the package remotely, killing both soldier and child (not to mention bystanders).
Such children (again, assuming they’re very young and completely oblivious to what they’re doing) are no less innocent than a fetus, and yet the Catholic Church does not condemn the terrible (but necessary) practice by US soldiers of shooting these kids when they approach checkpoints (this happens when it can be ascertained that the kids are carrying explosives; bomb dogs can smell explosive material from a long distance).
So here we’re saying that an innocent child can be intentionally killed not only without injustice but also without any sin at all. Clearly the suicide-bomber scenario isn’t identical to abortion in the case of rape, but it’s important nonetheless, because it completely destroys the argument that an innocent child can NEVER be intentionally killed without injustice. Like it or not, sometimes an innocent child is a morally acceptable target.
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Mulligan2
Guest
Yes, ‘back to normal’ meaning that she would no longer be pregnant against her will. I question the other poster’s use of the term ‘un-rape’, however, because I have never heard anyone say that the pregnancy termination equated to the rape never having occurred. This seemed like a weak attempt at a straw man argument.
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HappyCatholic01
Guest
That’s the beauty of our Lord. He gave us birth to ensure a woman will no longer be pregnant against her will. Killing the child is simply making ourselves into God’s, which is something we are warned not to do.
Posted from Catholic.com App for Android
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jilly4ski
Guest
Umm, a fetus is not a foreign object. 1) it is not an object at all, but a person, as such it can not be treated as an object, but as a person with equal dignity before God. 2) The child is also the woman’s and cannot therefore be considered “Foreign.” You cannot separate a child as belonging to one parent or the other, it is indivisibly her child, not half her’s and half the rapist’s.
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Mulligan2
Guest
A fetus and a person are by definition two different things, because of the factor of time. However, no matter how you personally choose to define a particular word, it doesn’t make it any less wrong to force a rape victim to carry her pregnancy to term if that’s not her desire.
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Abba
Guest
"That is, Thomson argues that even if we grant the humanity of the unborn baby, she has no ethical or moral right to the use of her mother’s body to sustain her life. However, this analogy fails on a number of grounds. Bouchier-Hayes summarizes Beckwith’s refutation:
‘Francis Beckwith finds four ethical problems with Thomson’s analogy. First, he tells us that in “using the violinist as a paradigm for all relationships, which implies that moral obligations must be voluntarily accepted in order to have moral force, Thomson mistakenly infers that all true moral obligations to one’s offspring are voluntary”. Beckwith contends that in an unwanted pregnancy the reluctant father has involuntary obligations to his offspring because of “the fact that he engaged in an act, sexual intercourse, which he fully realised could result in the creation of another human being, although he took every precaution to avoid such a result”.
‘Second, he tells us that Thomson’s volunteerism, above discussed, opposes family morality,
“which has as one of its central beliefs that an individual has special personal obligations to his offspring and family which he does not have to other persons.”
‘He goes on to say that even if Thomson sees the concept of family as being oppressive towards women,
“a great number of ordinary men and women, who have found joy, happiness and love in family life, find Thomson’s volunteerism to be counter-intuitive”
Calling abortion the ‘withholding of support or treatment’ makes about as much sense as calling suffocating someone with a pillow the withdrawing of oxygen.—Philosopher Francis Beckwith
‘Third, he argues that one can establish that the foetus has a prima facie right to the mother’s body on the grounds that the foetus is something which is dependent on its mother, that this stage of a human being’s natural development takes place in the womb, that the foetus, when born, has a natural claim upon its parents that they care for it, even if it is the case that they never actually wanted it, and, finally, that there is no reason to deny the foetus a natural prima facie right to its mother’s body if, as Thomson allows, it is fully human prior to birth.
‘Fourth, he argues that abortion is not simply the withholding of treatment for the foetus, but is in fact the killing of the foetus. He makes the point that “calling abortion the ‘withholding of support or treatment’ makes about as much sense as calling suffocating someone with a pillow the withdrawing of oxygen”.
‘Quite apart from all of the above criticisms, Beckwith is fundamentally opposed to Thomson’s use of the violinist analogy as is clear from the following passage:
“It is evident that Thomson’s violinist illustration undermines the deep natural bond between mother and child by making it seem no different than two strangers artificially hooked-up to each other so that one can steal the service of the other’s kidneys. Never has something so human, so natural, so beautiful, and so wonderfully demanding of our human creativity and love been reduced to such a brutal caricature.”’ creation.com/refuting-contrived-pro-abortion-arguments-judith-jarvis-thomson-famous-violinist
‘Francis Beckwith finds four ethical problems with Thomson’s analogy. First, he tells us that in “using the violinist as a paradigm for all relationships, which implies that moral obligations must be voluntarily accepted in order to have moral force, Thomson mistakenly infers that all true moral obligations to one’s offspring are voluntary”. Beckwith contends that in an unwanted pregnancy the reluctant father has involuntary obligations to his offspring because of “the fact that he engaged in an act, sexual intercourse, which he fully realised could result in the creation of another human being, although he took every precaution to avoid such a result”.
‘Second, he tells us that Thomson’s volunteerism, above discussed, opposes family morality,
“which has as one of its central beliefs that an individual has special personal obligations to his offspring and family which he does not have to other persons.”
‘He goes on to say that even if Thomson sees the concept of family as being oppressive towards women,
“a great number of ordinary men and women, who have found joy, happiness and love in family life, find Thomson’s volunteerism to be counter-intuitive”
Calling abortion the ‘withholding of support or treatment’ makes about as much sense as calling suffocating someone with a pillow the withdrawing of oxygen.—Philosopher Francis Beckwith
‘Third, he argues that one can establish that the foetus has a prima facie right to the mother’s body on the grounds that the foetus is something which is dependent on its mother, that this stage of a human being’s natural development takes place in the womb, that the foetus, when born, has a natural claim upon its parents that they care for it, even if it is the case that they never actually wanted it, and, finally, that there is no reason to deny the foetus a natural prima facie right to its mother’s body if, as Thomson allows, it is fully human prior to birth.
‘Fourth, he argues that abortion is not simply the withholding of treatment for the foetus, but is in fact the killing of the foetus. He makes the point that “calling abortion the ‘withholding of support or treatment’ makes about as much sense as calling suffocating someone with a pillow the withdrawing of oxygen”.
‘Quite apart from all of the above criticisms, Beckwith is fundamentally opposed to Thomson’s use of the violinist analogy as is clear from the following passage:
“It is evident that Thomson’s violinist illustration undermines the deep natural bond between mother and child by making it seem no different than two strangers artificially hooked-up to each other so that one can steal the service of the other’s kidneys. Never has something so human, so natural, so beautiful, and so wonderfully demanding of our human creativity and love been reduced to such a brutal caricature.”’ creation.com/refuting-contrived-pro-abortion-arguments-judith-jarvis-thomson-famous-violinist
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Dryden77
Guest
Jilly – I’ll try to keep my response as short as possible, but bear in mind that this is a complex issue. A few quick prefatory points follow, and then the main argument.
- The Church has repeatedly affirmed our right to self-defense even in cases in which our assailant is free of malice. Our assailant may be free of malice because he has lost (or never had) the power of reason, or because he is acting against his will as a helpless agent of someone else, or because he is acting without awareness of his behavior. Again: Absence of malice in our assailant does not deprive us of the right to self-defense – and that’s according to Rome.
- Our right to self-defense allows, in some cases, the use of deadly force. This means that we’re authorized in these cases to kill real people with real souls and real rights and real dignity. That’s from your church.
- Deadly force may be used to protect our lives and also our bodily integrity. (“As bodily integrity is included in the good of life, it may be defended in the same way as life itself.”) newadvent.org/cathen/13691a.htm
- The sperm left behind by a rapist is itself an aggressor.
Here’s the problem. And to understand the problem we’ll need to resort (sorry) to a hypothetical scenario. If a woman found herself kidnapped, drugged, operated on without her consent, and then impregnated with an in-vitro-fertilized egg from another woman (this could EASILY happen, by the way), the Church would say that even in this highly exceptional case abortion is impermissible. Yet no part of the fertilized egg in this scenario belongs to, is related to, or came from, the impregnated woman. So how can the fertilized egg not be regarded as an aggressor? And why can’t we treat this very unusual fetus like any other aggressor?
Appealing to the innocence of the fetus does no good here because your own church says that complete absence of malice still allows us to kill in the defense of our bodily integrity, and that bodily integrity is as morally defensible as life itself. Appealing to the humanity of the fetus does no good, either, because your own church allows us to kill human beings (including young children) in self-defense. Nor does appealing to the total helpless of the fetus, as your own church says that we are entitled to use deadly force against even a helpless and unintentional aggressor.
So on what grounds is it morally impermissible for the woman in our scenario to have an abortion?
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Abba
Guest
This really boils down to the argument of self defense and ‘intention’. The child carrying a bomb ready to be detonated may or may not be innocent but at any rate is being used as a weapon of war. It is not the intention of the soldier to kill a child, but they have the right to self defense. However, in the case of abortion, the intention is to kill the child and self defense does not apply.
CCC:
2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. “The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not.”
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jilly4ski
Guest
So time creates people, not say… conception, (where science denotes a new life begins).
So, when does that factor of time create a person? It can’t be birth, since that time is variable. Some children are born at 22 weeks and some children are born at 42 weeks. Birth is a factor of place not time, so it can’t be that. Is it sometime after birth, a person is not a person until they reach majority. Hmm, lets try out your logic on something else. Teenagers and a person are by definition two different things because of the factor of time.
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Dryden77
Guest
- The Church allows the soldier to take aim at the child with his rifle and pull the trigger, even if the soldier knows that the child is far too young to understand what she’s doing. The point here is that even a young child, entirely free of malice, can be killed deliberately without sin. The fact that the soldier isn’t initiating the use of force (or rather the threat of force), and is acting in self-defense, doesn’t change the fact that the Church does in fact authorize the killing, in some cases, of small children (though not as an end unto itself).
- The Church affirms that not just our life but also our bodily integrity may be defended with deadly force. A fetus produced by rape is an assault on bodily integrity. Therefore the killing of the child suicide-bomber should be no more permissible than the killing of a fetus produced by rape. And yet the Church say Yes to one and No to the other.
- When the Church says that “the one is intended and the other is not,” I think what it means is that when we kill in self-defense we do so not with the objective of killing per se, of killing for its own sake (this would be immoral), but rather with the objective of self-defense, and with the death of our assailant an unavoidable consequence. And I don’t see why this couldn’t apply to abortion in the case of rape. The mother intends to protect her bodily integrity and aborts the child with the same frame of mind, and with the same objective, as the soldier who kills the child…
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jilly4ski
Guest
See below for a response to self defense. As far as bodily integrity goes, I cannot believe you cited New Advent, which completely contradicts what you are trying to prove. A pregnancy is not life threatening, and just because someone bumps into you over even pushes you, you cannot respond with deadly force, that too is an infraction against bodily integrity. In fact the very sentence after the one you quote says: “It must be observed however that no more injury may be inflicted on the assailant than is necessary to defeat his purpose.” So what is the fetus’ purpose in invading ones bodily integrity? You have not listed what makes someone an aggressor, and how those attributes apply to a fetus, (either a fetus conceived during rape or any other method).
- You science is off. Once conception occurs, the sperm, that participated in the conception, is no longer present, and neither is the egg. So via your logic (with the correct science), the aggressor (even the unintentional aggressor) is gone, in its place in something new. You have not proven that this new entity, the fetus, is an aggressor (even an innocent one), you merely assert. What distinguishes this fetus with any other fetus, how come they both cannot be considered aggressors? Since fetuses are generally the same, what makes this fetus (not the sperm) an aggressor? Is it the fetus’s DNA, or its wantedness, since those are the only things that are really different between fetuses of the same gestational age.
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Abba
Guest
Let us highlight the fact that human beings are individuals and social beings. We want to keep it real, right? We need to keep in the forefront of our minds human nature and reality. This, I think is the major fallacy of Thomson’s argument of the violinist which renders it inapplicable. In the end, our objective is not to win an argument. Who cares, right? There are on the net hundreds of threads in a variety of languages, to win or lose an argument in an anonymous random thread is not something worth devoting much time to. Time is precious. However, if we get into a discussion it is hoped that it is to grow and become better person and to ultimately be better equipped to serve God and man.
If we consider the soldiers in your analogy, we recognize that they are not acting merely as individuals but under the authority of the society of which they are members. They are soldiers and as such servants of the authority of a society and are acting under the command of that authority. Conversely, if I know there is a pedophile in the neighborhood, I as an individual have no right before man or God to kill that man. Even if it would be ultimately good for the society. I am the equal of all the members of a society and it is the authority of the society that has the obligation and right to make such a decision because they as individuals are not merely looking for their own good but they have the duty to take care of the common good.
The above only provides another reason why your analogy does not work. A mother with child does not have a greater value before God as the vulnerable infant. In other words, I am not better than you and you are not better than me - period. As such, I cannot decide that I am going to kill, so and so, because this person is inconveniencing me and my personal interests.
Look at a crucifix and consider that Jesus died for a greater good. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and He did not fight back. Jesus was innocent and He sacrificed Himself for a greater common good. Otherwise, it would be suicide, but it wasn’t because it was for a greater good.
If we consider the soldiers in your analogy, we recognize that they are not acting merely as individuals but under the authority of the society of which they are members. They are soldiers and as such servants of the authority of a society and are acting under the command of that authority. Conversely, if I know there is a pedophile in the neighborhood, I as an individual have no right before man or God to kill that man. Even if it would be ultimately good for the society. I am the equal of all the members of a society and it is the authority of the society that has the obligation and right to make such a decision because they as individuals are not merely looking for their own good but they have the duty to take care of the common good.
The above only provides another reason why your analogy does not work. A mother with child does not have a greater value before God as the vulnerable infant. In other words, I am not better than you and you are not better than me - period. As such, I cannot decide that I am going to kill, so and so, because this person is inconveniencing me and my personal interests.
Look at a crucifix and consider that Jesus died for a greater good. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and He did not fight back. Jesus was innocent and He sacrificed Himself for a greater common good. Otherwise, it would be suicide, but it wasn’t because it was for a greater good.
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