Difficult abortion question

[Corki]

To help support her argument, the author of the article I read came up with this analogy, which sort of puts all of the theoretical material that I have outlined above on a more relateable level:

Suppose you find yourself one morning randomly hooked up to a famous violinist whose life depends on your kidneys purifying his blood along with your own. The doctor says to you, “It’s all most distressing, and I deeply sympathize, but you see this is putting an additional strain on your kidneys, and you’ll be dead within a month. But you have to stay where you are all the same. Because unplugging you would be directly killing an innocent violinist, and that’s murder, and that’s impermissible.”

So how would one respond to this one? Because the violinist is just as innocent as a baby would be.

This analogy is easy to deflate:

1. one does not “randomly” become pregnant (nor for that matter “ramdomly” hooked up to dying violinists )
2. the situation of being “hooked up” to a violinist involved the criminal act of a third person (the doctor). no such act has occured in the situation of a woman with a life threatening pregnancy
3. if the person who was hooked up to the violinist was to unhook him/her self, that *could *be a reasonable case of self defense against the doctor but not against the violinist.
4. unless the violinist was also put into this situation against his/her will, he/she had a role to play in getting into this situation. He/she would have had to seek out the treatment and agree to have you hooked up to him/her. No such corallary with a baby.
5. unplugging you from the violinist wouldn’t be directly killing him anyway.

As to the original premise, since the sole purpose of a womb is to nurish and carry an unborn child, one could easily assert that the only person who has a right to that womb is the unborn child of the woman in question. That child has even more right to the womb than the woman herself,

 

[vern_humphrey]

Originally Posted by mlcampbell
To help support her argument, the author of the article I read came up with this analogy, which sort of puts all of the theoretical material that I have outlined above on a more relateable level:

Suppose you find yourself one morning randomly hooked up to a famous violinist whose life depends on your kidneys purifying his blood along with your own. The doctor says to you, “It’s all most distressing, and I deeply sympathize, but you see this is putting an additional strain on your kidneys, and you’ll be dead within a month. But you have to stay where you are all the same. Because unplugging you would be directly killing an innocent violinist, and that’s murder, and that’s impermissible.”

So how would one respond to this one? Because the violinist is just as innocent as a baby would be.

There is no end to these phony hypotheticals.

Suppose you were out driving, and through no fault of your own, ran over someone and left them crippled? And no one saw the accident.

Now, knowing our system, you are in big trouble – you will be sued and forced to support the person you ran over. Your own family needs all the money you can make.

So you decide it would be better for all around if you simply backed over your unfortunate victim and then drove off.

See how simple it is to construct foolish scenarios like this?

 

[RyanL]

Sorry it took so long to get back to this – if you’re truly concerned about (or want to absolutely destroy) Thompson’s piece, I recommend the following: Rights and Wrongs of Abortion (you might find a copy at your library). In it there is a refutation by John Finnis, whose book on Natural Law is used by most of the law schools of which I’m aware; I will warn you, though, it’s not for “light reading”. It’s serious stuff, and it can be hard to keep up. Rest assured, however, that if you make it through Finnis’ refutation you’ll understand why Thompson’s arguments are so daft she should be ashamed of herself.

God Bless,
RyanL

 

[mlcampbell]

Sorry it took so long to get back to this – if you’re truly concerned about (or want to absolutely destroy) Thompson’s piece, I recommend the following: Rights and Wrongs of Abortion (you might find a copy at your library). In it there is a refutation by John Finnis, whose book on Natural Law is used by most of the law schools of which I’m aware; I will warn you, though, it’s not for “light reading”. It’s serious stuff, and it can be hard to keep up. Rest assured, however, that if you make it through Finnis’ refutation you’ll understand why Thompson’s arguments are so daft she should be ashamed of herself.

God Bless,
RyanL

Thank you so much! I’ll get right on to that reading.