Is abortion ever justified?

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bobzills

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We all know that abortion is wrong. But consider the following scenario: A man is dying of kidney failure and must find a kidney somewhere. But he cannot, so his wife pays a mobster to kidnap and drug a young woman. The mobster knows an excellent surgeon who can be bought and the doctor surgically connects the woman to the man so that the sick man can now live since he can tap off of the kidney of the woman. The woman then wakes up from the surgery and finds herself surgically connected by tubes to this sick man who needs her kidney. It is possible for the woman to easily remove these tubes any time she wants and disconnect the life support of the man, which will then result in the instant death of the man to whom she has been connected.
Now does this woman have a moral obligation to keep this man alive ? Or is she morally justified in removing these tubes?
What does this have to do with abortion? Consider the case of a woman who has been forcibly raped? There are differences between the two cases, but are there not some similarities which may be relevant when considering the morality of the actions of removing the tubes versus the morality of an abortion in the case of violent rape?
 
bobzills said:
We all know that abortion is wrong. But consider the following scenario: A man is dying of kidney failure and must find a kidney somewhere. But he cannot, so his wife pays a mobster to kidnap and drug a young woman. The mobster knows an excellent surgeon who can be bought and the doctor surgically connects the woman to the man so that the sick man can now live since he can tap off of the kidney of the woman. The woman then wakes up from the surgery and finds herself surgically connected by tubes to this sick man who needs her kidney. It is possible for the woman to easily remove these tubes any time she wants and disconnect the life support of the man, which will then result in the instant death of the man to whom she has been connected.
Now does this woman have a moral obligation to keep this man alive ? Or is she morally justified in removing these tubes?
What does this have to do with abortion? Consider the case of a woman who has been forcibly raped? There are differences between the two cases, but are there not some similarities which may be relevant when considering the morality of the actions of removing the tubes versus the morality of an abortion in the case of violent rape?
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First I’d like to state that abortions performed due to rape are .01%, that’s one-tenth of one percent. So it sort of drives me nuts when people use the rape scenario as a justification to keep abortion legal.

However, it is still the killing of an innocent human life. This life has been granted by God and it certainly is no fault of the baby’s that this rape has occurred. The difference betwen your scenario of the kidney patient and the raped woman is the kidney patient is a sick man lying in bed and needing to be kept alive by unnatural means. The baby in the womb is a fresh new life and is kept alive by the most natural means there is - his/her MOTHER.

Rape is a horrible, violent, sad and unfortunate event, but in the teensy-weensy percentage of cases where it results in a pregnancy, I still do not see how the MOTHER should have the right to extinguish this new life growing within her. What is wrong with placing the child up for adoption?
 
Direct abortion is never right, always wrong. Murder is murder, no matter how you try to dress it up and call it a fluffy bunny.
 
RosaryFan said:
First I’d like to state that abortions performed due to rape are .01%, that’s one-tenth of one percent. So it sort of drives me nuts when people use the rape scenario as a justification to keep abortion legal.

However, it is still the killing of an innocent human life. This life has been granted by God and it certainly is no fault of the baby’s that this rape has occurred. The difference betwen your scenario of the kidney patient and the raped woman is the kidney patient is a sick man lying in bed and needing to be kept alive by unnatural means. The baby in the womb is a fresh new life and is kept alive by the most natural means there is - his/her MOTHER.

Rape is a horrible, violent, sad and unfortunate event, but in the teensy-weensy percentage of cases where it results in a pregnancy, I still do not see how the MOTHER should have the right to extinguish this new life growing within her. What is wrong with placing the child up for adoption?
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Abortion is wrong. But is it also wrong for the woman in the kidney case to disconnect the tubes to the man and he will surely die? Does she have an obligation to keep the tubes connected to herself and to keep the man alive?
 
Your scnario is illogical, and cannot be answered.

The person with the kidney failure would be under a doctors care and would undergo dialysis using a machine.

One human being cannot act as a dialysis machine for another, both would die. The thought that this mythical woman could magically unhook herself and walk away is a fairy tale.

Far out science fiction examples don’t fly.
 
bobzills said:
…The woman then wakes up from the surgery and finds herself surgically connected by tubes to this sick man who needs her kidney. It is possible for the woman to easily remove these tubes any time she wants and disconnect the life support of the man, which will then result in the instant death of the man to whom she has been connected…
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You watch too many scifi movies. This is a completely unrealistic scenario! :D:D:D
bobzills said:
Abortion is wrong. But is it also wrong for the woman in the kidney case to disconnect the tubes to the man and he will surely die? Does she have an obligation to keep the tubes connected to herself and to keep the man alive?
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Now assuming that your scenario were possible, you have to approach it like the case of normal pregnancy vs. an ectopic pregnancy. From your description it appears that there is not risk to her life by keeping the tubes on and so she should not disconnect them.
 
There’s a great article addressing this very scenario (which is typically called the Violinist argument, first propograted by Judith Jarvis Thompson). You can read “Stand to Reason: Unstringing the Violinist” here: str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5689

Here is some of it in brief, but I highly encourage you reading the whole thing:

"Are there important differences between pregnancy and kidnapping? Yes, many.

First, the violinist is artificially attached to the woman. A mother’s unborn baby, however, is not surgically connected, nor was it ever “attached” to her. Instead, the baby is being produced by the mother’s own body by the natural process of reproduction.

Both Thompson and McDonagh treat the child—the woman’s own daughter or son–like an invading stranger intent on doing harm. They make the mother/child union into a host/predator relationship.

A child is not an invader, though, a parasite living off his mother. A mother’s womb is the baby’s natural environment. Eileen McDonagh wants us to believe that the child growing inside of a woman is trespassing. One trespasses when he’s not in his rightful place, but a baby developing in the womb belongs there.

Thompson ignores a second important distinction. In the violinist illustration, the woman might be justified withholding life-giving treatment from the musician under these circumstances. Abortion, though, is not merely withholding treatment. It is actively taking another human being’s life through poisoning or dismemberment. A more accurate parallel with abortion would be to crush the violinist or cut him into pieces before unplugging him.

Third, the violinist illustration is not parallel to pregnancy because it equates a stranger/stranger relationship with a mother/child relationship. This is a key point and brings into focus the most dangerous presumption of the violinist illustration, also echoed in McDonagh’s thesis. Both presume it is unreasonable to expect a mother to have any obligations towards her own child."
 
I was actually talking about abortion when it comes to rape with a friend a few weeks ago. We’re both still in high school and she said she couldn’t imagine having a child now, and I agreed. But I was listening to some of the clips on Pureloveclub.com, and there was a girl who traveled to Europe and was raped there. She became pregnant from this rape, had her baby, and gave it up for adoption to, I believe, a couple she knew. The girl also said the night before discovering she was pregnant, she had a dream and heard an angel say “Don’t be afraid, just love.”
God has a plan for us all, he creates all life for a meaning. It doesn’t matter if a child was created because of rape, because he or she will come out innocent and pure. It probably would be difficult having a child under these conditions, but this doesn’t justify murder.
 
So cool.Rape,a cruel violation of the civil rights of a person by another person…does that mean then ,if the victim becomes pregnant the victim has the right to murder…violate the civil rights of the developing baby inside her…after all she is only the temporary host…like an incubator so to speak! Billy Jean King wanted to finish her tour and thus had to have an abortion to do it…she felt justified for so many depended on her game.she also has a lovely trophy but her baby crib was empty…justifying is soooo easy. The lyrics to ‘unborn child’ tell it all…'oh no momma,just let it be,You’ll never regret it,just wait and see" and so two wrongs never make a right…the rape was wrong and destroying the fruit of that rape is also wrong. This is called the domino theory…killing an innocent being is horrible and letting that child live and then giving it up for adoption…who knows…this child may grow up and start a web site like this one and thus help bring thousands of lost souls to the Truth…as this one does…amen and amen…
 
The woman sustaining the life of the baby is not just *any woman *she is the baby’s Mother.
I can’t think of anywhere in human existence, where God has given anyone the privilege or the responsibitity of bodily sustaining the life of another, except for a woman who is by God’s ordination a Mother. That child is her very own flesh. What a gift, what an awsome responsibility.
 
Nino said:
Billy Jean King wanted to finish her tour and thus had to have an abortion to do it…she felt justified for so many depended on her game.she also has a lovely trophy but her baby crib was empty…
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Wow, I never knew this! People like that need to learn to plan ahead. If she felt she couldn’t have a baby at that time, she should have abstained. I can’t believe someone would think to murder their child for a trophy!
 
bobzills said:
Abortion is wrong. But is it also wrong for the woman in the kidney case to disconnect the tubes to the man and he will surely die? Does she have an obligation to keep the tubes connected to herself and to keep the man alive?
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I would say that woman is under no obligation to contribute to the illegal and unnatural means by which this man is staying alive.
 
RosaryFan said:
I would say that woman is under no obligation to contribute to the illegal and unnatural means by which this man is staying alive.
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So the woman is morally justified in cutting the tubes from her body to the man with the kidney problem and thereby killing him?
 
Nothing is ALWAYS wrong. The context determines if it’s right or wrong. No one in their right mind would want a 9 year old girl who was raped by her father to have to give birth to twins (this has happened).
 
AwareCatholic said:
Nothing is ALWAYS wrong. The context determines if it’s right or wrong. No one in their right mind would want a 9 year old girl who was raped by her father to have to give birth to twins (this has happened).
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i’m sorry but you are very wrong. abortion is wrong every time in evry circumstance. conception will not happen without God’s consent. the world needs more fiath in Him and less in our judgement.
 
AwareCatholic said:
Nothing is ALWAYS wrong. The context determines if it’s right or wrong. No one in their right mind would want a 9 year old girl who was raped by her father to have to give birth to twins (this has happened).
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Nothing is always wrong, you say - by your logic then there might be something about the ‘context’ of that father in Brazil raping his nine-year-old daughter made his rape of her OK. Clearly the father thought so, after all, and who are we to judge - we can’t possibly know the whole ‘context’, right?

And if nothing is always wrong then just maybe there was ALSO something about the ‘context’ of her conception (I don’t know, a little thing like the fact that she was carrying two INNOCENT CHILDREN, with all the rights to life of any child, within her womb) that made it right in her case to try to keep the children alive?
 
Your situation is illogical. The only closest reasons for justified “abortion” is if its the result of a another act. Like Chemo, Life saving medicine due to an accident, or tubal pregnancy.
 
aggiecatholic05 said:
i’m sorry but you are very wrong. abortion is wrong every time in evry circumstance. conception will not happen without God’s consent. the world needs more fiath in Him and less in our judgement.
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less of our judgment huh? See the irony?..
 
bobzills said:
We all know that abortion is wrong. But consider the following scenario: A man is dying of kidney failure and must find a kidney somewhere. But he cannot, so his wife pays a mobster to kidnap and drug a young woman. The mobster knows an excellent surgeon who can be bought and the doctor surgically connects the woman to the man so that the sick man can now live since he can tap off of the kidney of the woman. The woman then wakes up from the surgery and finds herself surgically connected by tubes to this sick man who needs her kidney. It is possible for the woman to easily remove these tubes any time she wants and disconnect the life support of the man, which will then result in the instant death of the man to whom she has been connected.
Now does this woman have a moral obligation to keep this man alive ? Or is she morally justified in removing these tubes?
What does this have to do with abortion? Consider the case of a woman who has been forcibly raped? There are differences between the two cases, but are there not some similarities which may be relevant when considering the morality of the actions of removing the tubes versus the morality of an abortion in the case of violent rape?
Click to expand...
This scenario/analogy is thoroughly debunked here:

arizonarighttolife.org/userfiles/File/violinist_factsheet.pdf
 
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