Rape, abortion and rights

[aux1]

I added bolding.

I would (and others too, I assume) appreciate it if you didn’t call your fellow human beings “it.” I doubt you (or any group of people) would appreciate being referred to as such.

I sincerely apologize. In my native language, “it” is normally used to refer to children, unless we specifically reference child’s gender.

 

[aux1]

First, all rights are limited. One’s right to free speech is limited if he shouts fire in a crowded theater, etc.

Second, rights are the flip side of prohibitions. The reason we have a right to our property is that others are phohibited from stealing.

No, you have it backwards. Since Enlightenment, the law is based on the idea that you have an inalienable right to property. The gov’t prohibits others from stealing in order to safeguard your rights, not because stealing is inherently bad. The gov’t then punishes the offenders to enforce your rights.

The difference is that the person attached to the violinist does **not **have the right to **kill **the violinist.

Actually, I can grant that woman does not have the right to directly kill the child.

Not that it matters. Here’s why: if we respect the woman’s right to her own body, then she must be able to refuse life support to a child – i.e. deliver it intact. If the child is under 22 weeks, it will suffocate un delivery due to underdeveloped lungs.

Again: you cannot effectively enforce fetal rights unless you nationalize woman’s uterus.

 

[aux1]

I would argue that the child needs the mother’s womb to stay alive. The violinist would be able to survive on a dialysis machine.

Alas, we have not yet invented an artificial uterus.

 

[aux1]

To the original poster:

We have the rights to bodily autonomy, but our natural rights end where they interfere with the rights of others. My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.

But you are applying this selectively.

Mother’s right to bodily autonomy ends when child’s right to life starts - YES!

Child’s right to life ends when mother’s right to bodily autonomy starts - NO!

 

[aux1]

I’m sorry but who wouldn’t want to save him if you knew he will live? Offer it to God and help the violinist.

The question is not if you shoud. (Yes, you should in my opinion).

The question is: should the state force you to do that.

 

[aux1]

If the right to kill one’s child is due to the child’s state of dependency, there is no reason that such right should not continue past birth. The point is made that the child is occupying the woman’s womb, and the state should not be able to force her to accept such a situation.

But after nine months, the child goes from occupying her womb to occupying her home, and remains in a state of dependency for many years to come. Should the state be able to force her—or her husband—to care for a dependent individual, who at the earliest stages of infancy requires care 24 hours per day?

The state DOES allow to severe dependency between mother and child after birth: a child can be given up for adoption.

It sounds outrageous, yet we already have serious proposals for “post-birth” abortion, along with proposals that the dependent elderly might be helped to end their state of dependency through euthanasia. Is killing always the answer?

Killing is never the answer.

Personally I don’t like to think of any woman as being licensed to kill by the fact of having a womb. Rather to the contrary, it seems to bespeak a nature of protection and nurturing. Have times changed so much that the womb is the most dangerous place for a child to live?

Ironically, this is what the pro-life movement argues: **the state must protect the child in utero from its mother. **

 

[levinas12]

There is an interesting article on the “violinist” in the Human Life Review, Winter 2013:

humanlifereview.com/index.php/component/content/article/70-2013-winter/208-defusing-the-violinist-analogy

The gist of the article is that we have a moral obligation to help the “vulnerable” - even if the vulnerable does not have a rights claim.

Think of the kidnapped girl in Cleveland trying to get someone’s attention - and a neighbor indeed responded.

Or a baby left on a doorstep of a cabin (the example used in the article in the Human Life Review).

These situations do not involve a rights claim - e.g., the abandoned baby does not have a “right” to my private property. But there is still a moral obligation to assist the “vulnerable” other.

As an aside: Levinas was a “postmodern” French philosopher whose primary focus was the vulnerable “other”.

 

[ellzeena]

Pure deontology.

Abortion is bad, because God said so.

Not donating a kidney is neutral, because God didn’t say that you have to donate kidneys.

That’s all fine, except that deriving morality from God’s command means that there is no such thing as individual rights, there is only devine law. Individual rights are the product of Enlightenment philosophy, not God.

And if there are no individual rights, then you can’t claim that fetus in utero has a right to life. A woman then is prohibited form killing it, yes, but the prohibition stems from the divine command, not its inherent rights.

If you want to base an anti-abortion argument on fetal rights, then you have to recognize that exercising these rights may require violating woman’s rights – in which case, why single out women? Everyone donate kidneys!

Counterpoints welcome and appreciated

I fear that your logic is grossly awry. You begin with a priori that is incorrect. *Abortion is bad, because God said so. *

God “says” the taking of all life (except in certain instances, read the OT) is a terrible sin. If it is an intact/growing entity in itself and apart from the “host”, it is alive (this includes bacteria, by the way). We “kill” “bad” bacteria to save life, this is permissible. But when we “kill” “good” bacteria (as happens when antibiotics are at work in our intestines), there are physical consequences (and they ain’t pretty). Stupid analogy but a simple point: there are consequences to the taking of any life at any time, anywhere. Most of those consequences go unnoticed by us. However, the dismembered body of an unborn baby does not go unnoticed and is a gross and heinous sight.

*Not donating a kidney is neutral, because God didn’t say that you have to donate kidneys. *

If you are compatible with someone who will die without your kidney, I believe you do have a moral imperative to weigh your responsibility quite seriously. Should it imperil your own life (because your remaining kidney is not healthy), obviously you would not do it. However, to watch another person die an agonizing death because you can’t trust God enough to give that person your kidney…well, personally I would have trouble living with that.

*That’s all fine, except that deriving morality from God’s command means that there is no such thing as individual rights, there is only devine law. Individual rights are the product of Enlightenment philosophy, not God. *

WHERE you got this I have no idea but…we are told that we have “FREE WILL” which implies “individual rights”. We have the “right” to make decisions, even wrong ones. We are not puppets. Theology and Juris Prudence are poor bedfellows, at best.

*And if there are no individual rights, then you can’t claim that fetus in utero has a right to life. A woman then is prohibited form killing it, yes, but the prohibition stems from the divine command, not its inherent rights. *

Argument made from flawed a priori statement produces convoluted logic. There are individual rights, we are told that in the Word of God, He has given us such by giving us free will wherein we recognize the rights of others to live, to function without torment, etc., this is MORALITY. The prohibition to not kill a life given by God IS a Divine directive insofar as we are told “Thou shalt not kill”. The developing fetus is a separate entity from its “host”. It has a God given life. It has the right to that life. A woman is “prohibited” by innate biological directive. Ever been pregnant? Going against this strong “drive” (part of who we are as females, ubiquitously in nature it appears) requires certain strong societal directives telling the woman she HAS THE RIGHT to end this life inside her because it is INCONVENIENT. Having done post abortion counseling for others, I can tell you that the mental and emotional consequences of having had an abortion are enormous, enormous.

*If you want to base an anti-abortion argument on fetal rights, then you have to recognize that exercising these rights may require violating woman’s rights – in which case, why single out women? Everyone donate kidneys! *

Further poor logic based upon incorrect initial supposition. There is no “right” to take innocent life. We will go from abortion to euthanasia (in fact, we already have). We will go from allowing an (almost) full term infant who has been “aborted” by saline injection to lie screaming and ignored (and this DOES happen) as garbage to the elimination of the elderly who are costing the State too much money (and, we already are). It does not violate a woman’s right to murder an innocent, it violates the right of the innocent and it violates God’s direct commandment to us. One cannot compare kidneys to a human life.

 

[John_Q_Sinner]

The question is not if you shoud. (Yes, you should in my opinion).

The question is: should the state force you to do that.

So, who is the rapist in the violinist situation? Society of Music Lovers?

Also the question is about if you should. Laws are laws for the very reason to dictate what we should and shouldn’t do. Morality is what is supposed to drive the laws but good luck being able to do that without a God since a God is the only being that could give authority to morality.

 

[JimG]

The state DOES allow to severe dependency between mother and child after birth: a child can be given up for adoption.

Killing is never the answer.

Ironically, this is what the pro-life movement argues: **the state must protect the child in utero from its mother. **

More precisely, the child in the womb must be protected from the abortionist.

The problem arises because the pro-choice movement has changed the child from a subject of love to an object to be searched out and destroyed.

Keep in mind too, that laws do require parents, including fathers, to support their children. Conceiving a child carries with it responsibilities TO the child. But according to pro-abortionists, the womb is the new version of the wild west. Carry you own weapon and watch out for yourself. It is only the unborn child who is unarmed, and does not know the rules, and does not know that he or she is a target.

Quite sad.

 

[sw85]

Pure deontology.

No, it’s natural law theory.

Abortion is bad, because God said so.

Nope, that’s not what natural law is.

That’s all fine, except that deriving morality from God’s command means that there is no such thing as individual rights, there is only devine law. Individual rights are the product of Enlightenment philosophy, not God.

I have no opinion on the status of rights under divine command theory because I am not a divine command theorist.

But I don’t know why you think “individual rights are the product of Enlightenment philosophy” since they precede the Enlightenment by, yanno, a couple millennia. Sure, the modern notion of “individual rights” originated in the Enlightenment, but these are not the only conception of rights that exist.

If you want to base an anti-abortion argument on fetal rights, then you have to recognize that exercising these rights may require violating woman’s rights

That’s where I get off the bus, since I deny that a “woman’s rights” are in any way “violated” by her having a child.

This is where, I think, we are on different pages. For the atheist/liberal/whatever, the only moral principles of any worth are “freedom” and “equality.” These are cold abstractions that stand outside the social order. Since the social order as it objectively exists includes a network of natural dependencies, it sees that order as morally deficient. For the Catholic/conservative/whatever, we cannot formulate moral principles without taking the natural order into consideration.

The issues you are raising are not easy and cannot be easily addressed on a forum like this. I’d encourage you to read Edward Feser’s Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide.

 

[Farsight001]

Under the pro-life legal theory, the embyo/fetus/child is a separate person starting from conception.

But this means that if woman has no right to abortion, the state essentially forces her to provide her body for the use by another person.

The counter-argument to this is that if woman consents to sex, she implicitly consents to carrying the child, so her right to bodily autonomy is not violated.

HOWEVER, in case of rape there was no such consent, so by denying abortion, the state is forcing the rape victim to provide her body for use by another person, i.e. the child.

If the state can do this, then the state does not recognize person’s bodily autonomy. So,
the state SHOULD also be able to force any person to donate blood (or kidneys or whatever) for the benefit of someone else.

See also the “famous violinist argument”: You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you. (quoted from Wikipedia).

You have it backwards. Pro-life laws would be in place precisely because the state DOES recognize bodily autonomy, specifically, the bodily autonomy of the unborn.

It all comes down to the very simple principle we were all taught as a child - two wrongs don’t make a right.

 

[levinas12]

HOWEVER, in case of rape there was no such consent, so by denying abortion, the state is forcing the rape victim to provide her body for use by another person, i.e. the child.

Prescinding for the moment from the “state” … do you think that the rape victim has a MORAL obligation to bring the baby to term?

Please note that this question does not necessarily involve an adjudication of “rights claims”. We sometimes have a moral obligation that does not involve “rights”. For example, if someone leaves a baby on my doorstep, and I live in a cabin way out in the woods, hundreds of miles from the nearest town, without a telephone, do I have a moral obligation to help that baby?

It may be that the baby does not a “right” to my property. But not to help the baby would appear to be a moral outrage.

See my posting #66 above - and especially the article I cited which responds to the violinist argument. I think you’ll find it interesting.

The article also points morally significant differences between the violinist artificially plugged into someone else’s kidney and the developing baby in the womb. I’ll be glad to expound on those differences but you should first read the article.

 

[marymary1975]

It has a right, except that its right is unenforcable without violating mother’s rights. Should the state be able to do that?

Likewise, violinist’s right to life is unenforcable without violating your risghts. Should the state be able to do that?

If the state is allowed to violate mother’s rights to enforce child’s right to life, then what’s stopping it from violating your rights to enforce violinist’s right to life?

Well then under this vision if it is true, then Amanda Berry’s child (I think her last name is Berry, the captive girl in Ohio) should be sentenced to death too – despite of being innocent of any crime - because her right to.life violated her mother’s rights.

 

[HappyCatholic01]

Under the pro-life legal theory, the embyo/fetus/child is a separate person starting from conception.

But this means that if woman has no right to abortion, the state essentially forces her to provide her body for the use by another person.

The counter-argument to this is that if woman consents to sex, she implicitly consents to carrying the child, so her right to bodily autonomy is not violated.

HOWEVER, in case of rape there was no such consent, so by denying abortion, the state is forcing the rape victim to provide her body for use by another person, i.e. the child.

If the state can do this, then the state does not recognize person’s bodily autonomy. So,
the state SHOULD also be able to force any person to donate blood (or kidneys or whatever) for the benefit of someone else.

See also the “famous violinist argument”: You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you. (quoted from Wikipedia).

It is pretty simple.

The natural outcome of pregnancy is birth.

The natural outcome of me having kidneys is for them to stay inside me.

 

[HappyCatholic01]

The question is not if you shoud. (Yes, you should in my opinion).

The question is: should the state force you to do that.

It appears you have arbitrarily ranked rights as you see them, and the right to life falls equal to or below the right to bodily autonomy (a right that doesn;t really exist).

Since you have done this capriciously based on your own feelings, why should anyone feel the need to defend their position?

 

[marymary1975]

And I have to say that as I have found at least five different felonies and four torts in the violinist argument, I find the comparison quite ridiculous.

 

[levinas12]

It may be that the baby does not a “right” to my property …

The article also points morally significant differences …

please excuse my typos:

“It may be that the baby does not [have] a “right” to my property …”

"The article also points [out] morally significant differences … "

 

[St_Francis]

No, you have it backwards. Since Enlightenment, the law is based on the idea that you have an inalienable right to property. The gov’t prohibits others from stealing in order to safeguard your rights, not because stealing is inherently bad. The gov’t then punishes the offenders to enforce your rights.

No… the right to property is not inalienable. For one thing, the government takes away some of our property all the time, from when sales tax is collected to income taxes.

In addition, the right to property is not inalienable because property can be transferred voluntarily: one can sell it or give it away.

But more importantly, the right to property under even Enlightenment principles does not mean a person has a right to keep one’s property–one only has a right to not be stolen from. If one had a complete right to property, then the government would protect everyone from property losses due to fire or what are still called acts of God, like floods, tornados, and the like. But even the most rigorous Enlightenment politician does not suggest that we outlaw hurricanes.

Actually, I can grant that woman does not have the right to directly kill the child.

Not that it matters. Here’s why: if we respect the woman’s right to her own body, then she must be able to refuse life support to a child – i.e. deliver it intact. If the child is under 22 weeks, it will suffocate un delivery due to underdeveloped lungs.

If nature is allowed to run its course, the baby will be born and no longer reside in the mother. If there is action taken to interfere with the natural course of events, the baby will die. Therefore, that action cannot be taken, because actions which interfere with the course of nature and cause death are killing actions, and actions which kill innocent human beings are immoral.

One’s rights along these lines are not absolute. For example, imagine that Mr and Mrs Smith just barely make it to their mountaintop home because a blizzard moved in as they were driving. They stumble into the house, only to be see that someone has taken refuge in their house. Altho normally they would be able to kick the person out, in this case they cannot, as they would be sending the person to his death.

However, if the person attacked them and in the struggle for their self-defense the attacker was killed, that would not be immoral.

But you see that the sifference is the circumstances. The first person, who sought shelter, must be given shelter, because of the blizzard. The second person, who attacked them, was killed only because that was the amount of force needed to subdue him.

Now, suppose the attacker had left a baby in the dining room. Could the Smiths put the the baby out into the blizzard? Are they obliged to care for the baby?

Suppose even worse, that the attacker, before Mr Smith killed him, had killed Mrs Smith. Would that change Mr Smith’s obligation to care for the baby? Could he put the baby in the basement and forget about it?

I think that you can see from this that one’s own rights do not supercede the obligation not only to refrain from killing the baby, but even to feed and care for the baby.

Thus we can see that the mother whose unborn baby is the result of conception is not so much being forced to carry the baby but prohibited from interfering in the course of the baby’s natural life.

Again: you cannot effectively enforce fetal rights unless you nationalize woman’s uterus.

The government would only be nationalizing wombs if women were *forced *to *become *pregnant–if they had to show up for duty and have a baby put inside her. Merely forbidding individual women to kill their unborn babies is not a general requirement that women bear children, only that they refrain from killing babies already in wombs.

 

[PetrusRomanus]

How isn’t it, it requires a host for life, and if it isn’t parasitic then induce labor and let it live on it’s own volition by being adopted or given to the state for foster care.

In order for your statement to be valid, you’d have to acknowledge that you, yourself, are a parasite as well. You still require resources from the earth (or host) like water, food, oxygen, etc. and are feeding off it to sustain life, which you could not do otherwise on your own.

And if you acknowledge that you, too, are indeed a parasite, the more important question is what stops the state from “aborting” you at any point in time as they so wish?