The Right-to-Life doesn't include

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Ana_v

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Consider the following:

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For context, this was posted by a pro-choice atheist whose commentary on abortion I have been reading for a few years. She is a public figure within the atheist community and something of a pro-choice apologist, using social media to equip other secularists on how to argue the pro-choice position and respond to pro-lifers (whom she refers to as “anti-choicers”).

I mention this to emphasize that I am very familiar with how she argues.

For example, if you say that a pregnant woman is responsible for the life of her unborn child because she is the biological mother on whom the child naturally depends for survival, she will say you are committing the naturalistic fallacy.

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She promotes the argument used by the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson in the essay A Defense of Abortion. If you are not familiar with the essay, you may read it by clicking on this link:

https://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm

Thompson gives a more sophisticated version of the bodily autonomy argument. Unlike other pro-choicers who argue for the woman’s- right-to-choose-abortion on the basis of denying the humanity and/or personhood of the fetus, Thomson doesn’t do this. She is willing to grant the personhood of the fetus and argues that its personhood is not in-itself a sufficient basis for prohibiting abortion.
 
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For brevity, I will just quote the essay’s central argument, which is an argument by analogy shorthandedly known as “The Violinist Argument”:

"But surely a person’s right to life is stronger and more stringent than the mother’s right to decide what happens in and to her body, and so outweighs it. So the fetus may not be killed; an abortion may not be performed.

It sounds plausible. But now let me ask you to imagine this. 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. The director of the hospital now tells you, “Look, we’re sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you–we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it’s only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.” Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. “Tough luck. I agree. but now you’ve got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person’s right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him.” I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, which suggests that something really is wrong with that plausible-sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago."

However, the atheist on social media differs from Thomson in that she doesn’t argue in defense of abortion from a moral aspect, but legal-consistency point of view. In other words, whereas pro-lifers typically argue with some version of:

Moral judgement about abortion → Abortion should be prohibited by law

And pro-choicers typically with:

Moral judgment about abortion →
Abortion should be permitted by law

This atheist avoids the morality issue entirely and limits herself exclusively to arguing for abortion on the basis of law-comparisons.

It is said that he who frames the debate, wins the debate…
 
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I suspect she frames the debate exclusively in terms of law-analogies because she knows that if morality is incorporated, her argument can be undermined by simply pointing out that just because laws are a certain way doesn’t mean they ought to be and laws are reformable.

But “forcing”, so to speak, her pro-life interlocutors, and encouraging pro-choicers to only argue in reference to our existing legal structure, she is able to make the pro-choice position seem like it is the logical extension of other laws that protect bodily autonomy.

So, with all of that in mind, I decided to respond to her post. You will notice that I did not (yet) argue against abortion. Rather, I pointed out the inherent limitations of her own argument. I’m taking a Socratic approach because I think it will be the most effective. I’m trying to draw out from her the presuppositions and moral principles that lie beneath her arguments.

This is what I wrote:

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Part of the beginning and end of my post were not captured by the screenshot, and those parts were:

What is the foundation for the legal right?..Problem: How do you provide a defense for a universal right-to-choose?

Do you believe it is a civil right or a human right?
 
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The right to absolute bodily autonomy is
  1. old
  2. tired
  3. barbaric
  4. arrogant
  5. radically individualistic
  6. circular nonsense
It assumes that every human being goes through life on his/her own power.
it fails to recognize that in order to have a right to absolute bodily autonomy, a person must first be…wait for it…a living human being.
It’s an intellectually vacant argument that is tragic when embraced by a society.
 
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Ana_v said:
The “right to life” doesn’t include the right to survive using another human’s body without their consent
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the “another human body” is an admission that the baby is a human and thus cannot be killed via force, which is what abortion does

its also an admission that it is not part of the mother’s body and thus destroys the “her body, her choice” argument

also the “without her consent” is false given that the mother did consent to the pregnancy (absent rape). placing a gun to my head and demanding one of my kidneys (no consent) is not same as me voluntarily choosing to carry a baby due to my choice to have sex (consent).
 
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Ana_v said:
Do you believe it is a civil right or a human right?
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And it really doesn’t depend on what a person “believes”.

It’s matter of being a sane and reasonable human being.

Who are human rights proper to?
Cats?
Trees?
No, human rights are proper to human beings.
Dead human beings? Does my deceased gramma have human rights?
No, living human beings have human rights.
Therefore, if you deny the right of a human being to live, you have no other human right.
Case closed, off to the loony bin with this argument,.

It’s circular nonsense.
 
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Ana_v said:
"But surely a person’s right to life is stronger and more stringent than the mother’s right to decide what happens in and to her body, and so outweighs it. So the fetus may not be killed; an abortion may not be performed.
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Notice this argument characterizes the fetus as part of “her body”, thus there is only one entity (her body)
Ana_v said:
you’ve got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person’s right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him.
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Note here that the fetus and the mother are two separate bodies - “your body” and “a person” plugged into your body.

So overall, the argument is entirely incoherent since it relies on two mutually exclusive rules:
(1) one entity - the woman’s body that includes the fetus
(2) two entities - the woman’s body and separate fetus body that is plugged into woman body
 
I keep seeing this argument pop up.
It shows a complete ignorance of How Sex and Biology Work.
As well as maturity and decision making.
If you have sex, you have to accept the consequences of that action (just like you accept the consequences of any action you do).
 
Now with modern science proving that the baby has many human characteristics early on (of course we always knew the baby is a human being at conception) they say ok but even if that’s so here are arguments for aborting it anyway. By their logic the baby could be aborted up until birth. Morally reprehensible. All the analogies and thought experiments are nothing but smoke and mirrors obsfucating the facts: The right to life of a baby in the womb usurps the right of liberty.
 
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AlNg said:
How would the argument go in the case of rape?
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  1. The people making this argument don’t believe in a rape exception, they believe in abortion no exceptions so we need to call them on that and that their “what about rape?” is disingenuous inquiry
  2. The concession is that the baby is a separate human (hence that the analogy to organ donors) , thus since its a separate human it cannot be physically murdered, which is what abortion does
 
I think that mabye she is to immature to have sex.
If you don’t want a baby don’t have sex it’s really that simple. Having sex willingly and then
Getting pregnant and then choosing to have an abortion just shows a lack of responsibility and immaturity.
I have contemplated abortion on more than 1 occasion and beacuse I didn’t and beacuse I made the right decision I have 3 absolutely amazing kids
 
I absolutely hate it when people mention rape as a reason to justify abortion, whilst it can be a constant reminder to the mother about what happened and keeping the child can be seriously stressful I think having an abortion could have the same effects it is possible to love the child there are also other options such as adoption. That baby is part of you you wouldn’t go throwing part of you in the trash would you
 
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
I keep seeing this argument pop up. It shows a complete ignorance of How Sex and Biology Work.
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It’s not that they are ignorant of how biology and sex work; it’s that they deem these to be irrelevant to their argument. Their argument isn’t based on the relationship between sex and reproduction.

The premise that they operate on is:
“Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy.”
 
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Ana_v said:
The premise that they operate on is:
“Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy.”
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Exactly. Sex should NOT seen as a commodity. And if others think that we are throwing into the dark ages, the answer should be “no, if anything, we are keeping women SMART!”
 
Aquinas11 said:
The people making this argument don’t believe in a rape exception
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Brendea said:
I absolutely hate it when people mention rape as a reason to justify abortion
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0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
One of my best friends is a rape baby. How will you explain to her she has no right to life?
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Right. The only thing is that one argument given by the pro-life people is:
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
If you have sex, you have to accept the consequences of that action (just like you accept the consequences of any action you do).
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Aquinas11 said:
The people making this argument don’t believe in a rape exception, they believe in abortion no exceptions so we need to call them on that and that their “what about rape?” is disingenuous inquiry
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You are conflating two distinct things: Their defense of abortion as an exercise of freedom of choice, and any pro-life argument that appeals to the fact that, as a norm, pregnancy is a result of consensual sex.

The pro-choicers would have no problem conceding that they are pro-choice beyond just cases of rape.

What they have a problem with, is an argument against abortion that rests upon the assertion that “women choose to have sex and should therefore attend to the natural consequence of that choice - pregnancy.” They have a problem with this because, even if they were to grant - for the sake of the argument- that line of reasoning, it only applies to cases of consensual sex and not rape. So what they’re trying to point out is that the relationship between consensual sex and reproduction cannot serve as the basis for opposing all abortion (including cases of rape), but could apply to cases where sex was freely engaged in by both parties.
 
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