Thoughts on abortion debate

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Below is a debate between Peter Kreeft and David Boonin on the morality of aboriton at the University of Minnesota in the spring of 2010. In my opinion, Kreeft lost this debate, which is why I am seeking help.
youtube.com/watch?v=6RobCjM0ZLA

I have a basic overview of his argument. It seems to have a few holes at first, but he (apparently) fills them. However, you’d be much better off by watching the debate, even though it is over an hour and a half. If you do watch it and care to attempt a rebuttal of Mr. Boonin, it would be very greatly appreciated. I am in no way considering changing my pro-life stance, but I’m not sure how I’d do if someone brought this argument up in a debate with me.

I found it interesting (and slightly troubling) at the turn this debate took from your average abortion debate. Peter Kreeft used his moral, scientific, and legal arguments as well as put in his version of the Uncertainty Argument to cliam that abortions are wrong and shouldn’t be legal. Boonin threw me (and apparently, Kreeft) for a bit of a loop in his argument, however. He didn’t even attempt to deny Kreefts arguments, but rather forcussed on the right to life. His basic argument was that even if the fetus had a right to life equvalent to ours, it doesn’t have the right to sustain itself using the body of the mother. He then used the following example: He is dying of either cancer or leukemia or cancer (I can’t remember, but it’s not important) and he needs a bone marrow transplant. The only person that can be found who he is compatible with is you. He then asked if, though you may donate, whether or not you should be legally forced to donate. It appeared everyone said no, which makes sense. He then likened that to the fetus and the mother. He said the mother shouldn’t be forced to provide for the child in the same way that you shouldn’t be forced to provide bone marrow to him. He answered a couple of objections to his statement. The first one was that, aside from rape and incest, the mother gave consent by having sex. He then gave an example on when consent was given to an action and when it wasn’t. The first one was gambling in a casino. By playing the game, you indirectly give consent to have your money taken should you lose the game. Another example he gave was taking a walk in a neighborhood that you knew to be very dangerous, and you end up mugged. By taking the risk of walking in the neighborhood, you still haven’t given consent to be mugged.
This part of his argument seems the most vulnerable to me, but I am unsure of exactly how to attack it.
There is a second and third objection that I won’t get into but I’ll give the spot in the video.
A second objection took place at about 1:10:25, in the video.
A third objection took place at about 1:24:57, in the video.

If anyone would like to take a whack at Dr. Boonin’s argument, I’d like to hear what you have to say.
Thanks.
 
  1. There is a difference between ordinary care and extraordinary care. A mother sustaining her child’s life for 9 months in her womb is ordinary care, which is somewhat obligatory (a parent would be legally obliged to provide ordinary care for a child, but someone would be only morally obliged, not legally, to provide ordinary care to a stranger.) Providing a marrow transplant is extraordinary care.
  2. Just because one is not legally obliged to provide marrow for a transplant, one is not permitted to *kill *the person who needs it.
BTW, this is one of the problems i see with basing anti-abortion arguments on tye right to life. In reality and in traditional Catholic thinking, the problem is the violation of the obligation to refrain from killing. But this is probably one of those obscure things that few are concerned about.
 
  1. Just because one is not legally obliged to provide marrow for a transplant, one is not permitted to kill the person who needs it.
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My bad, I forgot to mention this one. Boonin was given this response and he said that if we cut the umbilical cord, the baby is still alive, but will soon die because it doesn’t have the nutrients and oxygen it needs. We aren’t directly killing the fetus, we just aren’t giving it the neccessities it needs to survive.
 
St_Francis said:
  1. There is a difference between ordinary care and extraordinary care. A mother sustaining her child’s life for 9 months in her womb is ordinary care, which is somewhat obligatory (a parent would be legally obliged to provide ordinary care for a child, but someone would be only morally obliged, not legally, to provide ordinary care to a stranger.) Providing a marrow transplant is extraordinary care.
  2. Just because one is not legally obliged to provide marrow for a transplant, one is not permitted to *kill *the person who needs it.
BTW, this is one of the problems i see with basing anti-abortion arguments on tye right to life. In reality and in traditional Catholic thinking, the problem is the violation of the obligation to refrain from killing. But this is probably one of those obscure things that few are concerned about.
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But what about the situations in which ordinary care becomes extraordinary care? Pregnancy is a very complex condition, and any number of things can go wrong. For example, I have a friend who was in the process of miscarrying fairly early in the pregnancy. She bled for two weeks and needed a number of transfusions. Even though there was no hope of survival for the baby, her body wasn’t reacting the way it ‘normally’ would. Now, there are many of us, especially those of us with strong faith, who would see the possibility of a miracle. But what about those who don’t have a strong faith? My friend was afraid she would bleed to death. Because the doctors were not willing and/or able to induce her in the state in which she lived, she ended up driving herself, at great risk to her own health, to another state in order to be induced and put an end to the bleeding.

I actually feel that there is a good possibility this was God’s grace working in the baby’s life, as, even though I call this woman a friend, she is not stable enough to be a good mother, and has put her only other child through hell already at the age of 11. But my main point was that none of us can know with certainty what kind of medical situation can arise that jeopardizes either the mother or the baby’s health - or both. So to make blanket rules for all to follow as if every person’s circumstances are the same, I find difficult to swallow, even though I do believe that life begins at conception.
 
ccmnxc said:
Below is a debate between Peter Kreeft and David Boonin on the morality of aboriton at the University of Minnesota in the spring of 2010. In my opinion, Kreeft lost this debate, which is why I am seeking help.
youtube.com/watch?v=6RobCjM0ZLA

His basic argument was that even if the fetus had a right to life equvalent to ours, it doesn’t have the right to sustain itself using the body of the mother.
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At what age do human beings become self sufficient? Until that age, in one way or another, they tend to depend upon the body of a parent to either directy sustain it through nutritional transfer through the umbilical cord, or through labor which brings in the income necessary to purchase sustenance.
If you choose not to sustain your four year old via your labor while sustaining yourself, there are legal ramifications. If your four year old perishes, you are likely to be held accountable. Why should we have a lower standard of accountability in the case of a preborn child?
 
ccmnxc said:
My bad, I forgot to mention this one. Boonin was given this response and he said that if we cut the umbilical cord, the baby is still alive, but will soon die because it doesn’t have the nutrients and oxygen it needs. We aren’t directly killing the fetus, we just aren’t giving it the neccessities it needs to survive.
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Lets move his argument to other similar situations and find out if it holds.
  1. lets say a mother of a newly born infant decides that she doesn’t want her child anymore. So she decides that she will stop breast feeding the child. Yes, there is adoption, but lets say for the sake of argument that only the mother can feed the child. Would it be ok for her to stop feeding the child?
  2. lets say a child is the only possible source of food for his aged parents. They are too old to take care of themselves. He has grown tired of them and wants them to stop leaching his estate, so he decides to stop giving them food. Is that just?
I would argue that much of the problem that exists in this debate is the word “moral”. It is ill defined. Let us use the word “Justice” instead. I would define justice as “rendering to every man what is due to him”. Clearly the act of severing an umbilical cord is unjust. That child is due life. To argue that it is ok to abort the child in this instance I think would require you to say that there is some injustice being done to the woman by the child that needs to be fixed. Are we really to say that it is unjust that a child should need it’s mother?

Further, there is an implication that inaction can never be immoral. This is false.
 
DAML72 said:
But what about the situations in which ordinary care becomes extraordinary care? Pregnancy is a very complex condition, and any number of things can go wrong. For example, I have a friend who was in the process of miscarrying fairly early in the pregnancy. She bled for two weeks and needed a number of transfusions. Even though there was no hope of survival for the baby, her body wasn’t reacting the way it ‘normally’ would. Now, there are many of us, especially those of us with strong faith, who would see the possibility of a miracle. But what about those who don’t have a strong faith? My friend was afraid she would bleed to death. Because the doctors were not willing and/or able to induce her in the state in which she lived, she ended up driving herself, at great risk to her own health, to another state in order to be induced and put an end to the bleeding.

I actually feel that there is a good possibility this was God’s grace working in the baby’s life, as, even though I call this woman a friend, she is not stable enough to be a good mother, and has put her only other child through hell already at the age of 11. But my main point was that none of us can know with certainty what kind of medical situation can arise that jeopardizes either the mother or the baby’s health - or both. So to make blanket rules for all to follow as if every person’s circumstances are the same, I find difficult to swallow, even though I do believe that life begins at conception.
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I think it is true that the conversation becomes more complex, and the question of the morality of abortion becomes less clear as the risk to the mother’s life increases. Blanket rules are usually unjust, that is why the church very rarely makes them. In the cases where a woman’s life is in serious danger it can be moral for her to have a surgery that has the side effect of concluding the life of the child. This is not the same thing as an abortion in that in an abortion the primary intent is with the taking of the life of the child.

But even with the assumption that this mother made the right choice, we should NEVER say that a death is a blessing or a grace.
 
St_Francis said:
BTW, this is one of the problems i see with basing anti-abortion arguments on tye right to life. In reality and in traditional Catholic thinking, the problem is the violation of the obligation to refrain from killing. But this is probably one of those obscure things that few are concerned about.
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👍👍👍
I’ve got to remember that in my next ‘letter to the editor’ … that will not get printed. Again.

Good thinking, Saint.
 
I am going to admit that I do not have a strong argument to shut down Boonin’s comparison between the bone marrow transplants while a patient is in a coma versus a chemical abortion where the baby dies after coming out of the womb… Kreeft (from what I watched) could not come up with a decent rebuttal here and I can’t think of anything, myself, that would prove Boone wrong on this point (as much as I would have loved to have been able to come up with something).

What we need to remember is this. As Catholics, we are given the privelege of understanding God’s law, but they don’t always have to make sense to us. Satan has arguments that are going to appear convincing to those of us who have IQ’s of 80 as well as to those of us who have IQ’s of 180. Even though we have the Truth through the infallible teachings of the Catholic Church, it isn’t always going to be possible outwit our opponents with logical arguments. When I converted to the faith, it wasn’t the logical arguments of abortion that converted me, it was deep sensation of longing and desire to love and be close to God that converted me (which gave the logical arguments against abortion a much more profound effect in turning me pro-life then those arguments could ever do by themselves).

Therefore, I recommend that people watch this video with a certain skepticism. We have to remember that we are pro-life first and foremost out of our loyalty to the magisterium and it’s infallible teachings as established by Jesus Christ. Our logical understanding of these teachings is just icing on the cake. If we get trapped in a purely rational understanding of Church teachings (as what appears to be happening in this debate on abortion), we give Satan a huge opening to lead us astray by arguments such as the one that David Boonin was proposing.

Remember the following quote by St. Padre Pio (source = saintsworks.net/forums/index.php?topic=1969.msg27779#msg27779 )
‘One day, while I was hearing confessions, a man came to the confessional where I was. He was tall, handsome, dressed with some refinement and he was kind and polite. He started to confess his sins, which were of every kind: against God, against man and against the morals. All the sins were obnoxious! I was disoriented, in fact for all the sins that he told me, but I responded to him with God’s Word, the example of the Church, and the morals of the Saints. But the enigmatic penitent answered me word for word, justifying his sins, always with extreme ability and politeness. He excused all the sinful actions, making them sound quite normal and natural, even comprehensible on the human level… He continued this way with the sins that were gruesome against God, Our Lady, the Saints, always using disrespectful round-about argumentation. He kept this up even with with the foulest of sins that could be conjured in the mind of a most sinful man. The answers that he gave me with such skilled subtlety and malice surprised me. I wondered: who is he? What world does he come from? And I tried to look at him in order to read something on his face. At the same time I concentrated on every word he spoke, trying to discover any clue to his identity… But suddenly; through a vivid, radiant and internal light I clearly recognized who he was. With a sound and imperial tone I told him: “Say long live Jesus, long live Mary!” As soon as I pronounced these sweet and powerful names, Satan instantly disappeared in a trickle of fire, leaving behind him an unbearable stench.’
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St. Padre Pio
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See, this is where pro-choicers try to “win”, via analogy. Here’s the thing, though: in this case, analogy isn’t necessary, so why are we using it?

Let’s just look at it as it is. A mother has a child. Getting rid of the child would kill the child outright-no ifs, ands, or buts. Is it moral to commit an action where you would knowingly kill your own child? Not refrain from saving the (innocent) child’s life, but kill your child?

Of course not! To argue otherwise is to obfuscate the point to avoid what seems like an uncomfortable conclusion.

Let’s go a step further-a fetus DOES have the right to use the mother’s body. The mother’s womb is specifically set up for a child to live in. That the child is living in the place where it’s meant to live, and that the mother’s womb is functioning normally, is not the same as somebody who is forcibly stuck to you. Any sorts of “analogies” like this try to dodge the point.

Tell it like it is. No analogies-let’s talk about abortion. This is the truth, not a child needing bone marrow or anything like that. That’s something best left to different debates if it floats your boat.
 
ccmnxc said:
My bad, I forgot to mention this one. Boonin was given this response and he said that if we cut the umbilical cord, the baby is still alive, but will soon die because it doesn’t have the nutrients and oxygen it needs. We aren’t directly killing the fetus, we just aren’t giving it the neccessities it needs to survive.
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First, the action of an abortion involves cutting up the baby or poisoning the baby or poisoning the environment of the baby.

Second, only cutting the umblilical cord also results in a loss of nutrition, which is part of basic care.

Third, if I were to go into a hospital and cut off the air to a patient, I would be charged with murder, even if ventilation is extraordinaey care. The point of stopping medical care when that care becomes burdensome is to allow nature to take its course, not to kill the patient.
 
I just watched the debate in regards to what he said. We have tests today that can tell a woman whether having sex would result in a baby at a certain time of the month. I think therefore she should find out.
What I would ask is the baby infringing on the moms life so much
Also using analogy like he did
Supposed I get into my car to go to buy something. I don’t want to hit someone. I go out knowing I could. Just like sex I could get pregnant, but I might not be thinking I would get pregnant. I’m driving and hit a child not very seriously. He Is stable, but still needs my help if not he will die. Let’s say I’m in Canada or Alaska and It is snowing cell and phone don’t work so I cannot call for help. Is it ok for me to let the child die. I didn’t want to hit him, but I did. In the bone marrow case when I said. I would give you bone marrow my intension was 9 months
 
So, I think there’s a somewhat clear argument here that will unravel Boonin’s analogy on the comatose bone marrow doner.

There is a fundamental difference between his analogy and the and a mother supporting a child in the womb. Boonin focuses heavily on the act of removing the medical “tube” in the case of the two hospital patients and it does, in fact, appear to be very similar to certain types of abortions (where the baby is still alive after being removed from the womb). The difference between this analogy and abortion, however, lies in who established to the dependency between the two human beings, in the first place. In the case of the analogy, it was a doctor who setup the “feeding” tube for transferring material from the comatose patient to the terminally ill patient. In the case of a mother and a chiild, however, it was not a doctor who established the ambilical cord between the two human beings but, rather, it was God’s active Will.

God may have allowed the doctor to begin the process of transferring bone marrow, but this was God’s passive Will, not His active Will. At the end of the day, it was a human authority that established the life-line between the two hospital patients, while it was a divine authority that established the life-line between mother and child. A human authority can be overruled by another human authority, but this is not the case with a divine authority. God has full command over His creation, and so a duty exists for a woman to continue with a pregnancy (even if she doesn’t want to) as a result of this manifestation of God’s active Will.

At the heart of Boonin’s error, lies his athiestic intrepretation of the act of conception. He compared pregnancy to a person making an initial donation to a food-bank (claiming that no obligation exists to make subsequent donations). This is incorrect since during that initial “donation to the food bank” there occured a divinely miraculous act which completely changed the nature of all subsequent “donations” (ie. God created a human soul). An athiest, however, believes that a human being is a clump of cells, so the donation of the sperm and the egg (ie. the first cell) really appears to just be the first “donation” in a line subsequent deposits necessary to make a giant clump of cells… 😦
 
ccmnxc said:
He didn’t even attempt to deny Kreefts arguments, but rather forcussed on the right to life. His basic argument was that even if the fetus had a right to life equvalent to ours, it doesn’t have the right to sustain itself using the body of the mother.
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Once he said that, he should have immediately been asked then, if it is ok to allow a one-month old, a two year old, a four year old to die, since they too need sustenance from an adult. This shows the fallacy in that argument - every society agrees without question that until they can provide for themselves, ALL children, born or unborn, require adults to provide that sustenance. In other words, his argument is invalid on the face of it because it goes against the natural order - humans and other creatures MUST provide sustenance to their young, by natural design., or else their young die, and without any young ones, the entire species dies.

So it can be seen that the argument is flawed - as somebody said - ordinary care; ordinary care is the natural order of things. if somebody says, “I want to live, but I don’t want to eat” people would say that is impossible,you must eat to live, it is against nature to think you can live without eating. This guy is arguing children who cannot sustain themselves are allowed to die; no adult is required to provide for them??? He is arguing against the natural order of things. he is saying people should be able to live without eating, and trying to persuade others to agree with him on that. A delusional wacko in my opinion.

That’s my two cents.

God bless you.
 
Marc_Anthony said:
See, this is where pro-choicers try to “win”, via analogy. Here’s the thing, though: in this case, analogy isn’t necessary, so why are we using it?

Let’s just look at it as it is. A mother has a child. Getting rid of the child would kill the child outright-no ifs, ands, or buts. Is it moral to commit an action where you would knowingly kill your own child? Not refrain from saving the (innocent) child’s life, but kill your child?

Of course not! To argue otherwise is to obfuscate the point to avoid what seems like an uncomfortable conclusion.

Let’s go a step further-a fetus DOES have the right to use the mother’s body. The mother’s womb is specifically set up for a child to live in. That the child is living in the place where it’s meant to live, and that the mother’s womb is functioning normally, is not the same as somebody who is forcibly stuck to you. Any sorts of “analogies” like this try to dodge the point.

Tell it like it is. No analogies-let’s talk about abortion. This is the truth, not a child needing bone marrow or anything like that. That’s something best left to different debates if it floats your boat.
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Amen end of story!!! 👍
 
Thank you all for your responses. I’m already feeling better about this.
 
The sad thing about this is we have lost sight of what a beautiful gift it is to be able to bring another life into the world, a chance for another human to know and love our God. People make this to hard, they have almost made pregnancy a disease to be avoided and the baby property. God help us all!
 
ccmnxc said:
… He answered a couple of objections to his statement. The first one was that, aside from rape and incest, the mother gave consent by having sex. He then gave an example on when consent was given to an action and when it wasn’t. The first one was gambling in a casino. By playing the game, you indirectly give consent to have your money taken should you lose the game. Another example he gave was taking a walk in a neighborhood that you knew to be very dangerous, and you end up mugged. By taking the risk of walking in the neighborhood, you still haven’t given consent to be mugged. …

Thanks.
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It seems that you are saying that Boorsin gave these argumemts? So I will answer as if he were.

The first one, about gambling, is more like tye abortion issue. A man goes into a casino with every cent he owns in the world. His rent money, his food money, his retirement fund…

And he loses it all on a toss of the dice.

Wow! Does he get to get his money back after gambling it away? No. He consented to the act, knowing that he was taking a chance of losing his future, and he lost the gamble.

The example about getting mugged is not sufficiently analogous, because there is a direct relationship between one’s consent to gamble and doing so, and losing, just as there is a direct consent between consenting to have sex and doing so, and creating a child.

The analogy about getting mugged also doesn’t work because it involves a broken chain of consent. A person walking in any neighborhood is not consenting to being mugged, nor is there a direct corelation between walking and getting mugged. The mugging occurs as the result of the consent of another person altogether, whether it occurs in a good neighborhood or bad.

(I’m sorry I can’t watch the video because I have no sound on my iPod, so I’m going on your description.)
 
I stumbled into this website while researching the topic of abortion tonight. Having read several books by Peter Kreeft and I cannot believe he would lose a debate on child killing. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence that has not been influenced the Dictatorship of Relativism could ever conclude that a “physician” that inserts a cannula (a hollow plastic tube that is connected to a vacuum-type pump by a flexible hose) and dislodges that baby and sucked into the tube - either whole or in pieces, could ever be justified in his/her actions.

I will now spend the hour and half to watch the video and come back to give my impressions of this.
 
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