Unusual pro-choice arguement

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Marc_Anthony

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Hi all,

First let me start off by saying that I am crazy pro-life. Like, ultra pro-life. However, I think it’s important that we understand the arguements of the other side. When we understand them, we realize that pro-choicers are not necessarily evil or selfish, simply misguided.

Keep in mind that, after much thought and prayer, I have found a way to refute the arguement I am about to give. But it’s not easy. So, I present to you, the “My Sister’s Keeper” arguement:

Have you ever heard of the book My Sister’s Keeper? I have never read it but the pro-choicers described it to me. It is about a girl who’s body is, as they described it to me, “perfectly suited to support the body of her sister”. As in, she had to live with her sister or she’d die. The girl sued that she was being forced to live with her sister and won-rightly so. That is a question of personal morals and sacrifice that you shouldn’t be forced to make. You should have the right to refuse being someone’s slave, more or less, to keep them alive.

So the obvious parallel is that a mother should not be FORCED, under law, to have to carry the child; yes, the child would die, but on the other hand, this arguement says, the mother should not be forced to keep the child alive if she doesn’t want to, right?

Please don’t get into semantics in the book if you’ve read it, that’s not the point. Just deal with the given hypothetical, please.

I’m interested to see other people’s refutations of this arguement. When a decent amount of people have given their responses to the arguement, I’ll give mine as well as the excellent refutation of this arguement by Matthew Warner of fallible blogma. He says it much better than I do.

Treat this as an intellectual excercise.

Good luck!
 
Hi Marc,

Quick preliminary question, just so that I can understand the argument. When the argument says
the Argument:
You should have the right to refuse being someone’s slave, more or less, to keep them alive.
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would this mean that I don’t have to feed and clothe my children anymore? I really am a slave to them, more or less. Or is there something different between the two cases (sister keeping sister alive versus parent keeping an already born child alive) that the argument contemplates?

Thanks,
VC
 
I think you would have to look at this in a context outside of pregnancy to find your answer. A pregmant woman is tied to and gives support to a baby. Because you are using hypotheticals, I will use a hypothetical. If two people were locked in a cell together, and the jailers passed food enough for both into the cell but only gave it to one person, and then that person refused to give the other the share of the food, so that the other died, is that murder? I woudl say it is. It is like when you see someone who is in mortal danger and do nothing to help. Immoral - definately. Illegal - hard to tell sometimes.

The other argument against this is that the slavery is not the same as what we think of as slavery - except in the case of rape, these women did not get randomly selected and dragged against their will to take care of the baby. They chose to engage in behavior that could cause a life to be formed.

If your sister died and left you her newborn to take care of, would you toss it out on the street? Even if it was inconvenient for you? You would take care of it because it is a living human being and needs to be taken care of or it will die. It’s no different for an unborn human being…
 
To make this more difficult, let’s assume our hypothetical pregnant woman was raped.
 
Pregnancy is a totally natural bodily function which the female body was designed for, and the mother will have every part of her body after giving birth that she had before the pregnancy.

The Sister’s Keeper argument is unclear to me. Is the sister forced to be an organ donor? In that case it’s entirely different from pregnancy.
 
The sister is forced to live wither sister in the hospital, I believe. I don’t know details. For the purposes of our hypothetical, imagine this:

The sister has a major blood disease. The only way she can survive is if her sister, who’s body is considered to be the only perfect match of the sick sister, lives with her in the Hospital for nine months, giving blood. Let’s assume for this hypothetical that it’s about as inconvenient as pregnancy.

The sister will die if the other sister is not intravenously attached to her for nine months, giving blood. Now, is the healthy sister obligated by law to be connected to the sick sister for nine months? Of course not. That would be slavery. So in the same vein, is the mother of a raped child obligated to carry their child for nine months? Why or why not?
 
The hypothetical situation is so manufactured, it is not something that one can rebut because it makes no sense. If these “pro-choice” folks want to say that pregnancy is slavery, then just come out and say it, and let us rebut that, rather than a silly manufactured situation.

I do not see how one can compare pregnancy to slavery. I bet if you asked real slaves from 1860 if she would rather be an unpregnant slave for 9 months or be a pregnant free person, they’d say a pregnant free person 100% of the time.

A fetus growing in the womb depends on the mother for its nourishment and well-being. I hardly call that slavery. But for someone who feels that it is, let them complain to God. Meanwhile, are such women who feel that way justified in freeing themselves from such “slavery” by killing the defenseless human being that didn’t ask to be the “master”?
 
Perhaps slavery was the wrong choice of word. Forget it and just look at the hypothetical. How can it be rebutted, if it can?
 
shelby2014 said:
I think you would have to look at this in a context outside of pregnancy to find your answer. A pregmant woman is tied to and gives support to a baby. Because you are using hypotheticals, I will use a hypothetical. If two people were locked in a cell together, and the jailers passed food enough for both into the cell but only gave it to one person, and then that person refused to give the other the share of the food, so that the other died, is that murder? I woudl say it is. It is like when you see someone who is in mortal danger and do nothing to help. Immoral - definately. Illegal - hard to tell sometimes.

The other argument against this is that the slavery is not the same as what we think of as slavery - except in the case of rape, these women did not get randomly selected and dragged against their will to take care of the baby. They chose to engage in behavior that could cause a life to be formed.

If your sister died and left you her newborn to take care of, would you toss it out on the street? Even if it was inconvenient for you? You would take care of it because it is a living human being and needs to be taken care of or it will die. It’s no different for an unborn human being…
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A pregmant woman is tied to and gives support to a baby.
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Please think no ill will of me speaking here. And I’m not trying to misconstrue your line of thinking here but while it may be true that a pregnant woman may feel tied and gives support to the baby you do not exclaim what it is for a mother carrying an infant inside her feels. As if to say that this is a burdensome chore on behalf of the pregnant woman.
Where does the genuine love aspect come from the woman’s spirit connecting with the new human spiritual soul within her womb? I mean how many pregnant mothers fail to take in such considerations? This I find the sad part.
 
Interesting thoughts, centurionguard…now how would you convince an atheist?
 
Another thing…“being FORCED to carry the child…” “You should have the right to refuse being someone’s slave, more or less, to keep them alive.”

The obvious answer is, you do have the right to refuse the state of pregnancy (I can’t call it slavery). It’s called abstinence. I have little sypathy for couples who ignore the reality of sex. If you are going to engage in sexual relations, be prepared for the possible consequence: pregnancy. It’s part of the law of our universe. Sex can lead to pregnancy, just as jumping off a building can lead to death. There’s no getting away from it. If you don’t want to be a slave to gravity, don’t jump. If you don’t want to be a slave to pregnancy, don’t have sex.

Pregnancy from rape is another matter, however. There is the very significant factor that even though the pregnancy is, to say the least, unwanted, the fetus is a human being. The question boils down to this: Is the woman justified in freeing herself from the unwanted pregnancy by killing the defenseless human being that didn’t ask to be conceived? It’s a difficult situation to be sure, but if you truly believe life begins at conception, the answer is no.

The thing about pregnancy is that you don’t really DO anything to keep the baby alive and growing. You eat and sleep and go about your business like you normally do. The baby grows “automatically”. The difficult part about an unwanted pregnancy is not the “keeping it alive” part. It’s the part about knowing there is another human being growing inside you as a result of a terrible experience, and that it will be born, and what will you do about caring for the baby. Do you keep it or give it up?
 
Marc_Anthony said:
Interesting thoughts, centurionguard…now how would you convince an atheist?
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It can be difficult to convince any atheist on any matters on spirituality.
Why? Because humility is their greatest adversary.
 
I haven’t read all the responses again, but the problem with this situation is that this sister’s situation is not even close to being the same situation as that of an unborn baby and its mother’s.

The mother only needs to be a “slave” to the growing child for 9 months and then she can put the child up for adoption to a mother who will want to be a “slave” to the child for the time it takes for that child to mature into an adult.

These two situations just don’t seem to be the same at all because there’s a time limit on carrying a child as close to term as possible.
 
centurionguard-Try not looking at this from a spiritual standpoint. It’s possible to refute this arguement without using our faith at all (not that our faith wouldn’t support such views, of course). How?

jpjd-The problem with what you’re saying: You said,

"Pregnancy from rape is another matter, however. There is the very significant factor that even though the pregnancy is, to say the least, unwanted, the fetus is a human being. The question boils down to this: Is the woman justified in freeing herself from the unwanted pregnancy by killing the defenseless human being that didn’t ask to be conceived? It’s a difficult situation to be sure, but if you truly believe life begins at conception, the answer is no.

The thing about pregnancy is that you don’t really DO anything to keep the baby alive and growing. You eat and sleep and go about your business like you normally do. The baby grows “automatically”. The difficult part about an unwanted pregnancy is not the “keeping it alive” part. It’s the part about knowing there is another human being growing inside you that will be born, and what will you do about caring for the baby. Do you keep it or give it up? "

First of all, pregnancy can be extremely inconvenient, and sometimes the problems with an unplanned pregnancy caused by a rape are more than physical. I’ve heard stories where girls were forced to leave home unless they aborted.

Second, everybody here agrees that the fetus is a human being. But going back to my hypothetical: Should the healthy sister be forced by law to keep the sick sister alive for nine months? I would say no. Now how is this different from a Mother not wanting to be forced by law to keep a child alive for nine months?
 
I’ve seen this argument many at time, the problem with this hypothetical is its completley unrealistic, its like saying “oh, what would you do if a zombie broke in your windows and a vampire came in your door and a werewolf was on yuour back and you have to give one of your children to the one of the monsters”.

Therefore, it becomes almost impossible to refute this BS, and that’s the point, its one of those pro-abortion mind jumbles that is designed to use an unrealistic, illogical and completely impossible example to compare it to a realistic situation.

The pregnant woman, bar a rape scenario, is not a slave to the human uterine entity. She engaged in the behaviour to put it there, therefore, the responsibilty to that child is her’s and her parnters. If she doesn’t want to be pregnant, or risk pregnancy, keep her legs shut and tell her partner to keep it in his pants. Its just that simple.

The problem with the sister’s keeper rubbish is that even if it DID happen, it would be super, super, duper, puper rare. Pregnancy is not rare. And for the majority of women, there are no problems.

If anythign, the foetus is a slave, the woman paying someone to kill them, the woman being in complete control of whether it lives or dies, that child didn’t ask to be concieved in the womb of an abortion minded woman.

However, the sister’s keeper’s argument relies on pointing out the “slavery” of the woman and how important it is she has her freedom, well, what if she wants her freedom at 39 weeks. Arguments of this sort demand abortion freely through all nine months of pregnancy. It is simply an attempt to befuddle the science. They can’t come up with any decent scientific or medical arguments to support the killing of these children, so they have to make up stories that are completely impossible.
 
Loboto-Me said:
I haven’t read all the responses again, but the problem with this situation is that this sister’s situation is not even close to being the same situation as that of an unborn baby and its mother’s.

The mother only needs to be a “slave” to the growing child for 9 months and then she can put the child up for adoption to a mother who will want to be a “slave” to the child for the time it takes for that child to mature into an adult.

These two situations just don’t seem to be the same at all because there’s a time limit on carrying a child as close to term as possible.
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I’m not insensitive to any woman being raped and carrying a bastards child. But to say a woman/mother is a slave to carrying a child debasing both the pregnant woman and the child she’s carrying? Maybe I’m missing something here :confused:
 
Marc, upon thinking about your hypothetical, I would say that there are thousands of people in that very situation of your hypthetical sister. Think of the caregivers, those family members such as spouses or adult children, who take care of the terminally ill, the handicapped, the dependent elderly, in their own home. I think many of these caregivers might feel enslaved at times, having the reponsibililty of caring for their dependent family member foisted upon them by circumstance, not by choice.

We do this because we are caring human beings. We don’t just abandon those who are dependent on us for their very lives. I would say to the person that feels enslaved, if you think you have it tough, how do you think the terminally ill, the handicapped, and the dependent elderly feel? And yes, even the fetus in danger of being aborted, if it could only know of it’s vulnerability. And to have the continuation of your life dependent on someone who has no regard for your life has to be the ultimate in frightening experiences.

BTW Marc, you can’t say “just disregard the spiritual”. The spiritual is the very heart of the matter. It is exactly the reason pregnancies should not be aborted. Because the fetus is a human being, created by God, and we have no right to take that life away. But those in the “pregnancy is slavery” movement don’t recognize that factor, and that is the very crux of the abortion debate.
 
Marc_Anthony said:
The sister is forced to live wither sister in the hospital, I believe. I don’t know details. For the purposes of our hypothetical, imagine this:

The sister has a major blood disease. The only way she can survive is if her sister, who’s body is considered to be the only perfect match of the sick sister, lives with her in the Hospital for nine months, giving blood. Let’s assume for this hypothetical that it’s about as inconvenient as pregnancy.

The sister will die if the other sister is not intravenously attached to her for nine months, giving blood. Now, is the healthy sister obligated by law to be connected to the sick sister for nine months? Of course not. That would be slavery. So in the same vein, is the mother of a raped child obligated to carry their child for nine months? Why or why not?
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  1. If we live in a world where women must be forced to behave morally, i.e., women don’t jump at the chance to assist their sister - that society is probably going down the toilet anyway.
  2. One sister is responsible for bringing the other sister into existence. If that does not create a sense of obligation, I refer back to 1.
  3. Rape is a moot argument. If you are raped, you are given the morning after pill, which should cause no qualms among those contemplating abortion.
  4. Society in its entirety is provides its lifeblood to maintain the lives of all sorts of criminals. If it is acceptable to be in slavery to those who commit the most heinous acts (thereby of questionable humanity) , I don’t think it is a stretch at all to put ourselves out for an innocent.
I’m surprised they would stretch far enough to equate a fetus with a sister - usually they don’t like to get that human.
 
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