The main reason I am doing this blog is to defend
pro-choice bodily rights arguments with a focus on Judith Jarvis
Thomson’s unconscious violinist thought experiment (hence the title
“Restringing the Violinist”). For the full break-down of that thought
experiment see my last post.
Pro-life philosophers have pointed out a number
of differences that they believe to be morally relevant between the violinist
story and pregnancy. I think one of the most powerful objections I have
encountered is the responsibility objection and I will attempt to respond to
that objection in this this and one or two other posts, so this will just be
part one.
The objection goes something like this: in
Thomson’s story you have not done a voluntary action that caused the
violinist to need your kidneys to survive, but in pregnancy the pregnant woman
has done a voluntary action that caused the fetus to need her to survive,
namely, she had sex. This seems to be a morally relevant
difference. Imagine you have poisoned the violinist by accident and that
is why he now needs your kidney to survive, it seems plausible that you are now
morally obligated to stay plugged into him. However, I will demonstrate
in a number of thought experiments that having done a voluntary action that
causes someone to need you to survive does not mean you should be legally
obligated to sacrifice your bodily autonomy for their benefit even if you are
morally obligated.
For example, suppose you and your wife are going on
a romantic road-trip to a cabin in the mountains. You know there is a chance
that you will get into an accident and injure someone, but you are a good
driver and you follow all the rules of the road. You are in a residential area
and a child is obliviously playing with a ball. He runs out from behind a
parked car and you hit him. He is rushed to the hospital. He is okay except for
his kidneys, they are severely damaged and he needs a transplant or he will
die. Although you took precautions in order to avoid a situation like this, you
have still caused someone to need you to survive so a government worker visits
you at your home and informs you that if you do not donate your kidney to the
child you may face jail time. You don’t want to have a criminal record so
you agree to donate. You have to undergo surgery. You have to take a few
months off work, so you are now in a terrible financial situation. Your wife
leaves you and everyone around you looks down on you because you ran over a
kid.
It seems extremely intrusive for people to be
legally obligated to make such enormous sacrifices of their bodily
autonomy. Perhaps it is morally obligatory for you to donate a kidney to
the child, but the added legal obligation seems extraordinarily intrusive to
me.
If we did force people to sacrifice their bodies
for the dependents they create, not only would people who get into car accidents
be required to sacrifice their bodily autonomy, but this may extend to other
situations as well. Currently, you can sue people for all sorts of things and
demand that they financially compensate you for the different ailments they
have inflicted on you. Under the assumption that we can override people’s
bodily autonomy when they have created a dependent we would now be able to
demand that people submit their organs, blood, or bone marrow if they are found
legally responsible for causing someone to need those things to survive.
This seems like a huge injustice.
Suppose I run a small coffee shop and I fail to put
up a “slippery when wet sign” and a customer trips, falls, and gets impaled on
a straw. It goes right through his kidney! He can survive for now, but he
will eventually need a transplant. There is a very long waiting list for the
next kidney and there is no chance that he will get one in time. Does he now
get to sue me for my kidney?
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that that is a
really outlandish analogy, but the point is that it seems extremely morally
problematic to force employers to sacrifice their bodies against their will for
their customers, or employees. This just seems like a terrible consequence of
this line of reasoning. So, although I can appreciate the intuitive power of
this objection I think it ultimately fails, because when you add a legal
dimension (making it more closely parallel making abortion illegal) the
objection leads to some very hard to swallow consequences.
First of all, let me say WOW. I really enjoyed reading this.
ReplyDeleteLet me preface this by saying that I am a pro-life advocate, and I found your blog through Josh Brahm's blog. :)
I thought that I would bring up this idea to offer a different perspective on the hypothetical situation of the young boy that was hit by the car different than abortion.
I can totally understand this argument, but I don't exactly think that it is comparable to the moral obligation of carrying an unborn baby rather than aborting it.
An abortion is purposefully going into the womb and taking the life of the person's "dependent" (using your term). Actually paying a doctor to go into the womb and stop the dependent's heart from beating. That is completely different from choosing not to donate a kidney to a dying child that needs a transplant. That is the equivalent of the driver of the vehicle actually going to the child and killing him himself.
I was recently asked to be a surrogate mother for a friend's leftover frozen embryo from a past IVF treatment. They may not be able to find someone else to be the carrier for this embryo. But just because they may not be able to find a surrogate other than myself, that doesn't make me morally responsible to be the carrier for that embryo either.
The difference is the express intent of the person in this situation. Where as the man that hit the child never INTENDED for the child to die, he isn't obligated to donate his kidney to save his life. It would be more comparable to abortion if the man that was told that he would go to jail if he didn't donate the child his kidney, instead killed the child himself to avoid having to donate it.
In the case of abortion, the woman INTENDS to have someone kill the child. She knowingly stops a heart from beating, on purpose, so that she doesn't have to go through childbirth and carrying a child. That is much different.
Hi Kasey, thank you for commenting. I’m glad you enjoyed reading my article.
Delete“Let me preface this by saying that I am a pro-life advocate, and I found your blog through Josh Brahm's blog. :)”
That’s awesome! Josh is actually a really good friend of mine. He writes an amazing blog.
“An abortion is purposefully going into the womb and taking the life of the person's "dependent" (using your term). Actually paying a doctor to go into the womb and stop the dependent's heart from beating. That is completely different from choosing not to donate a kidney to a dying child that needs a transplant. That is the equivalent of the driver of the vehicle actually going to the child and killing him himself.”
That is a really good point. I realize that there are a lot of differences between my example and pregnancy, however I think when we examine these differences more closely I find they don’t undermine the analogy. I’ve been trying to address one objection per blog post, so that’s why I didn’t go right into it in this post. That being said, I’ll try and give a little bit of a response here.
Firstly, although I do realize that most abortions do actively kill the unborn that is not true of all abortions. For example, some chemical abortions just dislodge the embryo from the wall of the uterus. The embryo does end up dying, but it dies as a result of not being attached to the mother not because someone actively killed it. I think this is analogous to the Thomson’s violinist thought experiment, because it involves one person simply disconnecting themselves from the other. If all abortions were performed this way would you be in favour of their legalization?
But let’s say that all abortions did actively kill the unborn. I would still want them to stay legal. I realize this position is probably really controversial, but I hope you can bear with me and hear me out. I think, as long as the unborn doesn’t feel any pain and isn't conscious there isn’t a morally relevant difference between actively killing and disconnecting and letting die. I think this simply because from the point of view of the unborn there isn’t a difference. In both cases the unborn dies and doesn’t feel any pain during the process. So, I don’t think the unborn is being wronged any more during a typical abortion then he is during an abortion that just disconnects. To me, if it doesn’t make any difference from the point of view of the unborn then I’m not sure how it could be any worse morally. I realize that is probably unconvincing and I don’t want to sound cold, I just don’t see a difference because I think the fetus feels the same thing in both cases. I could be wrong obviously, what are your thoughts?
Hi, I thought I'd commented on this article earlier, but it didn't seem to go through. I'm a pro-life woman, and I found your blog through Secular Pro-Life. You mentioned that you care about human rights, so I thought maybe you'd understand the kinds of things I talk about when I talk about abortion.
ReplyDeleteI guess I do understand your reasons for writing about this issue, but I also have disagreements. Here is an analogy that might help illustrate why:
I have a book that argues against marriage equality (like you, I often seek out viewpoints I disagree with!). The author purports to argue that, regardless of whether gay sex is immoral or not, we shouldn't allow people to marry people of the same sex. They try to make a logical argument, but it's clear that they aren't educated about the realities of bigotry against LGBTQ people, and are unconsciously giving massive short shrift to the humanity and rights of LGBTQ people. And I'll freely admit that many men who are against abortion are the same way--they believe they're operating logically, but they're failing to take into account an internal bias that dismisses women's concerns as lesser.
In the same way, most people have a bias against children in general, and most acutely, the unborn. And who can really blame them? The unborn have been the victims of scientific ignorance and literal invisibility for most of human history, and like other children, they have been seen as the property of their parents, with no human rights of their own.
So while I appreciate you making this logical argument for your position, I think it is something of a distraction from the two issues that people concerned about abortion should really be worrying about, namely: "how can we make sure women and pregnant people are treated justly, as full human beings?"; and "how can we make sure the unborn are treated justly, as full human beings?".
The answers to which I think are obvious: end stigma against female sexuality, support pregnant and parenting women, and fight dehumanization of the unborn. Now, I do believe that granting the unborn a legal right to life is an important part of fighting dehumanization. But if we disagree on that point, let’s first fight dehumanization in other ways (http://argentconflagration.tumblr.com/post/62005032859), so that the question of where the right to life ends can be argued from something closer to an unbiased perspective.
All the best,
Alexa
Thanks for commenting Alexa. :)
Delete"So while I appreciate you making this logical argument for your position, I think it is something of a distraction from the two issues that people concerned about abortion should really be worrying about, namely: "how can we make sure women and pregnant people are treated justly, as full human beings?"; and "how can we make sure the unborn are treated justly, as full human beings?"."
I agree that it's really important to make sure women are treated justly and that we ensure the unborn are treated as full human beings. But part of the way that I want to do that is by making posts like this. I think in order for women to be treated justly, abortion must be legal and for the unborn to be treated like full human beings it requires that people become exposed to arguments defending that view. I realize that this isn't a common position so I want to defend it somehow. Right now I think the best way I can do that is by writing posts like this.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I agree that fighting dehumanization is good and that advocating for women's rights is also good and this is why I am writing this blog.
That being said I checked out your blog and I'll probably modify my blogging to use more humanizing terms like "he/she" and "unborn".
Wow, thanks! Aw man I hope you didn't go poking around too much on my blog, it's mostly all my embarrassing fandom stuff ^^;
DeleteOne final comment (sorry) is that I would say that a gender-neutral pronoun like "they" or even "ze" is preferable to "he/she". The issue is perhaps closer to me than to most other people because I have several friends with genders that fall outside the binary of man/woman. But, it's not accurate to say that everyone is a "he" or a "she"; some people are neither and some people are both! I can point you to some resources if you're interested in learning more.
I really do enjoy reading your posts! And it gives me hope that maybe pro-life and pro-choice people can work together to advance human rights rather than always arguing about legality. ^^
Have a nice day!
"One final comment (sorry) is that I would say that a gender-neutral pronoun like "they" or even "ze" is preferable to "he/she". The issue is perhaps closer to me than to most other people because I have several friends with genders that fall outside the binary of man/woman."
DeleteThanks for bringing this up. I have a few friends who don't fit the traditional gender binary as well. I was using he/she to refer to sex not gender, because I don't think the unborn have a gender yet since they aren't conscious, but they do have a sex. I'll try and use "they" when I can though.
You seem to have a very interesting view. Thanks for commenting on my post.
"I really do enjoy reading your posts! And it gives me hope that maybe pro-life and pro-choice people can work together to advance human rights rather than always arguing about legality. ^^"
Thanks! I hope we can do that as well. My friend Josh is pro-life and we're hoping to do some work together where we try and get people from different sides of the political spectrum to make friends with people from the other side and work together.
It's really nice finding other people who are interested in finding common ground.
Hi, I know this is only tangentially relevant but I was curious to hear your answer: how do you respond to the argument that if banning abortion is a violation of bodily autonomy, abortion itself must be a greater violation of the right to bodily autonomy and integrity? (See this post: http://blog.secularprolife.org/2014/02/confronting-gruesome-reality-of-abortion.html (warning for disturbing content) for a description of abortion methods.)
ReplyDeleteHi. If I could add one ingredient to your car-hits-boy experiment that is present in your coffee-shop experiment --
ReplyDelete"a very long waiting list for the next kidney and there is no chance that he will get one in time" -- then I would say that to legally require the driver to give his kidney would be all right. But I would agree with you about the coffee-shop experiment.
Why the difference between my responses? I have no idea!
Well, that would be overstating it a little. If cross-examined, I could start finding differences between the two situations that might help explain my responses. The man was driving for fun, whereas you needed the coffee shop for your livelihood. I am picturing the coffee-shop customer as an adult, whereas children have a right to be oblivious. But I don't completely know how to logically justify my different responses, and may never know. I hold the driver more responsible, even though he took better precautions than you as the shop owner.
I think that our moral intuitions will always fundamentally be that -- intuitions. Which is not to say that they cannot change, or that logic can have no effect in changing them. But they are not ultimately based on logic.
And obviously, I am not saying that everyone's intuitions are correct. You and I had different intuitions about the driver, and after reading your post, I still end up with pro-life intuitions about pregnancy. All of the intuitions of both of us can't be correct.
But neither do I think that NO intuitions are correct. I think that some are and some aren't.
I have thought as best I could about intuitions and the function of thought experiments here:
http://www.noterminationwithoutrepresentation.org/dismantling-the-bodily-rights-argument-without-using-the-responsibility-argument/
By the way, I also included there an appendix called "Judith Jarvis Thomson on Responsibility."