Resolved: Abortion is morally impermissible

Introduction In my last round, I'll try to give an overview of the main areas of dispute, to show that the Pro-Life case in this debate has been the most plausible. An evidential approach against bodily rights My Original case I began by arguing that my objections should be interpreted as providing a cumulative case against Con's violinist argument being parallel to pregnancy. So long as (1) each objection has some force in weakening the violinist intuition and (2) these objections weaken the violinist intuition to be less compelling than the Pro-Life arguments (FLO, Foetal Harm, Infanticide), we have strong evidence that abortion is impermissible. Con's Criticism Con holds that we must take an all or nothing approach to these objections, arguing “if I can demonstrate that none of these objections individually is satisfactory, I will succeed in my defense of Thomson's argument.” My Response Con's denial of an evidential method is implausible. Suppose we're in a murder trial. It will likely be that any piece of evidence (e.g. fingerprints on the murder weapon) in isolation does not prove guilt. Similarly, an eye-witness, on its own, does not prove guilt. Yet, we know the total evidence, if weighed cumulatively, would reasonably deliver a guilty verdict. If Con's standard is that each objection must be definitive in isolation to have any force at all against his argument, it sees we'd have to reject evidentialism wholesale. Thus, it seems Con's divide and conquer strategy is not a good epistemic rule of thumb and we should accept my cumulative approach. . The Responsibility Objection My Original Case I initially responded to Con's argument by pointing out an important disanalogy between pregnancy and the violinist example. In pregnancy, the woman's actions foreseeably cause (i) the sickly violinist's neediness and (ii) her plight (sharing her body with another), whereas in the violinist case, she is a victim and therefore in no way responsible for her predicament. I gave the Jill example in support of this objection. Con's Criticism Con argues that in my Jill example, Drug Inc is culpable because their actions make Jill worse off than she was before, whereas pregnancy does not make the child worse off than it would have been otherwise. My Response Bad Faith Objection: Readers will remember Con's statement in R1, that his argument: “will not rest on claims about the metaphysical or moral status of the fetus. I will grant, for the sake of argument, that the fetus has the same right to life you and I have.” Bodily Rights arguers always do this and for good reason. If Con were to assume a foetus doesn't have the right to life, his case would be obviously question-begging. Alternatively, if Con were to argue this when running this argument (e.g. through a personhood argument), bodily rights become wholly redundant – a successful personhood case would have already established the permissibility of abortion. Con makes the moral distinction between (i) needy persons and (ii) bringing into existence a person in need, replying to my Jill example. Suppose he's correct. Con is essentially saying that the foetus does not have the same moral weight as the violinist – he is disputing “the moral status of the fetus.” By doing so, Con reduces his own argument to either begging the question or a triviality, effectively destroying the Bodily Rights case. Amending the analogy However, suppose Con's distinction diffuses the Jill example. It seems obvious that a woman would still be morally culpable for the existence of a person in need, as seen by the following example: Suppose we have a Pleasure Machine, where pressing the button creates a euphoric sensation. However, 1 in every 100 cases, this machine produces a newborn baby. Moreover, these newborns are born with a condition where they need the mother's body (her breast milk) for the first 9 months. Debbie, being fully informed of this, doesn't want a child. Yet Debbie chooses to forgo this risk to attain pleasure. She pushes the button and a baby pops out. (1) Clearly, Debbie would be morally responsible for this child, even to the point where she lets the child use her body. If she lets it die by refusing it her body, she would be morally culpable. Why? Because Debbie is responsible for her plight and that of the child. Moreover, 38% of all abortions are repeat abortions. (2) Surely, given the carelessness of couples acting so irresponsibly so often, our sympathies ought to shift to the innocent party. Thus, the Responsibility Objection completely diffuses the violinist intuition. The Exaggerated Burdens Objection My Original Case Here, I argued that there is a huge difference between the burdens of pregnancy and those in the violinist case. Con's Criticism Con affirms that the burdens in each cases are “roughly similar”, listing some of the various physical burdens of pregnancy. My Response The strength of this objection completely depends whether these burdens are “roughly similar”. I will show this is demonstrably false. First, consider Con's extensive list of pregnancy burdens. Many of these are of the straw-grabbing variety (e.g. food cravings) and are not significant enough to justify letting an innocent human being die. Second, every burden Con mentions are intermittent, with most occurring sparingly or not at all (e.g. complications with allergies). By contrast, every serious burden in the violinist case ( isolation from daily activities, hospitalisation, discomfort, being bedridden and attached to another's body) would always obtain for the entire 9 months. I simply ask readers: would you choose pregnancy burdens or being hooked up to the violinist, if you had to? If Con is right, there should be no clear choice. If I am correct, most people will agree that pregnancy is clearly less burdensome. The Competing Bodily Rights Objection My Original Case Here, I argued that as Con grants the unborn are persons like the violinist, we must respect their bodily integrity. As most forms of abortion resemble destroying the violinist, rather than unplugging, we have a strong objection to these methods of abortion. Con's Criticism Con gives 2 replies. Firstly, that medical abortions, which make up most abortions, are analogous to unplugging. Second, even if we rip apart the violinist's body, he won't feel any pain, and the foetus arguably doesn't have the right to bodily integrity anyway, prior to consciousness. As such, these methods would be permissible. My Response Reply 1: I acknowledged that this doesn't apply to all abortion methods, so Con's criticism seems misplaced. He quotes the figure of medical abortions in Scotland (81%). Scotland seems to be outlier here, for whatever reason (England and Wales, as well as the USA's figure of medical abortions is significantly less than 60%) (3) (4). Almost all the rest of abortions are done using the methods I described. So, this is a much bigger problem than Con supposes. Second, even the if my criticism applied only to a fifth of abortions, this would still involve millions of cases. Reply 2: It's just trivial to point out that bodily integrity can be violated without being conscious (e.g. coma patients). If Con means to say that the unborn don't have bodily rights absent consciousness, this is just another example of the Bad Faith Objection. As for Con's statement that it would be permissible to rip another's body apart to unplug, (1) this intuition is much weaker than the original analogy (2) it's self-defeating. Con dispenses with his own principle (bodily rights) to deflect the force of this objection. Lastly, when we factor in that the Good Samaritan/couple are responsible for the situation, it's wildly counter-intuitive to say that they should be able to rip another's body apart to unplug. Stranger vs Offspring Objection My Original Case The intuition that we can unplug and let our own child die is much weaker than than unplugging from a stranger, thus Con's argument again manufactures a disanalogy to wrongly inflate our intuitions in his favour. Con's Criticism Con argues that biological relatedness confers no special obligations on us, citing the example of a man's sperm being stolen and contending that we not not be morally required to stay plugged to an unwanted, long-lost child. My Response It's not just biological relatedness that I was alluding to. Parents are also de facto guardians of their children, entailing their duties to their child far outweighs the minimal duties to strangers. These can be given up in special circumstances (e.g. adoption) – but only when it's firmly in the interests of the child. Indeed, one of the consequences of Con's position would be that if parents must volunteer to their duties, unwilling fathers could just “give up” their duty to pay child support. Clearly, this view must be wrong. The importance of this is that parents have a special obligation to their children, which must entail a commitment not to irrevocably harm them. Clearly, abortion does so and so is seriously morally wrong. FLO argument Readers will remember I gave an extensive argument against abortion, based on the FLO account. Con's response in R2 was to accept the main thrust of FLO, challenging the widely accepted P2. I gave 3 objections to why his Continuity criticism would not work: 1. The Sufficiency Objection (it's irrelevant) 2. Justification of P2 (it provides no real case against P2) 3. Moral Absurdities (it leads to the Foetal Harm and Infanticide Objections) Thus, it seems the case against abortion remains formidable – much stronger than the violinist analogy. Conclusion Thus, on the balance of arguments, we have strong reason to affirm that abortion is morally impermissible. Sources 1 - Scott Klusendorf, The Case for Life, P195 2, 3 - (page 5) https://www.gov.uk... 4 - https://www.cdc.gov...