Abortion

Good luck to you as we advance into further rounds. There are plenty of cases where murdering a human is largely considered morally correct. For example, self defense. Or, again, if person X is planning to kill persons A, B, and C. Feel free to dispute this. Murder is the UNLAWFUL killing, killing that CANNOT be justified. Abortion is NEVER justified. I am going to jump straight to the violinist argument as it is my favourite. Let me re-state the violinist argument. You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist, a famousunconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers hascanvassed all available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They havetherefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneyscan 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 now is plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's onlyfor nine months. By then, he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you. ’ Is itmorally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be 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 still longer? What if thedirector of the hospital says, ‘Tough luck, I agree, but you've now got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged intoyou, 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 rightto decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him. ’ I imagine that you wouldregard this as outrageous. REFUTATION 1. Ask: Are the parallels truly parallel? For Thomson’s argument to work, a woman being forciblyhooked up to the stranger violinist must parallel (in morally relevant ways) a mother who is hookedup to her own child. Are there important differences between pregnancy and kidnapping? Yes. (a) Thomson’s argument tries to justify abortion as merely the withholding of support. But it is also somethingelse--the killing of a child through dismemberment, poison or crushing. As Beckwith pointsout, "Euphemistically calling abortion the 'withholding of support' makes about as much senseas calling suffocating someone with a pillow the withdrawing of oxygen. "(b) Thomson assumes that a mother has no more obligation to her own child then she does a total stranger (or aburglar). Clearly this is mistaken. What if the mother awoke to find herself hooked up to herown child instead of the violinist? We may not have the obligation to sustain strangers who areunnaturally plugged into us, but we do have a duty to sustain our own offspring, both legallyand morally. As Schwarz points out, “The very thing that makes it possible to say that theperson in bed with the violinist has no duty to sustain him; namely, that he is a strangerunnaturally hooked up to him, is precisely what is absent in the case of the mother and her child. ”I am also going to point out a couple of things 1. The Consent Objection: Perhaps the most damaging critique of the argument comes from the fact that in Thomson’sanalogy the woman is connected to the violinist against her will. However, 99% of pregnancies occur out of consensualsex. Adults engaging in sex, even with contraceptives, know pregnancy is a possible outcome and should be heldaccountable for their actions. Thomson’s “Society of Music Lovers” is certainly a far cry from reality and how pregnancyactually happens. (This is not to say that abortion is justified by rape, only that Thomson’s analogy does not represent theoverwhelming majority of pregnancies. )2. The Parental Obligation Objection: The analogy also fails to take into account the relationship of the mother and childin pregnancy and that parents have special obligations to their children that they normally would not have to strangers. Forexample, if a stranger comes to my door asking for a place to stay I am not obligated to help them, but if my five year-oldcomes to the door asking to sleep at home turning him away would be child abuse!3. The Different Burdens Objection: The analogy is a rather perverted view of pregnancy and makes it out to be far moredifficult than it really is (even though it certainly is difficult). Thomson’s view of pregnancy as spending nine months in ahospital bed hooked up to a strange violinist is disturbing and misleading. During the first weeks of pregnancy the fetus isnot even noticeable. Later, when the woman displays the physical characteristics of pregnancy she is still capable ofmaintaining a routine of leisure, exercise, and having a social life. It would be an extreme rarity for a woman to need to beconfined to a hospital bed for all nine months of her pregnancy.4. The Killing Versus Letting Die Objection: Unplugging the violinist is a passive way of killing him, while abortion isa violent, active way of killing the unborn child. The act of unplugging a device from the woman, which results in theviolinist’s death, is a morally neutral one. While the violinist’s death is foreseen, it is not intended. This is contrasted in anabortion where the abortionist intentionally and directly kills the child and the child does not die in a passive way like theviolinist. Instead, the child dies from poison or dismemberment during the procedure. . http://www.prolifetraining.com...http://www.azrtl.org... The Fetus May Pose a Direct Harm to the Mother In a case where the fetus poses a direct harm, then that is the ONLY time when abortion can be justified. This is a tue story. One of my friends was pregnat and had a baby that was triploid. Obviously we know that triploid animals--including humans cannot surviveThe fetus was draining the mother and the fetus was unable to survive, therefore, an abortion was the only way to save the mother. Furthermore, cases like this are extremely rare. In another case, what if the mother's life was NOT at risk? !E2: This is linguistic folly. Is an acorn an oak tree because it has the potential to be one? Simply the potential to become X does not make me X. It would be silly for me to describe myself as an old man, or even dead. The whole point to E2 is simply to point out that to say a fetus is not a human is to say a dog fetus isn't a dog. I turn it back over to my opponent for her refutations.