Resolved: Abortion is morally impermissible

I will now respond to yours. An Evidential Case Against Bodily Rights? Pro maintains that in presenting objections to the violinist analogy, he will adopt an evidential approach. According to him, this means that it might be the case that no objection in particular is enough to refute Thomson’s argument in isolation. However, when these objections are added together or combined with other objections, it is enough to undermine the argument. This way of responding to the violinist analogy is puzzling. If Pro admits that no single objection he presents is enough to destroy the argument, how can adding or combining these objections together make any difference? For example, suppose I wanted to argue that nonhuman animals do not have moral status. Why? This is because they have four legs, feathers, and horns. You point out that not all nonhuman animals have four legs, feathers, or horns. Moreover, these characteristics are irrelevant to moral status anyway. I agree with you, but then reason as follows. Although each of these characteristics *in isolation* do not establish that nonhuman animals lack moral status, taken together they provide a cogent argument. This is absurd. A bad argument is not strengthened by another bad argument. Therefore, if I can demonstrate that none of these objections individually is satisfactory, I will succeed in my defense of Thomson’s argument. I admire my friend Unitedandy’s novel attempt at trying to respond to the argument in this evidential way, however. It shows how willing he is to think outside the box and stand out from others. The Negligence ObjectionPro’s first objection starts with the observation that there is a dissimilarity between the violinist analogy I gave and pregnancy. In the violinist case, you did not do any act that led to the violinist’s predicament. But in pregnancy, at least in typical cases, a woman had sex and created the fetus that now needs her body to go on living. After pointing out this difference, he gives an analogy which involves doing an act that destroys somebody’s kidneys in pursuit of a desired end, and argues that this analogy is more akin to pregnancy. So, the claim seems to be that when you cause another person to need your body for continued life, you become morally required to assist them. Even if that means it will be a substantial cost to you. I call this the negligence objection, since it is always used in comparisons between cases of where somebody is harmed. Does this objection undermine the violinist argument? I’m inclined to think that it does not. In order to understand why this is so, we have to look at Pro’s analogy. In his analogy, as far as I understand it, the drug company who gave Jill the bad drug put her in a worse condition than she was in before. This is why you now owe her assistance, because you have to compensate her for the harm you have caused. This strikes me as no different from the other sorts of cases (drunk driver hits a pedestrian, hunter accidentally shoots a child who now needs the hunter’s assistance) that critics of the violinist analogy have deployed. The difference between my friend Unitedandy’s case and these others, on the one hand, and the pregnancy case, on the other, is that while giving Jill a drug or accidentally shooting her or negligently hitting her with your car makes her worse off than she was before (or than she would have been had you not knocked, short or hit her), conceiving a child does not make her worse off than she was before (or than she would have been had you not conceived her). Therefore, the consideration that generates the obligation to assist in the drug, hunting and driving cases does not apply in the conception case. And so the argument from the claim that you would owe assistance to Jill in the former cases to the conclusion that you would also owe such assistance in the latter case is unsuccessful. The Exaggerated Burden ObjectionPro’s second dissimilarity objection attacks the violinist analogy by challenging the idea that carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term is as burdensome as being hooked up to the violinist. Pregnancy is surely a sacrifice, yes, but it doesn’t require you to remain bedridden for the entire 9 month period. I don’t think this objection is convincing, because carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term followed by labor and delivery is *roughly similar* to the burden involved in being hooked up to the violinist. Philosopher David Boonin in his book “A Defense of Abortion” has listed just some of the physical burdens that happen to pregnant women: “Physical cost: You will almost certainly suffer at least some of the following common symptoms over the next nine months: fatigue, nausea, vomiting, frequent urination, excessive salivation, heartburn, indigestion, flatulence, bloating, constipation, headaches, faintness or dizziness, food aversions and cravings, varicose veins, cramps, body aches, hemorrhoids, bleeding gums, backache, skin blotching, swelling of ankles and feet, itchy abdomen, shortness of breath, difficulty sleeping, clumsiness, nosebleeds. In addition, you will certainly gain weight over nine months to the point where you will experience discomfort and difficulty moving; you will also have to endure the process of losing the weight afterwards or suffer long-term health consequences. Also, you will find that you will be very restricted in the medications you will be permitted to take; if you suffer from allergies, for example, you may well find that you’ll have to live with the symptoms, as well as many of the symptoms already described. Finally, there will be a period of at least a few hours and quite possibly many more than this during which you will experience physical contractions about which nearly every other person who has undergone this procedure has said, “It was the most excruciating pain I have ever felt in my entire life. ” There will then be a slow process of recuperation during which you will at the least be exhausted and sore, and may also have to recover from some minor incisions that are routinely done to facilitate the procedure. ” [1] I conclude that this objection does not destroy the violinist analogy. The Competing Bodily Rights ObjectionPro’s third dissimilarity objection to the violinist analogy makes the observation that abortion is not similar to Thomson’s story. In the violinist situation, the way you bring about his death is by simply unplugging from him. However, abortion, at least in typical cases, is not at all like this. Rather than a gentle detachment, the fetus is completely destroyed by being ripped to pieces by a vacuum. Surely, it is permissible to unplug yourself from the violinist when you merely detach yourself from him, but it’s not permissible to cut up his body in order to free yourself from him. If that’s right, the critic maintains, the violinist analogy cannot justify a pregnant woman removing the fetus from her body if it means destroying the fetus’ body. How should a defender of Thomson’s argument respond? I have two responses. First of all, I want to deny that most abortions are like this. Indeed, in my friend Unitedandy’s country of Scotland, medical abortions make up 81% of all abortions. [2] Medical abortions involve taking pills and cause the pregnant woman to have a miscarriage. This method of abortion does not in any way destroy the body of the fetus, and is more analogous to unplugging from the violinist. Second, if you remembered correctly, the violinist in Thomson’s story is unconscious. If that’s right, then cutting up his body to free yourself will not cause him any pain. Given this fact, why would it be worse to destroy the violinist rather than unplug from him? So, at least prior to consciousness, it seems to me that the violinist analogy could also justify those forms of abortion that involve destruction of the fetus rather than extraction. The Stranger versus Offspring ObjectionPro’s final criticism of the Thomson’s analogy points to a difference in the relationship between the violinist scenario and pregnancy. In the Thomson’s story, the violinist you’re hooked up to is a complete stranger. Surely we have no obligations to strangers. In the case of pregnancy, however, the woman is pregnant with her own biological offspring. Surely, the critic maintains, we have obligations to our children that we don’t owe to strangers. It’s clear that in raising this objection Pro is referring to the biological sense of somebody's child to undercut Thomson’s analogy. I simply have one response. For one thing, why is merely being related to someone morally significant? What is the basis for this view? Pro might reply that it’s just obvious, but it’s not clear to me that it is. Consider the following example. Suppose a man’s sperm is stolen from him, and it is used to create a child even though he has explicitly stated that he never wants kids. Suppose further this child grows up and ends up needing a very painful bone marrow transplant from a donor related to him. If we accept the claim that we have obligations to anybody that is our biological offspring, Pro would have to say the man in this scenario is morally required go through with the bone marrow donation. This is hard to believe. ConclusionPro has presented four objections to Thomson’s violinist analogy to undermine her argument. At face value these objections seem very powerful, but ultimately they appear to be unsuccessful. But perhaps I’m mistaken about this. I don’t know! Let’s see what my friend Unitedandy thinks of my replies to his objections in the next round. Sources:[1] Boonin, David. “A Defense of Abortion. ” Page 239[2] “Termination of Pregnancy Statistics. ” Page 14. https://isdscotland.scot.nhs.uk...