Resolved: Abortion is morally impermissible

In my last round, I will concede defeat on not having refuted Pro’s argument through my personal identity objections. However, this does not mean my case for abortion has failed. Indeed, Thomson’s violinist analogy shows that abortion can still be permissible even if the fetus has a right to life. Therefore, if I can give satisfactory responses to Pro’s criticisms in my last round, I will succeed in my defense of a woman’s right to choose an abortion. An Evidential Approach Against Bodily Rights? Pro claims that it is unreasonable of me to deny his evidential approach in attacking Thomson’s argument. He says my claim that each individual objection must succeed on its own in destroying her analogy is akin to saying that a single piece of evidence in a murder trial can be dismissed if it doesn’t prove guilt by itself. I don’t disagree with Pro’s analogy of a murder trial or using evidence in a cumulative way to arrive at a conclusion. However, I think Pro would agree that each individual evidence that is used in a cumulative case actually has to be good. Going back to the murder trial analogy, if the fingerprints on the murder weapon do not belong to the defendant, and the eye witness says she saw somebody else commit the crime, the prosecution’s case is not made more compelling if they continue to add on or combine more evidence that is also bad. When this is applied to Thomson’s violinist analogy, I think the same line of reasoning follows. Namely, if each objection my friend Unitedandy raises against Thomson’s argument is bad, his case will not be made stronger by combining these objections together So, I’ll say it again. If I can demonstrate that none of these objections individually is satisfactory, I will succeed in my defense of Thomson’s analogy. Looking at this through the lens of the murder trial analogy, if I can show that each piece of evidence by the prosecution is bad, my client walks free. Responsibility ObjectionPro claims I have argued somewhere in my pervious response to this objection that I basically said the fetus does not have the same moral weight as the violinist. This is not at all true. Why does he even think I did this? My response to the responsibility objection was simply that the reason for why you would owe assistance to Jill in the drug company case is because you put her in a worse condition than she was in before. However, when a woman conceives a fetus, that does not put the fetus in a worse condition than she was in before. This is because, prior to the woman engaging in intercourse, the fetus didn’t exist at all. If I am mistaken about this, and the act of conceiving does make the fetus worse off, then I would agree the pregnant woman would owe assistance to the fetus in the same way you would with Jill. But, for the reason I already explained, this is implausible. How does this response dispute the moral status of the fetus? Baby-Making Machine AnalogyPro gives a different analogy than his Jill example to demonstrate how, even if the pregnant woman doesn’t make the fetus worse off, she should still be morally required to let the fetus use her body. Suppose a woman pushes a button that will give her great pleasure, but will have the result that a baby pops out and will only be able to survive if she breastfeeds it. Does the woman in this story have an obligation to let this child use her body by breastfeeding it? Yes, she does. Why? This is because the cost or burden involved in breastfeeding are trivial compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term or being hooked up to the violinist. In other words, Pro’s analogy is nothing like pregnancy, since breastfeeding a child is easy and being pregnant is not. If pregnancy was as trivial a burden as breastfeeding, then I don’t think Thomson’s argument could justify abortion. But, given the list I gave last round of the difficulties pregnant women go through, I think it’s clear that’s not the case. Exaggerated BurdensPro claims that pregnancy is not roughly similar to the burdens involved in being hooked up to the violinist. He says many of the things mentioned on Boonin’s list of burdens in pregnancy are unimportant, and that the burdens involved in being hooked up to the violinist are continuous, whereas this is not the case with pregnancy. I don’t see how this refutes my claim that the burdens are, again, *roughly similar. * I already agree that they are not the same in every respect, and that there are some differences between the two situations. Both cases force the person providing life support to endure considerable cost to themselves, which, I think, is the only thing that is relevant. Competing Bodily RightsHere there seems to be an empirical dispute between Pro and I on whether medical abortions make up the majority of abortions done. The reason I pointed out the figures in Scotland is because that is where my friend Unitedandy lives, and he is the one who instigated this debate. I guess I presupposed we would be debating this issue on his home turf so to speak. However, medical abortions seem to be the most used method of abortion worldwide if we consider the countries in Europe. [1] Since medical abortion are more akin to unplugging from the violinist, it would seem that Thomson’s analogy justifies abortion in the vast majority of cases. I will not attempt to defend my second criticism of this objection, since I believe Pro gave a good response to it and I don’t think my reply will be satisfactory. But for the record, I wasn’t claiming that the fetus has no right to bodily integrity prior to consciousness. I think I misunderstood his argument with the killing versus letting die objection, which led to my confusing response. That was my mistake. Stranger versus OffspringPro claims that if we don’t consider biological relation to be important, then there is no way to explain the intuition people have that fathers owe child support to their children once they are born. However, I don’t think this is the case. In the case of child support, the father is simply asked to hand over some money. This is fundamentally different, in terms of burden, than letting someone live inside your body for 9 months with all the symptoms involved in pregnancy. Moreover, if that’s not convincing, I still think most people recognize that our right to be free of bodily intrusions is more significant than our right to be free of financial burdens. Virtually everybody agrees, for example, that it can be okay to force people to pay significant taxes to build new roads but wrong to force people to build the roads, okay to have large fines for certain crimes but not okay to force people to give blood for certain crimes. I don’t have much to say about the basis for this distinction, but I do think most people would acknowledge that it makes a difference. So, in short, the difference between the child support case and pregnancy has to do with the degree to which there is a significant burden on bodily rather than financial autonomy. Since there is this morally relevant differnce between the two cases, a defender of Thomson's argument can consistently maintain that women choosing abortion is permissible, but men denying child support is not. ConclusionIn this debate I have attempted to show that philosopher Judith Thomson’s violinist analogy shows that abortion is generally morally permissible. Whether I have succeeded in doing this I am far from certain. Nevertheless, this is the most enjoyable debate I have ever done! Thank you Unitedandy for allowing me to take part in this debate. I now feel like I have a better understanding of your point of view as well as my own. Sources:[1] Medical abortions as a percentage of all abortions: . https://en.wikipedia.org...