Resolved: Abortion is morally impermissible

In this round, I aim to focus exclusively on Con's affirmative case for the permissibility of abortion – the Bodily Rights Argument. Con's argument can be summarised as follows. Firstly, having the right to life does not entail the right to use another person's body to survive. Con then gives the standard violinist example to show that even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that the unborn are fully fledged persons with correspondingly robust rights, we still have a strong intuitive reason to think abortion is permissible. Before analysing Con's argument, I want to stress some key points. Firstly, I completely accept the plausibility of intuition of unplugging in the violinist case. It seems to me that while it obviously be morally preferable if one were to stay hooked up to the violinist and save their life, such an action would plainly not be obligatory. Con correctly anticipates that my response will not be to challenge the original intuition, but to deny that pregnancy is closely analogous to the violinist case. If these two cases are not closely parallel, then the violinist intuition lends little support to the view that abortion is permissible. Second,the Bodily Integrity Argument grants that the unborn are persons with the right to life, at least for the sake of argument. This means, as Con admits, that our debate does not rest “ on claims about the metaphysical or moral status of the fetus. ” In other words, this debate will proceed from the assumption that the unborn's right to life is as strong as an adult like the violinist. An evidential case against the Bodily Integrity Argument In the course of evaluating Con's argument, I want to point out several morally relevant differences which are apparent between the violinist case and pregnancy. However, I want to make it as clear as I can that in pointing out these differences, I mean to adopt an evidential approach. It may be that no morally relevant difference between these cases destroys the argument in isolation. However, I will contend that each objection has some force in weakening the analogy between abortion and unplugging. In other words, even if no single objection presented below are completely fatal to the argument, each difference succeeds in markedly weakening the original intuition. I should make it clear, I actually do think some of these objections, even in isolation, definitively undermine Con's argument (the responsibility objection, in particular). I only stress that these objections need not be evaluated as all or nothing, as moral deliberation, especially in contentious areas like abortion, is seldom so clear cut. The Responsibility Objection (1) Perhaps the most powerful defeater to the claim that Thomson's scenario is analogous to pregnancy is what is known as the responsibility objection. In Con's example, the Good Samaritan hooked up to the violinist bears no responsibility at all for the state of affairs she finds herself in. Her actions prior to this would in no way foreseeably lead to either (i) the sickly violinist's neediness or (ii) her own plight (that of sharing her kidneys with a complete stranger). Indeed, this is underscored by the fact she is forcibly kidnapped in Thomson's example. She is, essentially, a victim of a pretty egregious abduction and assault, leading us to the strong intuition we all have that she should be able to unplug from the violinist, despite the fact that doing so would ensure his death. Of course, none of this applies in a typical pregnancy. Here, couples engage in the only natural act (sex) which can result in creating life. Moreover, they do so knowing that pregnancy is a foreseeable consequence of their actions. For whatever reason, they disregard this risk, essentially creating the circumstances which lead to the third party's neediness. Yet, we know that people are directly responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their actions. We can see this from the following analogy: Suppose Drug Inc makes its money exclusively from sales of Pill A. It realises that it can increase profits by also selling Pill B. However, in order to do so, it has to use the same warehouses, staff, etc, to make this financially feasible. The problem is that this is a risky venture, as it foreseeably will lead to cross-contamination, where patients needing Pill A mistakenly get Pill B and vice versa. Moreover, the nature of the conditions of these patients means that anyone who gets the wrong treatment will suffer irreparable kidney damage, ending up like the sickly violinist (i. e. dead without intervention). Unfortunately, because of the actions of Drug Inc engaging in this risky behaviour, Jill gets the wrong medicine and suffers kidney failure as a result. It seems just as strongly intuitive as the violinist intuition that Drug Inc is morally culpable here. Jill's plight could have been avoided by Drug Inc acting responsibly. Thus, they are morally culpable. Notice, even if Drug Inc had done their best to minimise this foreseeable risk, as their actions have needlessly created the risk that would cause accidents Jill's illness, the company would still be liable. Further, suppose Drug Inc can save Jill, it seems unequivocal that they are obligated to do so, even if it is at great personal cost to the company. With pregnancy, the fact is the mother (along with her partner) is responsible for creating the needy person. In such a scenario, there ought to a spectacularly good reason to make it permissible for them to deal with this by effectively bringing about that person's death, given their culpability. The mere assertion of insisting bodily autonomy falls far, far short of a morally sufficient reason for an abortion. The Exaggerated Burden objection (2) This leads to a second disanalogy. One of the main motivations for why we assent to the intuition that unplugging from the violinist is morally permissible concerns the serious burden it would for anyone to undertake such an ordeal to save another. Being hooked up to another person would involve being hospitalised and bedridden in varying degrees of discomfort for the entire 9 months. Moreover, our lifestyle would be miserable, as this treatment would completely divorce us from our work, hobbies, family live and pretty much everything else. Clearly, this differs significantly from the burdens typically experienced by pregnant women (which should not be underestimated by any means). Prospective mothers certainly do make sacrifices in pregnancy and in giving birth. However, the violinist analogy grossly exaggerates these burdens, to the point where the parallels between Thomson's example and pregnancy break down. None of the above applies to pregnancy, except in the most rare of circumstances. If Con's scenario reflected normal pregnancies, there can be little doubt it would be a much less common occurrence, with only moral exemplars willing to make such sacrifices to bring a child into the world. Given the chasm of difference between Con's scenario and a normal pregnancy, it seems we ought to be wholly sceptical that the violinist intuition is analogous to abortion. The Competing Bodily Rights Objection (3) This criticism is more limited in scope than the others, but powerfully conveys an important point about the reality of abortion, as practised in the real world. To return to the violinist case, if we hold that persons have robust bodily rights, it seems we have to consider not just those of the Good Samaritan, but of the violinist as well. As such, even supposing that it is permissible to cause violinist's death by severing the tubes connecting your body to his, for example, it would be a much more contentious claim if “unplugging” entails ripping his body apart, dismembering him and so forth. It should be undeniable to claim that the intuition to unplug from is wholly independent from the intuition that it could be permissible to destroy the violinist's body, if that were the only means to separate from the violinist. Indeed, from a strictly bodily rights standpoint, unplugging by disregarding the violinist's rights would simply be inconsistent. The violinist's body, by Con's own reasoning, ought to enjoy the same protective rights as those of the person he is connected to. The importance of this objection is that most common methods of abortion are only analogous to destroying the violinist's body, not simply unplugging from it. As Jeff McMahan explains: “The standard methods for performing abortions clearly involve the killing of the fetus: the fetus dies by being mangled or poisoned in the process of being removed from the uterus. ” (4) As such, if Con is consistent, he must hold that most methods of abortion are impermissible, even if his argument is sound. The Stranger vs Offspring Objection One last objection is that Con's argument ignores the difference between parental obligations and the minimal duties we have to strangers. Suppose, for example, we imagine that we are hooked up to our own child, rather than the violinist. Clearly, the intuition whether we can unplug changes, depending on our relationship to the patient. It is enough to say that the intuition that unplugging in this scenario would be much more contentious than Con's original case. Again, insofar as Con's argument neglects this very important factor, it is simply not applicable to abortion. Conclusion As we can see, there are numerous powerful reasons to reject the violinist case as analogous to abortion. As such, we have multiple reasons to reject the claim that abortion can be likened to unplugging. Thus, Con's analogy, if it is not be dismissed outright, must incorporate these dissimilarities. Sources 1-3. Chris Kaczor, Ethics of Abortion, pp 145-76 4. Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, P378 5. David Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, P227