From: ramsay@math.ubc.ca (Keith Ramsay)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: Loren Finkelstein, please clarify.
Date: 19 Dec 1992 09:08:19 GMT
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
NNTP-Posting-Host: galois.math.ubc.ca

I wrote:

|I find this argument bizarre.
|
|For one thing, there is a big difference between being willing to make
|sacrifices which are actually necessary to "save" the life of a fetus,
|and being willing to submit to the conditions imposed by someone else
|as a condition for their doing so.

In article <1gtt9jINNn66@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com> 
regard@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com (Adrienne Regard) writes:

|Why?  

Okay, I'll try to explain.

|If the question is 'saving the life of the fetus', then the means,
|outlined above, is quite clear.  Loren can save the life of a fetus by
|consenting to being fisted for nine months.  Guaranteed.  He can do
|this 'good' thing for the world.  He actually *can*.  It is within his
|power.

I say that there is a morally relevant distinction here, between the
situation Loren is faced with, and the situation a pregnant woman is
faced with.

In our case, it is primarily within *her* power to save the life of
this (hypothetical?) fetus. Or to kill it. She is threatening to kill
it, in order to get someone else to `comply'. It is a kind of threat.
(Of course this threat is complicated. I don't think the real object
is to get Loren `fisted', for example!) Refusing to comply with a
threat to cause something you consider a disaster, is not the same as
failing to do something on your own to prevent something you consider
a disaster.  It is partly a question of responsibility.

Kidnapers sometimes reason like this: "*You* can save the lives of
those who are being held hostage. It is all within *your* power.
*You* get to decide. Their blood will be on *your* hands if you don't
do as we ask." And perhaps later, "The fact that you haven't complied
with our threats shows you don't care about them." One can also
imagine a kidnapping ring which is very reliable in carrying out such
threats, so that people who didn't comply really *would* lose their
loved ones.

The main responsibility falls on the kidnapers not to kill the
hostages, however, rather than on others to give in to the demands
which would `cause' the kidnapers to release the hostages. Others do
have *some* responsibility for what happens, but only in an indirect
way. This `cause-and-effect' relationship which holds between refusing
the demands of the kidnapers and the hostages dying is not considered
of the same type as ordinary physical cause-and-effect, because it
holds *only because the kidnapers have chosen to make it so*. There is
an element of free will involved. Failing to agree to the demands,
even of very reliable threat-makers, is not morally equivalent to
carrying out the threat yourself.

Let me add, by the way, that the reason I am using the example of a
hostage-taking situation is in order to illustrate a distinction
between kinds of responsibility, because no clearer example of such a
distinction came to mind.

Moreover, is it clear here that this plan would work? As I said
before, given the (so far as I know) uncertain state of surrogacy
contracts, I'm not convinced that a contract which requires carrying a
pregnancy to term on one side, and consenting to "fisting" on the
other, would actually be enforced. Further, the two sides here don't
really trust each other, do they?

Second, most people distinguish morally between actively causing an
event to happen and passively allowing it to happen. Not risking your
own life to save another person's life is considered by most people to
be *far* less culpable than killing someone else in order to avoid a
risk, even if in both cases the "choice" involved is between two
alternatives whose immediate, overt outcomes are death for the other
person, or life for them with some risk for you, respectively. You
can't call someone a "hypocrite" merely on the basis of considering
the one immoral, but not the other.

|It is admittedly a little bizarre to actually challenge some misogynist
|to put his body where his mouth is, so to speak. 

No, not at all, so long as one has an appropriate opportunity to do
so. Trying to prove someone is a hypocrite, by offering to do what
they consider to be one's own responsibility, in exchange for a
supposedly comparable sacrifice on their part, is a tactic I have seen
before. I don't think it is generally credible. Try another approach.

I wrote:
| Browsing through this newsgroup, I think the discussion would go
| better in general if posters spent less time trying to prove each
| other to be bad characters, no?

lefty@apple.com (Lefty) asks:
|You're new here, aren't you?

Yes, in the sense that I only re-subscribed recently. I've looked at
this group briefly on a few occasions over a period of years, and
usually have unsubscribed very soon afterward. Each time, much of the
discussion has appeared to be riddled with tiresome attempts to prove
people to be idiots and/or jerks. We'll see how it goes this time.

Keith Ramsay         I'm going on vacation soon, but I thought I ought
ramsay@math.ubc.ca   to clarify this before leaving. I can comment
                     further in 1993 if necessary.
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