From: kevin@rotag.mi.org (Kevin Darcy)
Subject: Re: ATUI: The Liberal Position, and Why it is Morally Incorrect
Organization: Who, me???
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 17:27:07 GMT

In article <1992Nov7.225656.2734@brandonu.ca> mcbeanb@brandonu.ca writes:
>The Liberal Position, and Why it is Morally Incorrect
>
> [...]
>
>     A more convincing liberal argument comes from the appeal to a woman's
>right to have control over her body.  Indeed, many pro-choicers liken the
>fetus to an unwanted parasite, but there is a more productive way to
>display the argument.  J. J. Thomson has made this argument popular
>using an analogy with a famous violinist.  In the analogy, you imagine
>waking up beside an unconcious famous violinist.  The Society of Music
>Lovers has kidnapped you, tied you up, and connected your circulatory
>system to his.  Your healthy kidneys must rid his blood of poisons
>which his kidneys are incapable of doing in order for him to survive.
>You must stay in bed with the unconscious violinist for a full nine
>months, or else he will die (cited in Feinberg, 1984).  Of course,
>in this analogy, you are not obligated to "carry the violinist to term"
>if you do not want to sit in bed for nine months, even though the
>violinist does have a right to life.  There are several problems
>with the connections between this analogy and actual pregnancy.
>First of all, the argument may only be applied to victims of rape, 
>because in the analogy the victim is forced into the situation.  

A red herring. The presence or absence of "force" by a third party or
parties has no particular bearing on the relative rights and 
responsibilities of the principal parties. The analogy can easily be
amended, so that the connection was the result of, say, an unforeseeable
computer glitch, and the basic workings of the analogy, or the result,
don't change a bit (pun intended).

>Second, actual pregnancy does not force a woman to stay in bed the
>entire nine months she carries the fetus.  There are many discomforts
>and pains associated with pregnancy, but certainly this tremendous 
>lack of freedom is not the case in pregnancy.  

Add to the 9 months of "discomforts and pains" the medical risks associated
with pregnancy. Add to the 9 months of "discomforts and pains" the hormonal
and/or nutritional changes which affect the woman in a multitude of negative 
ways. Add to the 9 months of "discomforts and pains" the actual excruciatingly 
painful process of labor and delivery. Add to the 9 months of "discomforts 
and pains" the permanent traces that childbearing leaves on a woman's body.

I think the comparison is more than fair.

>Upon the above analysis,
>it is not reasonable to conclude that a woman should be morally
>correct in aborting even a pregnancy that was the result of rape.

I disagree strongly for the reasons presented above.

>     Another analogy made by Thomson attempts to show the validity
>of a woman's right to control her body.  In this "people seeds"
>analogy, there are tiny seeds which blow in the wind, and take root
>in the carpeting and upholstery of the houses they enter.  After 
>rooting, the seeds develop into normal human beings.  Thomson continues
>by supposing that people who do not wish to have people seeds in their
>houses, but still wish to have fresh air flow through their houses, may
>install special screens to keep the seeds out.  If a seed happened to
>slip through the screen, then Thomson does not believe the owners of the
>house are obligated to allow it to use their carpet and upholstery to
>grow in.  The rooted seeds are analogous to the fetus, the house to the
>woman's uterus, fresh air to intercourse, and screens to contraception
>(cited in Feinberg, 1984).  This analogy can only be applied to those
>women who want to abort a pregnacy occurring due to the failure of
>contraceptive devices.  Why is abortion allowable in this case?  

This "people-seed" argument seems to address the normal pro-life answer to 
the Violinist analogy, i.e. that the woman "consents" to carrying a child to 
term when she has sex. Obviously, if the woman expends a great deal of effort 
in trying to PREVENT conception, then the "consent" argument is nullified.

You do not so much make the "consent" argument explicitly, as subtly
presuppose it when you note that in the Violinist example, the connection
has been effected by "force". The opposite of being forced to do something
is to do it voluntarily, of course. As you expand your point about not 
having been "forced", you may find that the contraception/people-seed 
argument begins to more clearly apply to your views.

>How
>can you decide to abort a fetus simply because the probability of
>conception was extremely small?  

The point here is not just that the probability was small, but that the
potential parents consciously TRIED TO ELIMINATE IT ALTOGETHER. Therefore, 
it is not reasonable to impute an intent to conceive, or even negligence.

>When engaging in coitus, there is always
>at least a minute chance of pregnancy occurring, and potential parents
>should not be able to abort simply because they didn't thiink a pregnancy
>was possible.

When using effective contraceptive methods, the chances of conception are
rather remote. We generally don't hold people responsible for the consequences
of "remote" possibilities. Every action a person performs -- driving to work,
washing one's hands, posting an article to Usenet -- has a "remote" chance of
hurting or killing someone, given the appropriate chain of bizarre and highly
unlikely circumstances. Yet our "respect for human life" doesn't demand that
we cease all actions immediately. There must be moderation. We have to define
the threshold of "remoteness" at such a point that people are relatively free
to act, free to grow, free to realize their potential, while at the same time
protecting others from suffering from their negligence, fraud or malice. What
I describe here is the basic underlying principle of Utilitarianism -- the
greatest good for the greatest number.

Many pro-choicers feel that consensual sex between adults is a fundamental
human right, and that when reasonable precautions are taken, and somehow
pregnancy occurs anyway, that there is no social reason to "punish" couples
for their consensual sex by forcing unwanted parenthood on them. 

Other pro-choicers point out the fact that, even if sex is not a fundamental 
right, it is nevertheless a fundamental biological drive, so people are going 
to engage in it anyway, and get abortions even if they are illegal, so why not 
legalize it, to protect those women from the horrors of botched back-street 
abortions?

Yet other pro-choicers make a legalistic argument, namely, that the remoteness 
of the pregnancy probability, when contraception is in force, is far lower 
than probabilities we routinely write off completely in a legal context, and
so we can nullify the "negligence" argument on legal grounds, if not moral
ones.

>     Obviously, a woman has a right to control her body, but should
>that right override the right to life of even just a potential person?

A potential person is an abstraction. A pregnant woman afflicted by an
unwanted pregnancy is a concrete reality, and is SUFFERING. Under what 
consistent, just, compassionate moral code would we consider the rights
of the former to outweigh the rights of the latter?

>I think not.  If the woman's life will be put at significant fatal risk,
>then her right to life would out-weigh that of the fetus, but these
>are not common cases.  Suppose a woman were forced to live in the same
>house as a fetus that was developing in plain view in a bottle on the
>counter.  Further suppose that the gruesome sight of the fetus caused
>the woman to have terrible physical problems such as nausea, terrible
>digestive cramps, and respiratory difficulties.  These problems may
>be analogous to some of the physical problems of a pregnant woman.  The
>fetus in the bottle has innocently caused great pain and discomfort
>to the woman.  If the woman were to slay the fetus, and bury it far away,
>her problems would be over.  Does her right to control her body allow
>her to slay an innocent fetus?  No, it does not.

I assume she is not allowed any freedom to cover the bottle up, or to move to 
a different house, or similar "coping" measures, without the fetus dying (?) 
How then is this essentially different from the Violinist analogy? And why 
should the result be any different than for that analogy?

								- Kevin