BastardSword
09-09-2004, 03:33
Its a essay in my book that I thought is good. page 173
I'll continue rest later but this is first part.
A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thomson
-Most opposition to abortion relies on the premnise that the fetus is a human being, a person, from the moment of conception. The premise is argued for, but, as I think, not well. Take, for example, the most common argument. We are asked to notice the developmnent of a human being from conception through birth into childhood is continous; then it is said thast to draw a line, to choose a point in this development and say, "before this point the thing is not a person, after this point it is a person" is to make an arbitrary choice, a choice for which in the nature of things no good reason can be given. It is concluded that the fetus is, or anyway that we had better say it is, as person from the moment of conception. But this conclusion does not follow. Similar things might be saud about the development of an acorn into an oak tree, and it does not follow that acorns are oak trees, or that we had better say they are. Arguments of this form are sometimes called "slippery slope arguyments"-- the phrase is self -explanatory-- and it is dismaying that opponents of abortion rely on them so heavily and uncritically.
- I am inclined to agree, however, that the prospects for "drawing a line" in the development of the fetus look dim. I am inclinedd to think also that we shall probably have to agree that the fetus has already is a human person well before birth. Indeed, it comes as a surprise when one first learns how early in its life it begins to acquire human characteristics. By the tenth week, for example, it has already as a face, arms and legs, fingers, and toes; it has internal organs, and brain activity is detectable. On the other hand, I think that the premise is false, that the fetus is not a person from the moment of conception. A newly fertilized ovum, a newly implanted c
lump of cells, is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree. But I shall not discuss any of thus. For it seemsto me to be of great interest to ask what happens if, dfor the sake of argument, we allow the premise. How, precisely, are we supposed to get from there to the conclusion that abortion is morally impermissible? Perhaps they think the step too simple and obvious to require much comment. Or perhaps insteadthey are simply being economical in argument. Many of those who defend abortion rely on the premise that the fetus is not a person, but only a bit of tissue that will become a person at bieth; and why pay out more argument than you have to?Whatever the explaination, I suggest that the step they take is neither easy nor obvious, that it calls for closer examination than it is commonly given, and that when we do give it this closer examination we shall feel inclined to reject it.
-I propose, then, that we grant the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. How does that argument go from here? Something like this, I take it. Every person has a right to live. So a fetus has the right to live. No doubt the mother has a right to decide what shall happen in and to her body; everyone will grant that. But surely a person's righ tto live is stronger and more stringent than the mother's right to decide what happens in and to her body, and so outweighs it. So the fetus may not be killed, an abortion may not be preformed.
-It sounds plausible. But now let me ask you to imagine this. You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can help to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, " look we are sorry, the Society of Music Lovers did this to you-- we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, its only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and we can safely be unplugged from you. Is it morally incubent on you to accede to this sisuation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says, "Tough luck, I agree but now you've got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged to you, for the rest of yur life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweights your right to decide what happens in and out of your body. So yu cannot ever be unplugged from him. "
I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, which suggests that something is really wrong with that plausible sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago.
- In this case, of course, you were kidnapped; you didn't volunteer for the operation that plugged the violinist into your kidneys. Can those who oppose abortion on the ground I mentioned make a exception for a pregnancy due to rape? Certainly. They can say that persons right to have a life only if they didn't come into existance because of rape; or they can say that all persons have a right to life than others, but that some have less a right to life than others, in particular, that those who came into existance because of rape have less. But these statements have a rather unpleasant sound. Surely the question of whether or not you have a right to life at all, or how much of it you have, shouldn't turn on the question of whether or not you are the product of rape. And in fact the people who oppose obortion on the grounds I mentioned do not make this distinction, and hence do not make an exception in the case of rape.
-Nor do they make an exeption for a case in which the mother has to spend the nine months of her pregnancy in bed. They would agree that would be a great pity, and hard on the mother; but all the same, all the persons have a right to life, the fetus is a person, and so on. I suspect, in fact, that they would not make an exception for a case in which,miraculously enough, the preganancy went on for nine years or even the rest of the mother's life.
-Some won't even make a exception make a case in which continuation of the pregnancy is likely to shorten the mother's life; they regard abortion as impermissible even to save the mother's life. Such cases nowadays are very rare, and many opponents of abortion do bot accpt this extreme view. All the same, it is a good place to begin. A number of points of interest come out in respect to it.
-
1. Let us call the view that abortion is permissible even to save the mother's life, "the extreme view." I want to suggest first that it does not issue from the argument I mentioned earlier without the addition of some fairly powerful premises. Suppose a woman has become pregnant, and now learns she has a cardiac condition such that she will die if she carries the baby to term. What may be done for her? The fetus, being a person, has a right to life, but the mother is a person too, so she has a right life. Presumably they have a equal right to life. How is it supposed to come out that a an abortion may not be performed? If mother and chold have equal rights couldn't we flip a coin? Or should we add to the mother's right to life her right to decide what happens in and to her body, which everbody seems to ber ready to grant-- the sum of her rights now outweighing the fetus's right to life?
- The most familiar argument here is the following. We are told that performing the abortion would be directly killing the child, whereas doing nothing would be killing the mother, but letting her die. Moreover, in killing the child, one would be killing an innocent person, for the child has committed no crime, and is not aiming at his mither's death. And then there are a variety of ways in which this might be continued. (1) But as directly kiling an innocent person is always and absolutely impermissible, an abortion may not be performed. Or, (2) as directly killing an innocentperson is murder, and murder is always and absolutely impermissible, an abortion should not be performed. Or, (3) as one's duty to refrain from directly killing an innocent person is more stringent than one's duty to keep person from dying, an abortion may not be performed. Or, (4) if one'd only options are directly kiling an innocent or letting a person die, one must prefer letting the pwerson die, and thus an abortion may not be performed.
- Some people seem to have thought that these are not further permises which must he added if conclusion is to be reached, but that they follow from the very fact that an innocent has a right to life. But this seems to me to be a mistake, and perhaps the simplest way to show this is to bring out that while we must certainly grant that innocent persons have a riht to life, the theses in (1) through (4) are all false. Take (2) , for example. If ditrectly killing an innocent person is murder, and thus is impermissible, then the mother's directly killing the innocent person inside her is murder, and thus is impermissible. But it cannot seriously be thought to be murder if the mother performs an abortion herself to save her life. It cannot seriously be said that she must refrain, that she must sit passively by and wait for her death. Let us look again st the case of you and the violinist. There you are, in bed with the violinist, and the director of the hospital says to you, "It's all most distressing, and I deeply sympathize, but you see this is putting an additional strain on your kidneys, and you'll be dead within the month. But you have to stay where you are all the same. Because unplugging you would be directly killing an innocent violinist, and that's murder, and that's impermissible." If anything in the world is true, it is you do not commit murder, you do not to what is impermissible, if you reaxch around your back and unplug yourself from that violinist to save your life.
- The main focus of attention in writings on abortion has been on what a third parrty may or may not do in answer to a request from a woman for an abortion. This is in a way understandable. Things being as they are, there isn't much a woman can do to safely to abort herself. So the question asked is what the third party may do, and what the mother may do, if it is mentioned at all, is deduced, almost as an afterthought, from what it is concluded that third parties may not do. But it seems to me that to treat the matter in this way is to refuse to grant to the mother that very status of person which is so firmly insisted on for the fetus. For we cannot simply read off what a person may do from what a third party may do. Suppose you find yourself trapped in a tiny house with a growing child. I mean a very tiny house, and a rapidly growing child-- you are already up against the wall of the house and in a few minutes you'll be crushed to death. The child on the otherhand, won't be crushed to death; if nothing is done to stop him from growing he'll be hurt, but in the end he'll simply burst open the house and walk out a free man. Now I could well understand it if a bystander were to say, "There's nothing we can do for you. We cannot choose to be the ones to decide who is to live, we cannot intervene." But it cannot be concluded that you too can do nothing, that you cannot attack it to save your life. However innocent the child may be, you do not have to wait passively while it crushes you to death. Perhaps a pregnant woman is baguely felt to have the status of the house...
To continued tomorrow, need sleep.
Edit: back to finish rezt of this post before new one.
...to which we don't allow the right of self defense. But if the woman houses the child, it should be remembered that she is a person who houses it.
- I should perhapsstop to say explicitly that Iam not claiming that people have a right to do anything whatever to save their lives. I think, rather, that there are drastic limits to the right of self-defense. If someone threatenes you with death unless you torture someone else to death, I think you do not have the right, even to save your life, to do so. But the case under consideration here is very different. In our case there are only two people involved, one whose life is threatened, and one who threatens it.Both are innocent: The one who is threatened is not threatened because of any fault, the one who threatens does not threaten because of any fault. For this reason we may feel that we bystanders cannot intervene. But the person threatened can.
- In sum, a woman surely can defend her life against the threat to it posed by the unboirn child, even if doing so involves its death. And this shows not merely that the theses (1) through (4) are false; it shows also that the extreme view of abortion is false, and so we need not carvass any other possible ways of arriving at it from the argument I mentioned at the outset.
2. The extreme view could of course be weakened to say that while abortion is permissible to save the mother's life, it may not be performed by a third party, but only by the mother herself. But this cannot be right either. For what we have to keep in mind is that the mother and the unborn child are not like two tenants in a small house which has, by unfortunate mistake, been rented to both:The mother owns the house. The fact that she does adds to the offensiveness of deducing that the mithercan do nothing from the supposition that third parties can do nothing. But it does more than this: It casts a bright light on the supposition that third parties can do nothing. Certainly it lets us see that a third party who says, "I cannot choose between you" is fooling himself if he thinks this is impartiality. If Jones has found and fastened on a certain coat, which he needs to keep from freezing, but which Smith also needs to keep from freezing, then it is not impartiality that says, " I cannot choose between you" when Smith owns the coat. Women have said again and again, "This body is my body!" and they have reason to feel angry, reason to feel that it has been like shouting into the wind. Smith, after all, is hardly likely to bless us if we say to him, " Of course it's your coat, anybody would grant you that it is. But no one may choose between you and Jones who is to have it"
- W should ask what it is that "no one may choose" in the face of the fact the body that houses the child is the mother's body. It may be simply a failure to apprecriate this fact. But it may be something more interrsting, namely the sense that one has the right to refuse to lay hands on people, even where it would be just and fair to do so, even where justice seems to require somebody to do so. Thus justice might call for somebody to get Smith's coat back from Jones ansd yet you have a right to refuse to be the one to lay hands on Jones, a rightto refuse to do physical violence on him. This, I think, must be granted. But then what should be said is not, "no one may choose" but only, "I cannot choose" and indeed not even this, but "I will not act" leaving it open that somebody else can or should, and in particular that anyone in a position of authority, with the job of securing people's rights, both can and should. So this is no difficulty. I have not been arguing that any given third party must accede to the mother's request that he perform an abrtion to save her life, but only that he may.
- I suppose that in some views of human life the mother's body is a only on loan to her, the loan not being one which give her any prior claim to it. One who held this view might well think it impartiality to say, "I cannot choose." But I shall simple ignore this possiblility. My own view is that if a human being has any just, prior claim to anything at all, he has a just, prior claim to his own body. And perhaps this needn't be argued for here anyway, since as I mentioned, the arguments against abortion we are looking at do grant that the woman has a right to decide what happens in and out of her body.
- But although they do grant it, I have tried to show that they do not take seriously what is done in granting it. I suggest the same thing will reappear even more clsely when we turn away from cases in whivh the motyher's life is at stake, and attend, I propose we now do, to the vastly more common cases in which woman wants an abiortion for some less weighty reason than preserving her own life.
Continued new post.
I'll continue rest later but this is first part.
A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thomson
-Most opposition to abortion relies on the premnise that the fetus is a human being, a person, from the moment of conception. The premise is argued for, but, as I think, not well. Take, for example, the most common argument. We are asked to notice the developmnent of a human being from conception through birth into childhood is continous; then it is said thast to draw a line, to choose a point in this development and say, "before this point the thing is not a person, after this point it is a person" is to make an arbitrary choice, a choice for which in the nature of things no good reason can be given. It is concluded that the fetus is, or anyway that we had better say it is, as person from the moment of conception. But this conclusion does not follow. Similar things might be saud about the development of an acorn into an oak tree, and it does not follow that acorns are oak trees, or that we had better say they are. Arguments of this form are sometimes called "slippery slope arguyments"-- the phrase is self -explanatory-- and it is dismaying that opponents of abortion rely on them so heavily and uncritically.
- I am inclined to agree, however, that the prospects for "drawing a line" in the development of the fetus look dim. I am inclinedd to think also that we shall probably have to agree that the fetus has already is a human person well before birth. Indeed, it comes as a surprise when one first learns how early in its life it begins to acquire human characteristics. By the tenth week, for example, it has already as a face, arms and legs, fingers, and toes; it has internal organs, and brain activity is detectable. On the other hand, I think that the premise is false, that the fetus is not a person from the moment of conception. A newly fertilized ovum, a newly implanted c
lump of cells, is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree. But I shall not discuss any of thus. For it seemsto me to be of great interest to ask what happens if, dfor the sake of argument, we allow the premise. How, precisely, are we supposed to get from there to the conclusion that abortion is morally impermissible? Perhaps they think the step too simple and obvious to require much comment. Or perhaps insteadthey are simply being economical in argument. Many of those who defend abortion rely on the premise that the fetus is not a person, but only a bit of tissue that will become a person at bieth; and why pay out more argument than you have to?Whatever the explaination, I suggest that the step they take is neither easy nor obvious, that it calls for closer examination than it is commonly given, and that when we do give it this closer examination we shall feel inclined to reject it.
-I propose, then, that we grant the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. How does that argument go from here? Something like this, I take it. Every person has a right to live. So a fetus has the right to live. No doubt the mother has a right to decide what shall happen in and to her body; everyone will grant that. But surely a person's righ tto live is stronger and more stringent than the mother's right to decide what happens in and to her body, and so outweighs it. So the fetus may not be killed, an abortion may not be preformed.
-It sounds plausible. But now let me ask you to imagine this. You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can help to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, " look we are sorry, the Society of Music Lovers did this to you-- we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, its only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and we can safely be unplugged from you. Is it morally incubent on you to accede to this sisuation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says, "Tough luck, I agree but now you've got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged to you, for the rest of yur life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweights your right to decide what happens in and out of your body. So yu cannot ever be unplugged from him. "
I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, which suggests that something is really wrong with that plausible sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago.
- In this case, of course, you were kidnapped; you didn't volunteer for the operation that plugged the violinist into your kidneys. Can those who oppose abortion on the ground I mentioned make a exception for a pregnancy due to rape? Certainly. They can say that persons right to have a life only if they didn't come into existance because of rape; or they can say that all persons have a right to life than others, but that some have less a right to life than others, in particular, that those who came into existance because of rape have less. But these statements have a rather unpleasant sound. Surely the question of whether or not you have a right to life at all, or how much of it you have, shouldn't turn on the question of whether or not you are the product of rape. And in fact the people who oppose obortion on the grounds I mentioned do not make this distinction, and hence do not make an exception in the case of rape.
-Nor do they make an exeption for a case in which the mother has to spend the nine months of her pregnancy in bed. They would agree that would be a great pity, and hard on the mother; but all the same, all the persons have a right to life, the fetus is a person, and so on. I suspect, in fact, that they would not make an exception for a case in which,miraculously enough, the preganancy went on for nine years or even the rest of the mother's life.
-Some won't even make a exception make a case in which continuation of the pregnancy is likely to shorten the mother's life; they regard abortion as impermissible even to save the mother's life. Such cases nowadays are very rare, and many opponents of abortion do bot accpt this extreme view. All the same, it is a good place to begin. A number of points of interest come out in respect to it.
-
1. Let us call the view that abortion is permissible even to save the mother's life, "the extreme view." I want to suggest first that it does not issue from the argument I mentioned earlier without the addition of some fairly powerful premises. Suppose a woman has become pregnant, and now learns she has a cardiac condition such that she will die if she carries the baby to term. What may be done for her? The fetus, being a person, has a right to life, but the mother is a person too, so she has a right life. Presumably they have a equal right to life. How is it supposed to come out that a an abortion may not be performed? If mother and chold have equal rights couldn't we flip a coin? Or should we add to the mother's right to life her right to decide what happens in and to her body, which everbody seems to ber ready to grant-- the sum of her rights now outweighing the fetus's right to life?
- The most familiar argument here is the following. We are told that performing the abortion would be directly killing the child, whereas doing nothing would be killing the mother, but letting her die. Moreover, in killing the child, one would be killing an innocent person, for the child has committed no crime, and is not aiming at his mither's death. And then there are a variety of ways in which this might be continued. (1) But as directly kiling an innocent person is always and absolutely impermissible, an abortion may not be performed. Or, (2) as directly killing an innocentperson is murder, and murder is always and absolutely impermissible, an abortion should not be performed. Or, (3) as one's duty to refrain from directly killing an innocent person is more stringent than one's duty to keep person from dying, an abortion may not be performed. Or, (4) if one'd only options are directly kiling an innocent or letting a person die, one must prefer letting the pwerson die, and thus an abortion may not be performed.
- Some people seem to have thought that these are not further permises which must he added if conclusion is to be reached, but that they follow from the very fact that an innocent has a right to life. But this seems to me to be a mistake, and perhaps the simplest way to show this is to bring out that while we must certainly grant that innocent persons have a riht to life, the theses in (1) through (4) are all false. Take (2) , for example. If ditrectly killing an innocent person is murder, and thus is impermissible, then the mother's directly killing the innocent person inside her is murder, and thus is impermissible. But it cannot seriously be thought to be murder if the mother performs an abortion herself to save her life. It cannot seriously be said that she must refrain, that she must sit passively by and wait for her death. Let us look again st the case of you and the violinist. There you are, in bed with the violinist, and the director of the hospital says to you, "It's all most distressing, and I deeply sympathize, but you see this is putting an additional strain on your kidneys, and you'll be dead within the month. But you have to stay where you are all the same. Because unplugging you would be directly killing an innocent violinist, and that's murder, and that's impermissible." If anything in the world is true, it is you do not commit murder, you do not to what is impermissible, if you reaxch around your back and unplug yourself from that violinist to save your life.
- The main focus of attention in writings on abortion has been on what a third parrty may or may not do in answer to a request from a woman for an abortion. This is in a way understandable. Things being as they are, there isn't much a woman can do to safely to abort herself. So the question asked is what the third party may do, and what the mother may do, if it is mentioned at all, is deduced, almost as an afterthought, from what it is concluded that third parties may not do. But it seems to me that to treat the matter in this way is to refuse to grant to the mother that very status of person which is so firmly insisted on for the fetus. For we cannot simply read off what a person may do from what a third party may do. Suppose you find yourself trapped in a tiny house with a growing child. I mean a very tiny house, and a rapidly growing child-- you are already up against the wall of the house and in a few minutes you'll be crushed to death. The child on the otherhand, won't be crushed to death; if nothing is done to stop him from growing he'll be hurt, but in the end he'll simply burst open the house and walk out a free man. Now I could well understand it if a bystander were to say, "There's nothing we can do for you. We cannot choose to be the ones to decide who is to live, we cannot intervene." But it cannot be concluded that you too can do nothing, that you cannot attack it to save your life. However innocent the child may be, you do not have to wait passively while it crushes you to death. Perhaps a pregnant woman is baguely felt to have the status of the house...
To continued tomorrow, need sleep.
Edit: back to finish rezt of this post before new one.
...to which we don't allow the right of self defense. But if the woman houses the child, it should be remembered that she is a person who houses it.
- I should perhapsstop to say explicitly that Iam not claiming that people have a right to do anything whatever to save their lives. I think, rather, that there are drastic limits to the right of self-defense. If someone threatenes you with death unless you torture someone else to death, I think you do not have the right, even to save your life, to do so. But the case under consideration here is very different. In our case there are only two people involved, one whose life is threatened, and one who threatens it.Both are innocent: The one who is threatened is not threatened because of any fault, the one who threatens does not threaten because of any fault. For this reason we may feel that we bystanders cannot intervene. But the person threatened can.
- In sum, a woman surely can defend her life against the threat to it posed by the unboirn child, even if doing so involves its death. And this shows not merely that the theses (1) through (4) are false; it shows also that the extreme view of abortion is false, and so we need not carvass any other possible ways of arriving at it from the argument I mentioned at the outset.
2. The extreme view could of course be weakened to say that while abortion is permissible to save the mother's life, it may not be performed by a third party, but only by the mother herself. But this cannot be right either. For what we have to keep in mind is that the mother and the unborn child are not like two tenants in a small house which has, by unfortunate mistake, been rented to both:The mother owns the house. The fact that she does adds to the offensiveness of deducing that the mithercan do nothing from the supposition that third parties can do nothing. But it does more than this: It casts a bright light on the supposition that third parties can do nothing. Certainly it lets us see that a third party who says, "I cannot choose between you" is fooling himself if he thinks this is impartiality. If Jones has found and fastened on a certain coat, which he needs to keep from freezing, but which Smith also needs to keep from freezing, then it is not impartiality that says, " I cannot choose between you" when Smith owns the coat. Women have said again and again, "This body is my body!" and they have reason to feel angry, reason to feel that it has been like shouting into the wind. Smith, after all, is hardly likely to bless us if we say to him, " Of course it's your coat, anybody would grant you that it is. But no one may choose between you and Jones who is to have it"
- W should ask what it is that "no one may choose" in the face of the fact the body that houses the child is the mother's body. It may be simply a failure to apprecriate this fact. But it may be something more interrsting, namely the sense that one has the right to refuse to lay hands on people, even where it would be just and fair to do so, even where justice seems to require somebody to do so. Thus justice might call for somebody to get Smith's coat back from Jones ansd yet you have a right to refuse to be the one to lay hands on Jones, a rightto refuse to do physical violence on him. This, I think, must be granted. But then what should be said is not, "no one may choose" but only, "I cannot choose" and indeed not even this, but "I will not act" leaving it open that somebody else can or should, and in particular that anyone in a position of authority, with the job of securing people's rights, both can and should. So this is no difficulty. I have not been arguing that any given third party must accede to the mother's request that he perform an abrtion to save her life, but only that he may.
- I suppose that in some views of human life the mother's body is a only on loan to her, the loan not being one which give her any prior claim to it. One who held this view might well think it impartiality to say, "I cannot choose." But I shall simple ignore this possiblility. My own view is that if a human being has any just, prior claim to anything at all, he has a just, prior claim to his own body. And perhaps this needn't be argued for here anyway, since as I mentioned, the arguments against abortion we are looking at do grant that the woman has a right to decide what happens in and out of her body.
- But although they do grant it, I have tried to show that they do not take seriously what is done in granting it. I suggest the same thing will reappear even more clsely when we turn away from cases in whivh the motyher's life is at stake, and attend, I propose we now do, to the vastly more common cases in which woman wants an abiortion for some less weighty reason than preserving her own life.
Continued new post.