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Term Limit for Abortion

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Reply 80
Original post by Rat_Bag
An anaesthetised person has no capacity whatsoever. That's what an anaesthetic does to them.


Yes, they do have the capacity. Their brain has the ability to produce reason and self-awareness; just because it has been temporarily shut down, doesn't mean it doesn't have the ability.

Original post by Rat_Bag
But it doesn't mean they can be transferred between individual, since individuals' preferences are subjective and reflective of that individual.


They can, because humans are very similar to each other. You'd feel pretty much identical to someone else if a train was coming towards you and about to kill you.

Original post by Rat_Bag
So a person in a coma can never have the 'life support' equipment switched off?


If somebody once had a preference to continue to live, but is now in a coma and is unlikely to ever have such a preference again, we should still take the preference into consideration. The anguish that family members experience plus the resources in the healthcare system which could be used to satisfy more people's preferences may be enough to outweigh the preference of the comatose individual.

Original post by Rat_Bag
And as mentioned, this rigid utilitarianism can only work with a totalitarian system to implement it.


That doesn't mean it's not the correct system to use as a basis for our actions. It's common for people to say that things could never be fully implemented in practice if they can't dispute the logic.

It is indeed very difficult to act upon the fact that the good of any one being is of no more importance than the good of any other. Yet, thousands of utilitarians have changed their lifestyles in order to reduce the amount of suffering in the world, which, under a utilitarian framework, is much more ethical than doing nothing.

Original post by Rat_Bag
Except Mill would not agree with you one bit.


Yet, Mill was also a utilitarian and would have, today, recognised that a foetus cannot experience pleasure and pain before 24 weeks at the earliest.

Original post by Rat_Bag
Same could be said for abortions (particularly late 2nd and 3 trimester ones)


The foetus cannot feel pain before 24 weeks at the very earliest. And, even in abortions later than this, a chemical is injected painlessly into the foetus's heart. This is also combined with the fact that the foetus is under sedation in the womb.

Original post by Rat_Bag
Anyway, the fact you entertain the concept of killing babies and infants as perfectly moral (as long as they don't suffer) is just indicative of how impractical your proposed system is.


Again, you appeal to the practical side of it when we're having a theoretical discussion about what ought to be the case.

Original post by Rat_Bag
And at what age roughly would this become wrong?


Whenever the individual has demonstrated self-awareness.

Original post by Rat_Bag
They may not have expressed such preferences.


Given the evidence that almost everyone on the planet wishes to continue to live (that is, they haven't committed suicide for instance) and that almost everyone on the planet has preferences for the future, we should have a strong Bayesian prior in favour of not killing people even if these preferences haven't been expressed.

If they would actively prefer to die, then we're in the territory of voluntary euthanasia, of which I am, of course, fully supportive.

Original post by Rat_Bag
The value system you are proposing is accepted by almost no one.


Not in full, but most people would make utilitarian judgements in at least some cases. The problem is, they don't tend to have logically consistent value systems in general (they'd kill one person to save one million, but not one person to save five, for instance).

And, I already explicitly stated that hardcore utilitarianism will most likely never be implemented in full on a societal level, so I don't see the point of typing this.

Original post by Rat_Bag
Doesn't sound very pro-choice at all.

Your viewpoint on this is one big mess.


When did I ever say I was "pro-choice"? The notion that one can either be "pro-choice" or "pro-life" is a false dichotomy.

I'm afraid my viewpoint is perfectly clear on this issue: abortion and infanticide are morally permissible in general, but abortion on the basis of discrimination against a sex or a race may reinforce societal discrimination. That doesn't mean we make abortions illegal, it means that we take steps, if at all possible, to limit this discrimination, for example by withholding the sex of the foetus from the parents. If it's not possible to limit abortions on the basis of discrimination by these means, then they should still be allowed to go ahead.
Original post by DorianGrayism
No. Forced organ donation is analogous to forced pregnancy.

The fact that one chooses to have sex is irrelevant to the concept that both require the loss of bodily autonomy.


Except in the rare cases when someone is for instance raped, pregnancy is not "forced" - rather, it's accidental on the parents' part.

There's a clear difference between being "forced" to become pregnant or donate organs by someone, whereby you are powerless to prevent it, and becoming pregnant accidentally as a result of your own mistaken actions and oversights.
Original post by tazarooni89
Except in the rare cases when someone is for instance raped, pregnancy is not "forced" - rather, it's accidental on the parents' part.

There's a clear difference between being "forced" to become pregnant or donate organs by someone, whereby you are powerless to prevent it, and becoming pregnant accidentally as a result of your own mistaken actions and oversights.


I am not talking about being forced to become pregnant.

We both know that.

So let's stick to the point.
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by DorianGrayism
I am not talking about being forced to become pregnant.

We both know that.

So let's stick to the point.


I know you're not talking about people who are forced to become pregnant, you're talking about people who become pregnant accidentally, through their own actions. Yet you still seem to be calling it "forced pregnancy" and consider it to be analogous to forced organ donation, when it is not analogous at all.

It would be analogous to forced organ donation only if they were forced to become pregnant - not if they brought their predicament upon themselves, by themselves.
I understand that perfectly well - call it a "forced pregnancy" if you really want, but either way, it is not analogous to "forced organ donation", because there is a fundamental difference between the two. Being forced into a situation is not at all equivalent to being prevented from exiting a situation that you put yourself into.


Forced organ donation is a predicament that is thrust upon a person by someone else - that is, they have done nothing to put themselves in that situation. They are compelled by another person to give up their organs, and are entirely powerless to avoid it.

Accidental pregnancy is a predicament that a person gets themselves into, with constraints on how they are permitted to deal with it. A person can easily avoid this by not getting pregnant (or getting someone else pregnant) in the first place.
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by tazarooni89
I know you're not talking about people who are forced to become pregnant, you're talking about people who become pregnant accidentally, through their own actions. Yet you still seem to be calling it "forced pregnancy" and consider it to be analogous to forced organ donation, when it is not analogous at all.


No, it's not that either.

I don't care if they become pregnant against their will or if they plan to with IVF or if it is by accident or etc.

I made this fairly clear on the 1st page when I said that whether they choose to have sex or not is irrelevant.
(edited 8 years ago)
Reply 86
Original post by DorianGrayism
No, it's not that either.

I don't care if they become pregnant against their will or if they plan to with IVF or if it is by accident or etc.

I made this fairly clear on the 1st page when I said that whether they choose to have sex or not is irrelevant.


So you agree the analogy is nonsense. Great
Original post by DorianGrayism
I made this fairly clear on the 1st page when I said that whether they choose to have sex or not is irrelevant.


Yes, and I'm making it fairly clear that it is relevant.

You say that forced organ donation is analogous to "forced pregnancy" - but if the pregnancy is the result of the parents' own choice to do the thing that leads to pregnancy, then it is not analogous at all, in the matter of bodily autonomy. The former does not involve the person having any choice in the matter, whereas the latter does.
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by Rat_Bag
So you agree the analogy is nonsense. Great


Explain.
Original post by tazarooni89
Yes, and I'm making it fairly clear that it is relevant.
.


So I never talked about it.

You just want to make it relevant.

Original post by tazarooni89

You say that forced organ donation is analogous to "forced pregnancy" - but if the pregnancy is the result of the parents' own choice to do the thing that leads to pregnancy, then it is not analogous at all, in the matter of bodily autonomy. The former does not involve the person having any choice in the matter, whereas the latter does.


Well, it is analogous. In both bodily autonomy is overridden. Choice doesn't change that.
I am not differentiating based on "fault", I am differentiating between the two scenarios, firstly based on the fact that one is a case of being forced into an undesirable situation, and one is getting yourself into an undesirable situation and then being prevented from exiting it. The point at which the compulsion takes effect is different.

Secondly, the person that puts you into an undesirable situation, regarding forced organ donation, is your "kidnapper". Whereas the person who puts you into an undesirable situation regarding pregnancy is yourself.
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by DorianGrayism
Well, it is analogous. In both bodily autonomy is overridden. Choice doesn't change that.


Well for starters, complete bodily autonomy is something that doesn't exist in this country anyway. There are various harmful drugs and substances that we are legally prohibited from putting into our bodies, for example. Limitations upon bodily autonomy exist in all sorts of forms for all sorts of reasons, and rightly so.

Secondly, pointing out that both involve a limitation on bodily autonomy does not make them analogous. There is a key difference between them (involving choice) which makes the limitation upon bodily autonomy more acceptable in one case than the other.
(edited 8 years ago)
There isn't forcing happening in both cases. One is force, the other is prevention, which are different. The first scenario is forcing someone to donate their organs. The second scenario is preventing them from having an abortion.

If I lock someone in a room, I am forcing them to be a prisoner. But if someone walks into a room of their own accord, and it happens to have been constructed from beforehand such that doesn't open from the inside, nobody is actually forcing them to do anything.

The concept I am appealing to is not one that I would call "fault" - but yes, I am saying that whether or not you can claim to be forced into a situation depends on who put you in that situation - yourself, or someone else.
Original post by tazarooni89
Well for starters, complete bodily autonomy is something that doesn't exist in this country anyway. There are various harmful drugs and substances that we are legally prohibited from putting into our bodies, for example. Limitations upon bodily autonomy exist in all sorts of forms for all sorts of reasons, and rightly so.

Secondly, pointing out that both involve a limitation on bodily autonomy does not make them analogous. There is a key difference between them (involving choice) which makes the limitation upon bodily autonomy more acceptable in one case than the other.


Ok. Well, I didn't claim that complete bodily autonomy exists.

Again, you state that choice makes a limitation on bodily autonomy without justification.

Using your scenario, then choosing to have an organ transplant would place a limitation on bodily autonomy.
It has nothing to do with probability whatsoever. Whether you are at "fault" for a situation, and whether you just did something that had a chance of leading to that situation (whether it is a high chance or a low chance) are two separate things.


For example, if I am in a car accident, I chose to get into the car, and I wouldn't have been in the accident had I not done so. But the fault of the accident is not necessarily mine, it lies with whoever was driving their car in an inappropriate manner. Similarly, if someone kidnaps me and forces me to donate my organs, I would not be in that situation had I not been walking around in the area where the kidnapper happened to have caught me. I did something that had a chance of leading to that situation. But the fault lies entirely with that kidnapper, and not at all with me. In both these situations, the fault lies with a person who acted unreasonably i.e. the reckless driver and the kidnapper. The individual suffers as a result of someone else doing something that they should not be doing, thereby forcing the individual into an undesirable situation.

The same cannot be said of pregnancy (unless it's a case of rape or something like that). There is no analogous equivalent of the reckless driver or the kidnapper who can have the blame for the undesirable situation placed upon them. So there is no "fault" as such. The couple can't blame someone else for acting in an inappropriate manner that resulted in a pregnancy. The pregnancy is a result of nobody's actions but their own.


There is a fundamental difference between going for a walk outside at night down a dark alleyway and getting killed by a gunman, and going for a walk outside in a lightning storm and getting killed by lightning. In the former situation, you can blame someone else for acting inappropriately (as you can with some car accidents, and with forced organ donation). In the latter situation, you can't blame anyone else - you just took a risk with nature and fell foul of it. The probability of the event occurring has nothing to do with it.
(edited 8 years ago)
The fetus is not "holding" anything against one's will. The fetus has been absurdly portrayed as a conscious aggressor willingly inflicting a harm on the mother. This is beyond stupid. The very existence of the fetus, and its situation of dependency, is causally linked to actions of the mother. The situation of dependency of the violinist (being in the position of requiring surrogate kidneys) is not causally linked to the woman in the scenario, in any way. Either it is not linked to any persons, or perhaps it is self inflicted, but certainly not linked to the woman. No actions of the woman have resulted in the violinist needing the body of another to sustain himself. Again, this is just one of the fundamental ethical differences between these scenarios, which make any comparisons useless to us. Perhaps other arguments from different authors do exist, but as you saythis the most famous philosophical defense of abortion, and the one you have presented in this thread, and frankly it fails.

Well, prima facie, I'm going to disagree with you there. Women don't just pop out babies without the help of someone of the male sex (or perhaps in vitro). Humans females are not hermaphroditically reproducing and they're not asexually reproducing either. You'll also find a huge plethora of feminist philosophy literature refuting the idea that women are the solely responsible party.


The father is irrelevant here - the father cannot possibly have the potential responsibility of child bearing, the woman however does. Thus, she is the one who is ultimately culpable for the consequence of pregnancy, since she had every ability to refuse sex. Unless she was raped, in which case she has absolutely no ability to prevent the pregnancy. Otherwise, she has every ability to prevent the pregnancy, simple as.

Again, a failure to understand the argument. The kidnapping scenario makes it such that the violinist's current situation is casually linked to the woman. Should she detach herself from the life support machine, then she will be the cause of his death (barring someone else taking up the mantle of life support machine).Even if you dislike the particular example used, many more have since been offered. The basics of the argument remain the same. I never claimed that JJT's particular examples were the best, nor that better ones could not be made. I put the paper forward as being the most famous piece of philosophical literature on abortion. You've taken it to attempt to attack my position because the paper I've presented has, according to you, poor examples; you've implicitly assumed that my position is based on her provided example because I provided the paper. This is an incorrect assumption. I provided the paper for educational purposes to people who were curious. It's typically a foundational piece of literature for those proceeding into the abortion debate. Your pedantry over her points is, all things considered, a waste of everyone's time.


Her examples are flat out flawed, and whilst it is an interesting thought experiment, it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. The scenario is fundamentally different to pregnancy in numerous ways which means that any kind of meaningful parallels cannot be drawn. The actions of the woman are not in any way causally linked to the violinist's scenario - she has not done anything whatsoever to cause his situation of being dependant on someone else's body, as I have explained.

I both understand it and reject it is as working. You can try to defend it all you like, but you're creating a situation non-analogically. Your situation, as you've constructed it is to (1) remove yourself or (2) kill the person and then remove yourself.This doesn't work, because killing the person first isn't necessary, nor does it amount in a different procedure for removal.No, it's not. Because medically, these procedures don't factually map out. In the case of abortion we're choosing between cutting someone open, or performing a less invasive procedure. The former may results in fetal life, or may not; the latter results in fetal death.The analogy you're attempting to provide doesn't work because in the hypothetical you're hooked up to the individual via needles, tubes, etc. your body is effectively acting as his filtration system. Killing him will not change how these needles, tubes, etc. are disconnected.The analogy you provide has to map onto the situation appropriately and, as we're trying to make analogous situations to actual medical practice, they have to map onto medically hypothetically viable situations.


You're seemingly not understanding what an analogy is supposed to achieve here. The analogy does not have not have to be "medically hypothetically viable", it simply serves to set up an ethical comparison to illustrate a point. Eg. JJT uses "people seeds" as one of her analogies; we wouldn't reject this simply because it does not pertain to the real world, we would only reject it if the situation it attempted to draw a parallel to was fundamentally different and thus parallels could not actually be drawn, and ethical comparisons could not be made. I am simply saying: If there were two methods of "disconnecting" the violinist, one which, for some hypothetical reason, required him to be actively killed as part of disconnecting, and the other not requiring to kill him while disconnecting, then we have an exact analogy for abortion/C-section. I can even grant that the former procedure may somehow be "more invasive" on the woman. And the conclusion any sane person would reach is that there is no ethical justification for choosing the process which involves killing.

I can refuse any treatment, this is correct. This also maps onto a positive right to demand to be able to have certain procedures. A negative right will, in a number of cases, turn into a positive right depending on the situation. A right to free speech (conceptually typically thought of as a negative right) will, in some cases, turn into a positive right (a right to demand something of the government).Using a capabilities approach to liberty (see Nussbaum's work) or a negative conception of liberty (Locke, Hobbes, Berlin), in fact, removing my option to choose a certain medical procedure does constitute a restriction of my freedom and thereby my bodily autonomy. Even in positive liberty theory such as Green and Bosanquet, there could be certain situations where a removal of 'juridical freedom' would constitute an infringement of 'true freedom'.Mill, for example, is a negative liberty thinker who tries to deny that any restrictions are necessarily restrictions on liberty. He does this through the 'harm principle' claiming that you have no pre-existing freedom to choose a harmful proposition. MacCallum has a similarly morally loaded conception in his triadic freedom.However, rejecting morally loaded conceptions of liberty (as Berlin would have us do), this would constitute a restriction in bodily freedom. As an aside, if you don't understand theories of freedom, then you're in no depth to be claiming what would or would not constitute a restriction of a freedom-based right.More pragmatically, however, is that suppose we assume your world where I have an option to either (1) carry to term or (2) have a cesarean section. The problem with this conception is that it ignores real world fact. This is the fact that (1) non-cesarean section abortion will continue to be available abroad (unless the entire world legislates simultaneously and unanimously to prevent all abortion); and (2) back alley abortion will continue to be available and, when abortion restrictions are heightened, the number of back alley abortions increases; which of course, presents greater harm to the women. However, we know that women will risk this option for any number of perhaps incorrect reasons, but this is a fact of human psychology that must be acknowledged.


You've completely lost the plot here. We can agree to disagree on every other issue and that's fine, but what you're saying regarding this final point is just flat out false, and painfully silly. You're needlessly arguing in philosophical abstracts and overcomplicating what is a simple issue. We only need to look at how medical treatment and autonomy are actually related in practice: the simple fact is that you do not have a right to demand any treatment you want, end of story. I really really don't know where you've got this idea from. Between the treatments that you are offered by the current standards of medical practice, you of course have full autonomy in deciding which to have, or alternatively in rejecting all of them even if it will result in harm. You can not pick and choose any medical procedure whatsoever and demand that doctors perform it on you.

Procedures may be restricted based on situation - you cannot, for example, demand to have surgery on an inoperable tumour which surgeons will not operate on. Others may be restricted based on cost. They can also, quite obviously, be restricted based on ethics.The example of metal fillings in Dentistry I posted above illustrates this very simply. An established and successful treatment has been discontinued in some jurisdictions for an ethically justifiable reason relating to environmental concerns, and as such patients can no longer have it. They are free to choose between other options which the medical community offers.

If you deny this concept, then you are implying that we have the right to any kind of medical intervention no matter how horrific the consequences or prerequisites may be. We could justify the most terrifying medical experimentation on humans claiming a "right" to the best possible treatment. This is clearly insane. Even if we grant you all the bodily autonomy arguments as absolute, which I personally don't and evidently isn't granted in practice either, you still cannot jump to the conclusion of "I have a right to an abortion at any stage of pregnancy". No logical pathway from one to the other. You want to "disconnect" a late term baby? You can have it removed from you without killing it, simple as that.

The issue of legislation around the world is also completely irrelevant. Remember, we are talking about late term abortions here, when the fetus is viable. These are generally not permitted in almost all developed countries in the world, even in the USA and the UK which have some of the most lenient laws. Yes, back alley abortions may exist, but that is a piss poor justification for allowing unrestricted abortion, and is really neither here nor there. There are plenty of dodgy, unethical doctors in 3rd world countries who probably do all kinds of procedures that would never be permitted in our society; that does not give us a reason to start implementing them here.
(edited 8 years ago)
What on earth is inconsistent about that? Yes, she caused her own situation, but she is not "at fault" for it because she hasn't acted in a way that is morally wrong or negligent (assuming all proper contraception was used). Seems pretty simple to understand.

I am not claiming that, because she is causally the reason for her situation, she must not be allowed to get an abortion. I am claiming that denying her from getting an abortion is not analogous to a forced organ donation. I have already pointed out what the difference is between the two: The kidnapper who forces an individual to donate organs is "at fault", and is causally the reason for that person's predicament in the first place. In the case of pregnancy, there is no analogous equivalent of that kidnapper. The state did not get her pregnant in the first place.
(edited 8 years ago)

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