3 ms·
Firstly, your kidney donation comparisons is completely irrelevant here, it is not even remotely comparable to the situation of having a living person inside yo
by swat535 4y ago
Firstly, your kidney donation comparisons is completely irrelevant here, it is not even remotely comparable to the situation of having a living person inside your body. I am not sure how your analogy would be able to backup your claim.
That being said, I will _assume_ that you are tying to make a variation of the The Violinist Argument [0] and so I will respond to that instead.
This argument claims that the question of fetal personhood is irrelevant because the mother’s right to an abortion would trump the fetus’ right to life even if he is a person.
The idea is that this situation is analogous to an unplanned pregnancy: against her plans, the woman finds herself supporting the life of an unwanted person and has the right to deprive that person of her bodily support, regardless of what the result is for the parasite.
The key logical flaw lies in its failure to distinguish between killing and letting die. In the context at hand, this distinction corresponds closely to the difference between what might be called ordinary and extraordinary life-preserving measures, whether they take the form of healthcare or some other intervention.
Let me give a simple example to illustrate what I mean by ordinary vs. extraordinary life-preserving measures. If you have fainted on the train tracks, it would be admirable for me to dive in front of an on-coming train and sacrifice myself in order to knock you out of the way. But you are not entitled to have me perform this extraordinary act of heroism. If I do not dive in front of the train, no one would say that I was guilty of manslaughter. On the other hand, you probably would be entitled to my assistance if I am standing idly by and see you collapse hours before a train is in sight. Where exactly to draw the line between ordinary and extraordinary life-saving measures might be fuzzy, but the basic validity of the distinction should be readily apparent.
Having laid this groundwork, we can see that the “Right to Life” is a right not to be killed. It is not a right not to die. The reason that the woman in the story can sever the tubes without violating the violinist’s dignity is because he does not have a right not to die. The tubes are an extraordinary means of preserving his life, and he is not entitled to extraordinary life-saving measures. However, the woman may not stab the man in the heart and only then sever the tubes. In this case, she would be violating his dignity because he has a right not to be killed. This latter scenario most closely resembles an abortion, in which the fetus is ripped or burned to death while still in the womb and only then removed.
Now, why does the abortion procedure go to such great lengths to kill the fetus before removing him? In many early-term abortions, the procedure is simply easier, but not so in late-term abortions. The reason is instructive: leaving a prematurely born infant to die without providing basic care would be illegal, a violation of the infant’s right not to be killed. Like the violinist, an infant is not entitled to extraordinary life-saving interventions, but he is entitled to ordinary sustenance. This includes the baseline level of care necessary for ordinary survival—food, water, oxygen, warmth, etc.—from those responsible for him. Parents who fatally neglect their young children are guilty of killing them, not just letting them die. Regardless of whether the parents want or ever wanted those children, the law understands that they have a primary responsibility to provide the ordinary sustenance to which young children are entitled. If unborn children have the same personhood status as infants, then they should be accorded the same rights. Since the placenta represents the ordinary means by which a fetus obtains food, water, oxygen, and warmth, it follows that he should have the right to remain in his mother’s womb until viability, even if she does not want him there.
The abortion debate is very much a question of personhood.
When Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun penned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortion in the United States, he admitted:
> If this suggestion of [fetal] personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [14th] amendment.
The appellant was Roe, and the 14th Amendment states that “no person shall be deprived of life…without due process of law.”
In other words, Roe v. Wade itself acknowledges this.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion