Dr. Retard

Recently, my favorite lousy pro-life argument goes like this:

1. If you choose to do something, knowing that it has a substantial risk of bringing about some unwanted outcome, then you must withstand that outcome, should it come about, in order to be responsible.

2. So, if you choose to have sex, knowing that it has a substantial risk of causaing pregnancy, then you must withstand pregnancy, should it come about, in order to be responsible.

Premise 1 is absurd and there is a lot of potential for hilarious parodies:

If you choose to go scuba diving and a shark bites off your arm, to be responsible, you must not seek medical treatment.

If you choose to eat sugary foods and you get a cavity, to be responsible, you must not see a dentist.

If you choose to go tree climbing and you break your leg, to be responsible, you must not see a doctor.

If you choose to go into 'the bad part of town' and you get raped, to be responsible, you must not seek medical treatment and counseling.

Any others?

Alonzo Fyfe

Actually, this argument is a bit worse than you presented it.

If you choose to go into 'the bad part of town' and somebody forces sex on you, it is not rape because, insofar as you knowingly entered the bad part of town, you 'consented' to the consequences.

tronvillain

No, it is rape, because you presumably did not consent having sex forced upon you. You are partially responsible for being raped since presumably you knew there was a significant chance of it happening, but it remains rape.

seebs

I think this is true in certain cases. I think it's true of gambling, but not of shark attacks. The question is whether your choice affects someone else.

The central issue - whether or not a zygote is "human" - remains a pure axiom.

NialScorva

Well, I'm not Pro-life, but:

I think you're attacking a straw man. The point is not that you must endure the consequences for the sake of enduring the consequences, it's that the badness of your discomfort is outweighed by the badness of destroying a potential human being. The statement presents a utilitarian choice that can be prempted by an earlier choice. Does the goodness of avoiding the decision outweigh the goodness of having sex?

According to pro-lifers, it does.

Dr. Retard

In short, you're changing the subject. There are at least prima facie good reasons to be pro-life: abortion is, after all, the intentional killing of a human being. That's why abortion is a legitimately tricky ethical issue, on which reasonable people may disagree.

But these reasonable motivations for being pro-life are quite unlike the kind given by the argument I'm talking about -- an argument which is, tragically, not a strawman, but a living, breathing crap monster.

seebs

I think the argument is better than you give it credit for; it applies reasonably to anything where avoiding the "unwanted outcome" will harm someone else.

Alonzo Fyfe

I don't think so, actually. Just as a woman who decides to walk down a dark alley does not consent to sex, she may also kill any potential attacker in self-defense.

A woman who has sex and takes precautions against pregnancy does not consent to have her body used as an incubator for another life for 9 months.

One may object that the rapist is a guilty party and the conceptus is an innocent party. But this, in part, begs the question -- since the rapist is a 'guilty party' only in the sense that the woman has a right to defend herself from the attack.

One may also object that the conceptus cannot help but be conceived, but the rapist makes a free choice to attack the woman. However, the woman's right to defend herself would not be diminished if scientists were to discover that rape was a compulsion and that rapists do not 'decide' to commit rape.

In short, even if the fetus is a person, no person has the right to the use of another person's body without her consent -- even to save a life (e.g., removing a kidney to keep another person alive). And knowledge that there is a risk that one's body will be used does not count as consent.

[ May 29, 2002: Message edited by: Alonzo Fyfe ]</p>

babelfish

Alonzo,

I agree with your thinking in the above post.

I just want to add one more thought. Most women who choose to have an abortion do not do so because they are uncaring, unmotherly monsters. On the contrary, they know what an enormous responsibility caring for and raising a human being is. Most women who choose not to continue a pregnancy do so because conditions in their life at that time are not consistent with the conditions necessary to take on the enormous, life-altering responsibilities of motherhood.

That's what annoys me about the anti-choice side's use of the word "convenience" when discussing why women have abortions.

Jamie_L

Actually, there are legal situations which hold people responsible if they do something that they could have known would result in harm to someone else.

Example: felony murder.

Suppose you attempt armed robbery of a bank, but have no intent to harm anyone. Say you even use a fake gun, but it looks real. A security guard tries to shoot you, and hits someone else killing them. You can be charge with felony murder. You committed a crime in which it was forseeable that someone could get killed.

I think negligent homicide is similar, but I'm not as familiar with that.

So the arguement isn't really that you must endure the results. The argument hinges on the presumption that the fetus is an individual with rights. The arguement goes: you don't have the right to harm the new individual (the fetus) based on events that were forseeable and could have been avoided.

I don't think it's as absurd as the OP suggests. It all goes back to the same thing: does (or should) the fetus have rights as an individual or not?

Jamie