- The child-in-utero is a real living human with moral value.
- Parents have duties to their children, even when they are in the womb.
Moral values and obligations are not things which can be proven like the facts of biology. Thus, the argument often hinges on showing the existence of certain ethical truths by isolating them in situations with key similarities.
Today I want to look at five situation which I think are useful.
The Murderous Conjoined Twin:
The typical starting point for a SAL is that a woman should be able to "do what she wants with her body”. The problem is that abortion is absolutely focused on attacking another person’s body – namely the child-in-utero.
So the first thing to point out is how the "right to do what you want with your body" doesn't include the prerogative to kill someone else. Even if that person is attached to you.
Situation:
“Suppose you had a set of conjoined twins. Twin A decides she wants to rid herself of Twin B by shooting her. She claims she has the right to do this because ‘its her body'. Does she have the right to do that?”Again, this situation is designed to point out the absurdity of saying “it’s my body” when the thing being discussed is violence to someone else. The twin in this situation has absolutely no right to kill her conjoined sister, who is a distinct human being with a life of her own.
Of course, your interlocutor may respond, “Well, that baby is totally dependent on the mother. So she gets to decide.”
This leads to a tweaked situation….
Spin-Off Situation:
“Suppose their physiology was such that Twin B was reliant upon the liver of Twin A to survive. Once again, Twin A wants to shoot Twin B in the head. Now does she have the right to shoot her twin?”Now the situation is altered to include physical dependency. Yet it doesn’t seem to matter, does it? The bottom line is, Twin A simply has no right to directly kill Twin B. And likewise, a mother has no right to kill her child.
Fork in the Road:
This tends to send the conversation in one of two directions. First, the person could say it's totally different because child-in-utero isn't a distinct human life. That sends you down the path of showing the ample scientific evidence to the contrary.
However, the SAL could also attempt to redefine murder...
The Dignity of a Coma Patient:
Many SALs attempt to salvage the ethics of abortion by adding a new criteria to the definition of murder. That is, they will propose that what matters it is not just the intentional extinguishing of an innocent human life – it must be the killing of a sentient or conscious human.
Well, you can take that criterion and simply try it out on an adult subject. Namely, someone who is in a deep coma but will eventually awake.
Situation:
"Suppose there was a person in a deep coma, but who was eventually going to awake. Would that human still be a 'person'? Would it be licit to kill that human being?"
This effectiveness of this analogy was aptly displayed by Ben Shipero at Berkley. Just like the child-in-utero, this patient is not currently sentient, but will become sentient in the future.
Remaining consistent will force the person to say that coma patients have no moral value and can be licitly killed. But that conclusion seems instantly absurd. Thus, the SAL is forced to admit that future sentience bestows moral value.
The Hurricane Victims:
As stated above, the second key premise of the Pro-Life philosophy is that parents have the duty to feed and shelter their children. This is opposed to the assertion that female autonomy entails the unrestricted right to cut off sustenance to the child-in-utero.
Pro-Lifers commonly respond by pointing out how no one would claim that right of a newborn child. That is to say, we'd never assert a right to starve or expose a child who has been born. In fact, it would be a crime.
Many SAL’s dodge this assertion by saying it’s different for a newborn baby because someone else can care for her. OK… what if there isn’t? What if the mother is the only one who can provide for the newborn baby? Then what?
Situation:
"During Hurricane Irma there was a woman who had to give birth alone. It was just her and her newborn, and help was hours away. Would she have the obligation to feed her baby? (Or could she just put her baby somewhere and forget about her?)"
We instinctively know that it would be child abandonment to simply place the newborn baby in a room and walk away. Thus, saying “yes” to the first question (and thereby “no” to the second) admits that a mother can have obligations to her baby – even when she’s the only one who can provide for the kiddo.
Now we can add one more wrinkle which makes it even more similar to pregnancy...
Spin-Off:
"Suppose she didn’t have formula and the only way to do it was breastfeeding… Is she obligated to attempt breastfeeding? Or, once again, can she just put the baby somewhere?"This is the same concept as before – only now you’re making the connection to pregnancy more explicit. This points to an obligation to support the baby (or attempt to do so) with one’s own body if necessary.
The only difference between this and actual pregnancy is that the child can get air on her own…
The Sea Explorers:
In the face of other examples of parents being obliged to provide food and shelter to their children, many SAL’s will assert there is something special about providing oxygen to someone with your body. Some will even assert (against all scientific criteria) that true human life does not begin until the first breath is drawn outside the womb.
So we need to ask the question, if someone is reliant upon you for air... do you have the right to kill that person?
Situation:
"Suppose a father and son go out treasure hunting at sea. The father sends his son down into the water in a submersible which is fed air from the boat. The father has to physically operate a pump to move the air down to his son.
Now… the father gets bored and decides he wants to do some fishing for a while. Would he be doing something wrong if he simply quit feeding oxygen to his son? Resulting in his son’s asphyxiation and death?"
If the SAL intuits that the father would be doing something wrong by ceasing to operate that pump, he/she is admitting a parent can be obliged to feed oxygen to his/her child with the labors of his/her own body.
The Abandoned Child:
Despite constituting only 1-2% of actual abortions, the case of pregnancy through rape appears in 100% of conversations about abortion. In these situations, the woman is (to everyone’s horror) forced into a scenario where the child is dependent upon her body.
And as tricky as it is to talk about this scenario (why do you think it gets brought up 100% of the time) it is possible to point out that we can have obligations foisted upon us.
Situation:
At the beginning of the movie “Meet the Robinsons”, the protagonist is dropped off by his mother at a stranger’s doorstep. Suppose it’s a snowy day and you open your door to find a baby has been dropped off on your doorstep. Do you have an obligation to move that baby into your house? Or can you just close the door and forget about it, leaving the baby in the cold?
The answer is obvious. As soon as you are aware of that child on your doorstep, you have the responsibility to care for that kid until he/she can be safely moved elsewhere.
It is certainly desirable to call Child Protective Services and get out of that situation as quickly as possible… but we still recognize that it must be done in an ethical way. You can’t just slam the door on the kid, and you may even have to take care of her for a while until the professionals arrive.
That means performing certain actions… with your body… on the helpless child’s behalf.
Thus we draw to the close of our five analogies.
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