This is the only bind I can think of that a man would face, that compares to that of a woman facing a crisis pregnancy and the specter of abortion:
A man—I’ll call him John—has a rare type of body chemistry, like a blood type or some other raw body material or organ. An ailing person—I’ll call her Mary—never having committed any offense or crime in her life, needs some of this raw body material of John’s because it’s the only compatible type accessible to Mary’s health care system. If John’s raw body material isn’t donated to Mary, she will die.
The process of getting John’s raw body material from his body to Mary’s is arduous. John will be increasingly less mobile and more confined over several months in preparation for making the transfer of his body material to Mary. He will face restrictions in diet and in medication he can take, so as not to taint the body material, making it useless for Mary. This process will culminate in an unfathomably painful, hours-long process. Doctors will not give him any pain medication for fear that it might harm Mary and render his body material useless. This process is so rigorous as to cause possible trauma to John, leaving him altered forever afterward. He will face a long recovery period. Mary is totally, utterly dependent on John for her life. If John does not go through this process and donate his raw body material to her, she will die.
I cannot think of any anti-legalized-abortion leaders who have called for a man in this situation to be forced by law to donate to a recipient who will die without the donation.
A double standard?
First, let me say that I agree with this analogy and think it very valid. But I know from experience that many see a distinct difference between ‘killing’ and ‘allowing to die’. That is, many think that all humans have a negative right to life (life cannot be taken) but not a positive right to life (life must always be saved).
Of course, I can’t see a difference between acting in a way that results in somebody’s death (killing a person) and acting in a way that results in somebody’s death (allowing a person to die), but I just wanted to point out that others without my utilitarian viewpoint (i.e. people who look at the means, not just the ends) most certainly do.
The reason you can’t think of any “anti-legal abortion leaders” who would call for a man to be forced to donate his blood in your contrived situation is that it is so contrived. Why would anyone take a position on some utterly hypothetical medical anomoly? To use such a silly scenario to justify killing an unborn human for the sake of someone’s convenience is preposterous. In your convoluted set-up we assume that Mary and John are not even related and that one has no responsibility for the other. Can that truly be said of an expectant mother and her child? Doesn’t nature teach you that it is the natural order for a mom to care for and protect her children. Abortion is an abomination against the natural order.
There’s a famous essay – I can’t remember the title right now – that posits pretty much this exact scenario, only with this difference: imagine that John wakes up and finds Mary already hooked up to him.
Why are you basing your morality on the natural order? Wouldn’t that mean that if, say, it was found that murder and adultery are natural, they would then be morally acceptable?
And, how do you even know what the natural order is?
Abortion is an abomination against the natural order.
Not according to Sarah Hrdy, a scientist who has demonstrated that abortion and “infanticide” occur in nature on a regular basis. Animals spontaneously abort under stressful conditions. Some animals actually eat plants that will cause them to abort if they are stressed. And of course, we all know that many animals eat their litters if times are tough.
If abortion is against the natural order, why do so many creatures in nature do it?
I am not referring to the natural order of lower species, I am referring to the natural order of Humans. Any mother worthy of the name understands instinctively what I am talking about. That I should have to defend the idea that killing one’s own child violates the natural order of things makes me fear for our future.
The natural order is not what I am basing my morality on. I am basing my morality on the One who created the natural order. He wrote on tables of stone, “You shall not murder.” But we already know that intuitively, don’t we! That same God put that law in your heart as well. You may deny the truth, but that doesn’t make it go away.
Looks to me like you are implying your own conclusion: the ‘No true Scotsman’ fallacy. If by a ‘mother worthy of the name’ you mean a mother who acts morally, then you have essentially said that ‘it is immoral for a mother to kill her child’ – and then you use that as a premise to argue that ‘it is immoral for a mother to kill her child’. You’re going around in circles.
You still need a separate reason – one that doesn’t rely on God – to believe that what God wrote on these tablets (if, indeed, He did) of stone is in fact the right thing to do.
Joshua, thank you for your thoughtful comments. I see the point you made in your first post. I think newfeminist was addressing it in her reply. I feel it comes down to just about the same thing, namely, a man wouldn’t be held to the same demand in such circumstances.
No, Kevin Phillips, it isn’t contrived. Stranger things have happened. You’re calling my depiction “contrived” is a cop-out. Men routinely choose to use violence and war to “defend [our] way of life.” They know that inevitably, war results in civilian deaths. That means they take innocent human life to “defend their way of life.” The men waging war kill not only human fetuses, but also the women carrying them. They call this “just war.” But let a woman choose to have an abortion to defend and preserve her financial, mental, emotional, and/or physical survival, and the same guys who feel entitled to “defend their way of life” don’t want her having that option.
You’d better believe that if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament, and it would be the equivalent in all the other male-supremacist religions with their fictional male deity.
I recall reading some years ago about the development of a “virtual migraine,” a device that, when worn by a person, simulates all the sensations of a migraine headache. I think it’s time we women developed “virtual pregnancy and childbirth”—a device that duplicates everything a woman experiences during pregnancy and childbirth. And I think it’s time for legislation requiring any American male who opposes legalized abortion to be attached to virtual pregnancy and childbirth—a first childbirth, with no pain medication, lasting say, 18 hours or so. I think I can put together a preliminary list of which prominent anti-legalized-abortion males should appear at the top of the list. Kevin, you’d be on the list, and I’d wager we’d have to hunt you down and drag you kicking and screaming. Among the first names on my list would be John McCain, George W. Bush, if he were living, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Randall Terry, Pat Buchanan.
Kevin, here’s a news flash: you don’t tell we women what our “natural order” is, or how we should respond to a crisis pregnancy. You stand respectfully by and you wait for us to tell you what that is. You defer to us.
You really are into contrived scenarios aren’t you. Down here on Earth women get pregnant. Here babies are killed wantonly. It is not just men who oppose the practice of abortion (another contrived argument). Many of the leaders in the pro-life movement are women. Your position still begs the question of the humanness and pesonhood of the unborn. You place a woman’s convenience over the right of the child to live. There are other options if the financial stain would be too much. Many couples desire to adopt a baby, but cannot because of so many abortions. There are people who will take those “unwante” and love them as their own.
My argument is not circular. It is based on what I believe both you and I know to be true. I adopt basically a presuppositonal apologetic that says we really do know what is right and wrong. The moral law is written on our heart. I am simply appealing to that law which we often suppress for our own reasons, often for our own convenience. I think it is a self-evident truth that a mother who follows that moral code will not kill her children. Some do. It is an aberration and an abomination of this natural order.
It is true what Chesterton said, “It is not true that when men stop belieiving God, they believe in nothing. When men stop believing in God, the believe in anything.”
But how do you know what other people intuitively feel is right?
I’d say that more, or at the very least just as many, women are in support of a woman’s right to choose an abortion. So even if those numbers in support were evidence for what people intuitively feel, they would still not support your conclusion.
And, if we intuitively feel our way towards the ‘right’ morality, why should belief in God affect how we act? I thought all humans were supposed to be intuitively sinful after the original sin like it says in Romans 8, so why God-fearing Christians be acting in a way more in tune with their moral intuition?
Kevin Phillips– The language you use assumes a lot. You use “pro-life” to describe someone who is really just “anti-choice,” because let’s face it, this is not a conversation about life and death, it’s a conversation about the right to terminate a pregnancy and who gets to decide on that right.
I would assume on my own, without praying or anything, that almost all “pro-choice” (that is–someone in favor of letting a woman have control over her own reproductive health and choices)are actually very much “pro-life” as well. It is written on people’s genes (or hearts, whichever you prefer) to want to protect human life in general. Which is the “heart” logic behind the pro-choice argument. When women get to have control over their own reproductive choices, birth-rates fall; poverty goes down; if they already have children those children get more food, time, attention and care—THIS is life protected.
A woman choosing to flush out a cluster of cells (and in the case of the morning-after pill, it’s not yet even attached to the uterine wall) in her body is NOT the same as a mother who kills her “children.” At that point, your “child” might actually only be comparable to a cluster of fingernail cells somewhere else in your body.
I really like your analogy to war, uppitywoman. It makes the comparison between women’s and men’s responsibility to “protect life” very vivid. Why is it that a woman should have to be almost entirely the sole responsible person for the formation and nurture of life? “Responsible” in that she may not defend her own well-being or that of her family by making the choice to terminate an unwanted pregnancy?
In the world as we know it, the vast majority of women are the sole providers for the day-to-day needs of babies and children–that goes for every single culture on this planet. Period. Having a child for most women in the world means giving up more of her life-force than the father will. It means she will be poorer than the average man in her town. It means she will be left with fewer options of mobility and entrepreneurial venture than men too. She should be able to opt out for those reasons alone.
kevinphillips, an undifferentiated cell cluster is not a child. More on definitions. “A mother worthy of the name,” you don’t define that. Each individual mother defines that for herself. Yes, there are women who oppose abortion. They’re entitled to do that. When they find themselves faced with a pregnancy that’s the result of rape, or a pregnancy that could cost them their lives, and they opt to carry the pregnancy to term, they’re entitled to make that decision. But they have no more right than you to impose their beliefs on other women. And you have no right. You never have and never will had to face any pregnancy, not even a welcome one. As I said earlier, you defer to us.
If the likes of you have the power to tell women we can’t have an abortion, you’ve also got the power to tell us we must. The decision isn’t yours. How dare you bring presumptious attitudes to this issue and call me contrived for taking a position on a deeply personal crisis you’ll never face? How dare you bring such a presumptious attitude that you feel entitled to tell mothers when they’re worthy of the name?