welsch (01/28/83)
The purpose of this article is to present a scenario for thinking about abortion and the right to life. The name of the scenario is "The Singer Scenario," both for the philsopher who thought it up and the key person in the scenario. The Singer Scenario There is a famous cult singer who is dying of a rare blood disease. The cult in an effort to save the singer, knocks you out and abducts you. When you awaken in the morning you are in bed with the singer in a bed next to you and you are connected to the singer through a series of tubes. If you break the connection with the tubes then the singer will die. Minnimum you will have to be connected to the singer for 9 months. Questions: 1. Is it murder if you break the connection? 2. If you were not forcibly connected to the singer are you still morally/legally obligated to be connected? 3. Once having been connected are you morally/legally obligated to remain connected to the singer? 4. What "moral/legal" obligations does society have towards the singer? 5. What moral/legal obligations does society have towards you?
decot (01/30/83)
These are my opinionated answers to your five questions about the Singer Scenario, although you probably thought the answers were obvious, and an explanation follows. 1. It is not murder to break the connection. 2. No, you are not obligated in any way to be connected. 3. No, you are not obligated to continue to be connected, because you did not have any way of choosing whether to be connected in the first place; that is, you did not, by any act or agreement on your part, choose to be susceptible to this situation. 4. Society has the obligation to attempt to preserve the life of the singer, as long as those involved in his preservation either: 1) are directly responsible for his dilemma, or 2) want to help him out of compassion for human life. 5. Society has the obligation to attempt to preserve my rights to live my life the way I want to, but not if I deny responsibility for my actions. The difference between the scenario you give and the morphology of most situations in which abortion is performed is that the abductee has no way of preventing the singer's illness, but the parents of aborted children choose through their (willfully or irresponsiblly) unprevented conception to put themselves (and their child) in that position. If you want to know, I take every opportunity to help others in every way I can that does not subject me to WORSE conditions than they; I would therefore CONTINUE to be connected to the singer as long as I could be of benefit to him without killing myself, but I would object to the methods used by the cult in securing my cooperation. -Dave Decot -...decvax!cwruecmp!decot
bernie (02/16/83)
In reply to your questions : 1. Is breaking the connection murder? No. I have no obligation to keep support the life of anyone else. If he can survive without being connected to me, or can find a *volunteer* to provide life-support, fine; forcing me to keep him alive is infringing on my basic freedom. 2. What if I hadn't been forced into the situation? If I had *voluntarily* chosen to provide the singer with life- support, then I have a moral (and possibly legal, if we'd signed any sort of agreement) obligation to continue doing so. 3. What moral/legal obligations do I have towards the singer? See (1) and (2) above. Effectively, the answer is "none". 4. Does society have any moral/legal obligations to the singer? Of course not. "Society" doesn't *have* 'moral and legal obligations', since "society" is not an independent, free-willed individual. "Society" is made up of individuals, each of whom has to make his or her own moral decisions. "Society" doesn't owe anybody anything. 5. What moral/legal obligations does society have towards me? None. See (4). --Bernie Roehl ...decvax!utzoo!watmath!watarts!bernie
mcewan (02/18/83)
#R:houxj:-20900:uiucdcs:31600002:000:415 uiucdcs!mcewan Feb 18 15:21:00 1983 This is a very poor analogy. For most people, the central question is whether the fetus should be considered fully "human" and having the right to life. There is no question that the singer is human. On the other hand, even if you think that the fetus and the singer have the same right to life, ones responsibility to ones child (fetus) is considereably different from the responsibility for a complete stranger.