adam@lzmi.UUCP (04/04/84)
This is a reply to Gary Samuelson. Lines prefixed by > are quotes. >Someone who either forgot to sign his/her article or wishes to >remain anonymous is now trying to redefine 'rape'. If you need to know who submitted an article, look in the header. "Signature lines" are redundant. >Several problems come to mind as I consider the above scenario: > >1. It is not universally accepted that a brain disease can force > someone to commit rape. Thus, it is not true that "there is > no question that the rapist ... is ... innocent," as you claim > below. > >2. It is not certain that the woman will be raped if she does not > kill the rapist. She may be able to shoot him in such a way as > to stop him without killing him. Self-defense does not necessarily > require killing. > >3. It could be argued that she does not have the right to kill him > because he is trying to rape her, but because he is likely to > kill her in the process. When I took the MIT Neuropsychology course , the late Hans Lukas Teuber discussed a case in which an irresistible impulse to rape resulted from damage to the temporal lobes. The possibility of alternative assumptions to other aspects of the scenario is not a valid argument agains a Gendankenexperiment using the scenario as given. >You're joking, aren't you? You aren't really saying that a fetus >has committed the crime of rape, are you? No - the fetus, like the brain-damaged rapist, is clearly innocent. But if a third person forcibly prevented the woman from killing the rapist, so that the rape took place, that third person would be guilty of rape. Similarly, anyone who forcibly prevents a woman from aborting an unwanted pregnancy is guilty. >Please tell me you're joking. "Unwanted pregnancy is rape?" I >thought calling the fetus a parasite was stretching a definition >(to say the least), but to call unwanted pregnancy a rape is >ridiculous. I guess before a woman can get an abortion, we should >file charges, produce witnesses, appoint a defense attorney, and >then, if the fetus is found guilty, sentence it to life imprisonment, >with possibility of parole after so many years. Or commit it to >a mental hospital, until it outgrew its tendency to rape its mother. How's that again? We do not require the threatened woman to submit to rape so that the rapist might be brought to trial. She is entitled to avoid rape by killing him on the spot. >By all means, let us check the premises. Shall we start with the one >which identifies an unwanted pregnancy with rape? That is not a premise, but the result of assuming the premise that the fetus is anything other than a part of the woman's own body. Adam Reed lzmi!adam
ark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) (04/27/85)
> I suggest the analogy be modified as follows: > You are driving your car, and you have an accident in which > you are not injured, but someone else is. Is it not evading > your responsibility to refuse aid to that injured person? > Your action has resulted in a situation in which someone > else's life depends on what you do. (Now, who caused the > accident may be a factor in determining whose is the > responsibility, but not in the analogy I draw below.) Whether your analogy is more accurate than mine depends on exactly one thing: whether or not a fetus is a human being. That, of course, is precisely my point: the "responsibility" argument is irrelevant. References: <818@bunker.UUCP>