hawk@oliven.UUCP (08/02/84)
[Followups have been routed to net.abortion {I think}]
> Lets say that you, Rick, and I are visitors from another world. (I have
> a reason for starting off with this.) We come to Earth as friends on a
> Holiday. We decide to go mountain climbing, and during the excursion, I
> happen to fall and damage both my kidneys. You, being the good friend
> you are, rush me to a hospital where the only living physician on ET
> biology informs you that the only way to save my life is for you to donate
> one of your kidneys to me. Its no big deal to us, your kidney would grow
> back in a few months anyway, but I don't have that long.
>
> Now, clearly, my life depends on you donating your kidney to me. But for
> whatever reason, you decide that you don't want to even though it would
> mean my life. Now, we have a situation where my right to life is directly
> dependent on you giving up your right to control what happens to your own
> body. In this case, which right prevails? My right to life, or your
> right to control what happens to your own body?
In this case, 1) I have a moral obligation to donate a kidney, but 2) you have
no right to demand this action from me.
The problem with this analogy is that it is confusing positive and negative
rights. [philosopher's sideline: a positive right is a right to have
something done, while a negative right is the right not to have something done
to you.] Your right to my kidney would be a positive right, a fetus's right
not to be aborted would be a negative right?
How 'bout this example?
You and I are again creatures from another planet and have encountered one
another while mountain climbing. I fall, and damage my kidneys, and due to
the biology of our people, when you brush against my open wound while reaching
over to help me up, a symbiotic attachment occurs (as in Siamese twins). The
only way to disconnect us is through surgery or upon of our deaths. It will
now take you months instead of a couple of days to climb back down the
mountain so that you can reach a surgeon. Now, my right to life has become
dependent on your giving up control of your body. Do you have the right to
shoot me? After all, I could not survive alone and you didn't ask to have me
attached to you.
--
hawk (Rick Hawkins @ Olivetti ATC)
[hplabs|zehntel|fortune|ios|tolerant|allegra|tymix]!oliveb!oliven!hawk