peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley) (04/02/84)
Yes, Laura's hierarchy of value of life seems to be a bit ad hoc. The more I think about pursuing this argument, say by offering a more difficult case for her system to handle (e.g. Fred and his mother-in-law locked in the same room fighting over limited food), the less sanguine I become as it's a bit of a leap to the abortion issue. This is because abortion laws can have very wide-ranging secondary effects. A ban on abortions will have some pregnant women throwing themselves down stairs in an attempt to bring on a miscarriage. Or going to backroom abortionists. And these are surely grave evils, as both the mother and fetus may die in these cases. A ban on abortions is seen as a blow against liberation of women, and it is, as it limits their freedom considerably. There is no accepted notion that it is a woman's duty to have a child. (Much more on this could be said). A ban on abortions is seen by some as an attempt to foist specific religious values on the general populace. And the secondary effects of this are also widespread-- imposing a general principle of conformity lessens the chance that novel solutions to problems will be found, harming the potential well-being of all. Finally, I am dismayed by the lack of specific cases discussed, though not surprised. Specific cases of abortion show a range of circumstances that aren't easily handled by a succinct logical system. All these factors have to be weighed and I just can't see a simple logical system doing that well, particularly when so many deal in effects the magnitudes of which are unknowable. Logic just isn't set up for that. Use logic where it applies, to parts of this problem, but don't expect to be able to deduce an answer (and have everyone accept it-- even if acting entirely without emotion). ------ It depresses me that all we seem to do is to look at the physical act of abortion in isolation, declare that there is something "wrong" there, and try to legislate it away, much as one might legislate away poverty. or gravity. Trained as scientists, we abstract away a lot of detail-- in this case, social considerations such as those above. But that detail CANNOT be tossed away without divorcing the argument from reality. If all those who want to legislate abortion away would put their efforts and money into sex education and offering assistance to unwed mothers to provide them and their children with good homes, I am sure they would reduce the numbers of abortions far more than they have done to date. I'd be interested to hear why they don't do this. p. rowley, U. Toronto
laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (04/02/84)
Peter presents 2 arguments. The first is that not allowing abortions infringes on a woman's freedom. The question is, where is a woman's right to freedom derived from? Is it an arbitrary decision, based on the whims of certain people who would like to be free (and thus no more reasonable than the whims of certain people who would like to set up a dictatorship) or is the `right to freedom' firmly based in reality, and thus is *real* regardless of the desires of certain people who do not want freedom for others (or themselves)? If it is an arbitrary and irrational decision then we are back to `whoever has the biggest stick wins'. Morality is therefore an opponent of humanity and not needed by him -- and it is opposed to his desire to impose his will on other people. If this is all that morality is then morality is only a measure of who has the power in a given society, nothing more. Clearly (or at least I hope I have been clear) I do not believe this. I believe that one's right to freedom is a basic truth. Man must choose to live. We therefore are free whether we wish it that way or not -- it is part of the given of existence. The right to be free is the right to make decisions which have a direct outcome on one's own life. The right to be free is the right to choose which values one will actualise. But the right to freedom is predicated on life. Rock are not free. Their existence is purely `given' -- there are no decisions for a rock. Plants are hardly more free. Animals are much more free and human beings are at the pintacle of the whole structure. What does this mean for the fetus? That, if it is a humn being, it should have the same right to freedom as any other human being. Killing a human being takes away all his freedom whatsoever. Unless the mother's life is threatened, a pregnancy does not have that total an effect on her freedom. (It is also useful to remember that pregnancy does not strike one down in the prime of health like cancer. Except in the case of rape it is clear that at some point the woman exercised her freedom to choose to persue an act which is known to produce fetuses with some statistical regularity.) If rights are irrational whims then there is no point in defending them save that you might have a whim to enforce them. If rights are *not* then to do anything against them is to work against one's own rights, since the rights should be uniform over a common humanity. Thus to kill a fetus is to undermine the very underpinnings of human freedom (if the fetus is human) by decreeing that certain people have the right to decide that other people should die for no crime other than their very existence. Existence is not a crime. Any ethics that proposes this should be abandoned as being anti-life, and thus anti-value, since values are predicated on life. (why do we choose to value something? because it furthers or maintains one's life. If we were all demonstrably immortal then teh action of shooting holes in a person would not be considered an evil -- it is because of its effect on human life that it is deemed to be evil). The other statement is that banning abortions will cause people not to look for other solutions. I fail to see the logic in this. Indeed, I belive that the converse is true -- if you legalise abortion on demand then you will immediately cause the pro-abortioners to believe that the problem has been solved. It may be that as long as you keep anti-abortion laws on the statutes there will be anti-abortioners who will consider the problem solved, but since they are by and large arguing from the position that human life takes precidence over human convenience it seems more reasonable to assume that they can look at poverty, disease, and people throwing themselves down stairs as evils against human life. I do not see how the pro-abortioners are necessarily going to see the same things, since they may simply find that it is as or more inconvenient to do anything about these problems as it would be to spend 9 months pregnant. Clearly, certain pro-abortioners will not see it this way but I see no logical necessity in this. -- Laura Creighton utzoo!laura "Capitalism is a lot of fun. If you aren't having fun, then you're not doing it right." -- toad terrific