Timothy Murray lost his father earlier this year and had been asking his principal for counseling when she called in the police
Timothy Murray lost his father earlier this year and had been asking his principal for counseling when she called in the police
Easy, define a form of bodily autonomy that permits forcing conscious action upon an individual (this is the basis for many laws1 ), but not prohibiting the individual from engaging in an action to override an already occurring unconscious process.
This is necessary because the former is the description of what many morally accepted laws already do, and the latter is a description of what prohibiting abortion is.
In other words this is the exact definition that we need to show is correct to justify abortion on the grounds of bodily control.
Except we can’t, and it’s obvious why. Saying “you must do X” is clearly stronger than saying “you cannot stop Y from continuing to happen”. So we already accept a greater violation of bodily autonomy as good, and the abortion defence is actually contradictory.
We can resolve this by rejecting one of the premises. So which one do you want to reject? The one that is the basis for societal rules, or the one that allows killing humans?
As I already pointed out the bodily autonomy argument is essentially completely rejected in ethics, it’s only popular because of Thompson’s deeply flawed and overly simplistic paper (primarily because it already assumes that such a form of bodily autonomy already exists).
The first half of what you said is difficult to understand and I’m probably going to need you to simplify it for me.
For the last part- you don’t believe that there’s any moral difference between:
?
And, follow up question - is a fertilized egg a person in this example? If not, at what point does it become one and have moral weight, in your view?
This is an incorrect phrasing of the situation. The actual question is what moral principles do we already accept? Which ones are more fundamental than others. Instead you are literally affirming the consequent by presupposing that bodily autonomy is morally relevant.(Otherwise,if that’s not what you are doing,your phraseology is just bizarre)
Laws force people to use their body regardless of how they feel about it. We agree that it is moral.
Prohibiting abortion is denying the ability to perform an action. We assert that this is immoral.
However, forcing an action is stronger than denying an action. So which premise is wrong? Is it the one that leads societal rules unenforceable, or the one that makes a quarter of the population temporarily unhappy?
There is also the extrinsic teleological argument that pregnancy isn’t a violation anymore than your pancreas producing insulin. A belief can be irrational if it contradicts a biological function.
“Would a fertilised egg be human”
As long as it is a separate entity that is living and functional with a probability of future conscious experience. Note, that I don’t make the unique DNA distinction because that would render killing clones permissible.
Now unlike some people I don’t think that all abortion is immoral, just one’s where we have a reasonable expectation of future human experience so long as we do not take action to reduce this expectation. Like how rendering someone brain-dead so you can kill them is just a more elaborate active killing , something like drinking alcohol to render your fetus brain dead is also active killing.
Why?
Do you consider a fertilized egg to have the same moral weight as a person?
Because denying an action is simply requiring that the existing circumstance continue, while forcing an action is to require that the person engage in a conscious action (to specify, it’s a stronger control over someone else’s body).
“Do you consider a fertilised egg to have the same moral weight as a person”
I already answered this more generally, fertilisation is not the revelant part it is that it is a distinct organism with a reasonable expectation of future conscious experience. Many fertilised eggs do meet this standard, but not all. Likewise fertilised eggs are not the only things that meet this standard. Things like pluripotent stem cells that are being created to form fetuses, also meet this standard.
(I strongly suspect that you are fishing for a specific response, which you find absurd despite ultimately accepting all the premises.)
I’m not. I thought you were pretty clear, but I wanted to check. I’m sort of exploring what you believe, rather than fishing for anything in particular.
So, in your view, if a building were burning, and inside was an artificial womb of some sort with twenty viable eggs that will eventually become people, then would there be a moral duty to save them over one five-year-old child?
Do you believe that it isn’t?