[Bups-dis] Second Response to Merlina

[J M Whiteley]

Thanks for the second response; it gave a lot of food for thought.  Hopefully, I
can tidy some things up.

It is certainly the case that goading is problematic.  Whether it is more
onerous to pressure someone into having a child or procuring an abortion I have
no idea, but I don’t think that it really affects the rightness or wrongness of
abortion. If euthanasia was legal, you could be goaded into it, but that
doesn’t make euthanasia wrong in principle:  To use a more banal example, you
could be goaded into signing up for a credit card you don’t need and can’t
afford, but that’s not a damning indictment of the credit industry itself.

Another problem you raise is the problem of choice, and whether people are
capable of making informed choices.  In the strict, idealistic, sense of
‘informed choice’, I would say no, because to have that ability to make
untainted choices implies a kind of metaphysical freedom we don’t possess. 
This doesn’t deliver a killer blow for abortionists though, because free choice
is something we have to assume in order to move in any direction – any choice
would be a bad choice because no choice would be a free choice – and, provided
we ascertain that the agent is being used as a ‘puppet’, we can call her choice
a free one.

The next point I’d like to look at is claims on the inside and the outside of
our bodies.  I don’t think there’s really any relevant difference between the
two, and I’ll try to explain why.  Imagine our violinist once more, but imagine
that instead of providing him with the use of your kidneys, you have been
forced to run on a treadmill which powers his life-support machine:  Do you
have the right to step off the machine?  If they demand you run on it for a
week non-stop then you can certainly step-off, but what about if they only need
you for five minutes? Our intuition would be that the treadmill-claim is
greater than the kidney-claim, precisely because of this inside/outside
distinction, but there doesn’t seem to be any relevant difference between using
someone’s kidneys and using their leg muscles.  

I do think that sex (protected or unprotected) doesn’t really amount to tacit
consent for sex, and this was the purpose of my – as you rightly pointed out,
rather weak – mugger analogy.  Instead of using this analogy, I’m going to run
with your colourfully insightful tiger-mauling analogy:  We may call the man
who gets mauled by a tiger foolish, but this isn’t really sufficient to place a
strong burden on him.  Assuming the man survived the attack, would we say that
a doctor could legitimately refuse him treatment on the basis that he is
blameworthy for his injuries?  We surely wouldn’t say that this man should bear
the burden of his injuries, no matter how careless he was.  We may call people
who get accidentally pregnant ‘foolish’ for doing so, but we wouldn’t
necessarily want them to bear the brunt of this costly mistake. 

Anyway, I hope the above is worth considering.  I’d be very interested hearing
your thoughts on it.

Johnny