[Bups-dis] Response to Merlina, on 'Three Approaches to Defending Abortion'

[J M Whiteley]

Cheers for replying to the post, I'd like to try and clear up/clarify a couple
of the points you made.


Firstly, the gin and coathangers thing was a joke - albeit one in poor taste. 
Of course abortions, if performed at all, need to be performed safely and I no
more think this ought not to be the case than I think that kidney transplants
should be performed using cutlery.  Lay people aren't allowed to perform any
other complicated medical procedure in their own home, abortion should be no
different

The question of women are influenced, bullied even, into having abortions
because of their fragile state is a genuine pickle.  It does happen, and
presumably any political sustem that allowed abortion would have to offer some
sort of protection to ensure that abortion decisions are the woman's decision
alone.  In any case, the door swings both ways, and presumably women can also
be goaded into bearing children they do not want.

You are right to point out that any claim on me is also a claim on my body, and
that people can readily assert these claims.  Thomson isn't arguing against
this though.  Claims on your body can be made, but there are limits.  An
injured man by the french roadside may have the claim on your time, energy and
phone credit by demanding that you call an ambulance, but he doesn't have the
claim that you carry him several miles down the road to the nearest hospital,
even if it would jolly nice to do so.  Equally, if you only had to be plugged
into the violinist for five minutes it would downright callous for you to pull
the plug.  Drawing an exact line where claims on the body end would be
near-impossible, but it is sufficient to say that the foetus crosses it.

The next problem you seem to raise is the problem of actively consenting:  If I
fully consent to the helping the roadside victim, I can't drop him halfway
because I'm tired.  Whether performing consensual sex, in the knowledge that
you could become pregnant, equates to consenting to the foetus's use of your
womb.  Sex could be seen as tacit consent to pregnancy, though I'm not sure
this is a very stable position.  If I go out on a night-out in my flashest
clothes, I know I am exposing myself to the risk of mugging, but this facts
don't seem to amount to consent:  If I do get mugged, I may admit I was
foolish, but I would hardly say I consented to it.  In the case of people who
really do fully consent, in my post I admit that Thomson's argument comes a
cropper, and instead introduce Little's argument.

Your last point is particularly interesting, and I probably should have talked
more about this sort of thing.  The abortion debate is multi-faceted, and
cannot really be reduced to one prepackaged question.  You characterised my
arguments as legal arguments, but I'm afraid this is not how I see them.  They
are arguments for a moral right to abortion, and the question of whether their
ought to be a corresponding legal right is a seperate question:  You may think
abortion is wrong, but there ought to be a legal right to put a stop to
dangersous backstreet abortions, or you may think women have a moral right but
that transforming it into a legal right creates such a minefield -  because
questions could could arise about the moral and then legal status of other
groups - that we're better off just banning it altogether.  The question you
raise is just another face of abortion ethics, and I can't offer an answer,
though I will admit that it is very interesting.

Thank you very much for your contributions.  I hope you - and others - have
further comments to add.


Johnny