Having ‘moral status’ equates to being the kind of thing it is wrong to kill. According to Elizabeth Harman, if a woman decides to have an abortion, then the fetus does not have moral status. If the mother decides not to have an abortion, then, due to the future life of that fetus, the fetus has moral status. I have moral status. If my mother had decided to abort me, then I would not have had moral status. When I was a fetus, my mother decided not to abort me and, in virtue of that fact, I had a future life. Consequently, I had, and still have, moral status. This…
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Planned Parthood
My house has parts–walls, foundations, windows, etc–and there are things that are inside my house–children, saucepans, guitars, etc. Being inside my house does not entail being part of my house. But there are boundary cases: Are my curtains or appliances part of the house or merely contained within the house? If they are inside my house and not part of the house itself, then I can take them when I leave the house. If, on the other hand, they are part of the house, then I should not remove them when I leave. Recently, in response to a question I posed about abortion, someone wrote this: When the fetus is…
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Your Rights: Acquired or Essential?
Do you acquire the rights associated with personhood or are they essential to you? Consider rights in general, the right to vote, for example. You didn’t always have this right. You acquired it. So, perhaps personhood is like the right to vote. You acquired it at some point in your development. The right to life goes along with being a person. If you are a person, anyone who kills you has committed a moral and legal wrong. Most pro-choice arguments talk about this right as if it is acquired at some point in the womb. Prior to counting as a person, however, it is morally justified to kill the entity…
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An Ordinary Language Argument for Children in the Womb
“You were always wriggling” mom says. “I could never get a nappy on you without a fight” “I still can’t stop fidgeting,” the boy says. “I know,” chimes in dad, “I have to sit next to you at mealtimes!” “Haha. You wriggled so much in my womb I couldn’t sleep.” Mom hugs her son. “During labor you you managed to get the cord wrapped round your neck and had to be pulled out extra quick.” “I’m glad you made it, son” “Wait a minute,” the abortionist interjects, “there was no “you” in the womb. “you” refers to a person, but you were not a person in the womb. You were…
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Abortionist Logical Consistency: A Right for the Goose Should be a Right for the Gander
Some positions are best opposed by trying to show what would follow from their view. Modus Tollens is particularly helpful in this way and takes the following form: if A, then B. Not B. Therefore, not A. They have the useful feature of providing the user with a tool for showing horrible consequences that can force someone to reject the antecedent. For example, a favored argument against abortion is to suggest that if abortion is morally justifiable, then infanticide is justifiable. The anti-abortionist relies on the consequent being plainly intolerable and should lead to the rejection of the antecedent. Those who are consistent are forced either to accept the consequent…
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When is Too Late? An Analogy from Spontaneous Combustion.
Imagine you are one of the thousands of people who have been looking forward to receiving a brand new Samsung Galaxy Note. However, after hearing news of their vulnerability to spontaneous combustion, you call Samsung and are told that there is indeed a possibility of your phone exploding in your pocket. If you so choose you may decide to stop the delivery and the phone will be destroyed along with all the other phones that have yet to be delivered. The trouble is, you really want the phone. If you choose to receive the phone it may never explode, but you will always live in fear that at any moment…
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Why Bill Nye is Wrong
Bill Nye Bill Nye argues that an abortion is analogous to an egg that does not attach to a woman’s uterine wall (here). So… If a fertilized egg is a human, then the woman is responsible for the death of any human that does not attach to a uterine wall. The woman is not responsible for the death of the human. Therefore the fertilized egg is not a human and abortion is justifiable. This is a bad analogy. An abortion is not analogous to an egg that does not attach to a woman’s uterine wall. No one is blaming anyone for miscarriages or for fertilized eggs not attaching to the…
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Babies and Lions: Why What We See Doesn’t Always Change What We Believe
The picture of a dead lion and the videos of Planned Parenthood workers went head to head this past month. Who won? Time will tell. One thing we do know is that evidence, the type of evidence you can see and hear, doesn’t always change a person’s mind. “How can anyone, any human being, see that poor defenseless lion and feel no moral outrage?” some people said. “No one with any moral scruples can watch the Planned Parenthood videos and remain a supporter of such an organization,” others cried. Yet, for some reason, many people defy the supposedly obvious evidence. Are they mad, irrational or psychopathic? I suppose many people…