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Anonymised Email Query
Joined: 03 Jan 2006
Posts: 4
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 Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 6:16 pm Post subject: Where Do I Stand? |
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My name is (Anonymised Email Query) I'm a college student from the USA. I just have a few questions about chapter 7 and was hoping you could clarify for me.
| Harry Stottle wrote: |
"Either you really believe Every Sperm is Sacred or you are in favour of freely available effective contraception. Either you believe "Abortion is Murder"or you believe in the 'Right to Choose'." |
Using the definition for "believe" that you use in the book, I was wondering if you could help me clarify what side of the fence I'm on if I believe that abortion can be used for medical purposes (such as if an unborn child is terminally ill or has a very serious birth defect and the parents decide to not put their child through treatment like chemotherapy), or a rape victim decides not to have a child of a rapist. I am also in full favor of all kinds of birth control. I do not believe, however, that a perfectly healthy unborn child should be denied "Life" because a young girl believed a little too much in free love. I think that once the child begins to germinate then it has the right to "Live."
Thank you for your time. |
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HarryStottle
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Joined: 29 May 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 6:41 pm Post subject: Re: Where Do I Stand? |
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| Anonymous Student wrote: |
Using the definition for "believe" that you use in the book, I was wondering if you could help me clarify what side of the fence im on if I believe that abortion can be used for medical purposes (such as if an unborn child is terminally ill or has a very serious birth defect and the parents decide to not put their child through treatment like chemotherapy), or a rape victim decides not to have a child of a rapist. I am also in full favor of all kinds of birth control. I do not believe, however, that a perfectly healthy unborn child should be denied "Life" because a young girl believed a little too much in free love. I think that once the child begins to germinate then it has the right to "Live." |
First off, congratulations for being the first to question an obvious inconsistency in the chapter. It is one of the reasons I'm rewriting the whole thing as we speak.
Abortion is a lousy example on which to base the distinction between autonomist and authoritarian. Any autonomist will agree that, at a certain point, the developing foetus becomes autonomous in its own right and thus entitled to challenge the autonomous decision of its mother (or have a challenge made on its behalf by a third party acting on behalf of Society at large). What isn't inherent in the autonomist's world view is where that point (of equal autonomy) lies in the process of foetal development. There are, no doubt, autonomists who would agree with you that foetal autonomy should be respected from the moment of fertilisation. At the other end of the spectrum, we have philosophers like Peter Singer who would argue that ethical autonomy is really a function of practical autonomy. In other words no-one is really autonomous until they can operate more or less independently in society. He is actually on record as saying "Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person."
My own position is spelt out in some detail in Chapter 8 which focusses on the issue of Abortion in particular. But, in summary, I take the view that it is a classic example of a philosophically and ethically insoluble problem. It is a prime example of what I say about "moral philosophy" in general. They all start from the indefensible position that there are such things as absolute rights and wrongs in the universe and that, if only you can determine these, then all other rules of behaviour fall into place. If that were true, we wouldn't need a social decision making process at all, just a "referee" to interpret the rules. That, of course, is the basis of Theocracy (Government based on Religion), which asserts that it knows the absolute starting positions and can thus determine the answers to all other behavioral questions.
The basis of all other power systems is that they know, not necessarily, what the absolutes are, but that they (the ruling class) are better able than the rest of us to judge what the approximate truths are.
In contrast, the basis of democracy, from my point of view, is that, in the obvious absence of absolutes, the best we can do is try to reach agreement on such issues which attract the widest possible support and antagonize as few people as possible. This entails not the search for "the right answer" but the search for the most widely acceptable answer. This applies to any question to which there is no objective solution. Of which the problem of whether to permit or forbid Abortion is a prime example.
Thus, in answering your own question "what side of the fence am I on?" my answer is that you stand four square in the confused middle - an ethically untenable position - along with most of society!
Presumably, for example, your argument for not agreeing to allow a woman who had consensual sex to abort the resulting child is based on the guiltlessness of the child. Why should it pay for the "sins" of the mother? Yet you freely concede Abortion to the rape victim. But how is the unborn child of the rape victim any more guilty than the unborn child of the consenting woman? Obviously it isn't. So why should it be so casually condemned to death in comparison to its more fortunate peer?
There is no rational ethical argument which can justify greater rights for the one child than the other in these scenarios. Instead of addressing that issue, people tend to ignore the plight of the child and focus on the plight of the mother. Because one of the mothers has been raped, we say, she has the right to override the rights of her foetus regardless of its innocence.
Philosophically such a proposition is nonsense and the problem only arises as a consequence of deciding that foetal rights equate with the mother's rights from the moment of conception. If that is the starting point, then killing the child is not an option at any point, regardless of the mother's circumstances. If, conversely, you accept my own recommendation - that foetal rights only reach equality with the mother's rights from the commencement of neural activity (once, in other words, they can begin to feel pleasure and pain and to store memories), then a more pragmatic option is available - without making a false distinction between the two foetuses. Viz: up to that moment, termination is not murder. After that point it is. This provides the opportunity for the raped woman or the consenting one to exercise their own autonomy and decide to terminate before it becomes ethically unsound.
One is still faced with the problem of what to do if the pregnancy isn't detected until we're already past that point. In the case of the rape victim, it would be irresponsible for either the victim or those acting in support of the victim not to conduct simple tests to establish whether or not a pregnancy had resulted from the rape and to do so in time to beat the autonomy deadline. In the case of consensual sex, the responsibility lies with the woman who doesn't want to get pregnant to a)take appropriate precautions (contraception) and b) to make regular checks to ensure that the precautions haven't failed.
In either circumstance, if the pregnancy is discovered, for whatever reason, after the autonomy deadline is reached, then no ethical case can be made for the termination other than for these two exceptions:
1: that to permit the pregnancy to proceed would result in the death of the mother. It is possible to defend a decision to terminate in such circumstances on the basis that although nominally equal, the "loss" represented by the death of the mother is greater than the loss represented by an unborn child. So the loss of the unborn child represents at least a reduction in pain compared with the prospective loss of the mother.
2: reliable medical information reveals than the foetus has an abnormality which would render its life "not worth living". The ethical dilemma here is similar to that facing grieving relatives whose loved one has slipped into a "Permanent Vegetative State" or similar and is no longer capable of taking decisions for themselves. Clearly the foetus is not capable of taking decisions for itself either and there is no fundamental ethical problem with trusted relatives and trusted medics collaborating to take a decision to terminate in the child's (and family's) best interests.
Both exceptions are consistent with the fundamentals of Survival Based Ethics.(SBE)
But outside those circumstance, (i.e. the mother would survive and the child would develop normally) there is no ethical case for termination. However, neither is there an ethical case for insisting - particularly in the rape case - that the woman should accept the custody of the child with all the responsibility that entails. So, if society insists that the rape victim has discovered her pregnancy too late and must, therefore, allow the pregnancy to proceed, they cannot also insist that she keep the child and they must make alternative provision to have the child adopted. (Or possibly imposed on the father if a) he can be traced and b) such an imposition is not considered harmful to the child).
Having said all that and, I hope, clearly demonstrated that we can reach a more philosophically consistent position if we assume a later "equal autonomy" point than the moment of conception, none of the above demonstrates that your own position is "wrong" or that mine is "right".
It is precisely because there can be no objectively right answer (or wrong) that we need the social decision making process we call democracy. Democracy can indeed reach the kind of conclusion you have reached. We won't permit abortions if the sex was consensual, but we will if rape was involved. We can award greater rights to raped woman, regardless of the unethical effect it has on her unborn.
Or, if I (and others who share my views) succeed in persuading more people than you (and your supporters) do, we can reach compromises of the type I favour
In other words, at no point do I argue that my views are superior to yours or that any amount of philosophy or ethical analysis justifies my views more than you might justify yours. I don't even attempt, in a sense, to find "the right answer". My search, in such a case, is for the most widely acceptable answer. That search is guided by my desire to try to find a solution that is consistent with SBE and one that preserves the maximum amount of autonomy for the mother, with due recognition for the developing autonomy of the foetus. But, on questions of ethics, as opposed, for example, to questions of science, it is always more important to reach consensus than to reach "the truth".
Why?
Because social friction arising from an inability to achieve consensus on this and other ethical issues is potentially far more damaging than the actual policies themselves. It is the root cause of most human conflict and whereas, up to now, we have been able to survive our conflicts, the risks are increasing to the extent that it is no longer safe to assume that we will survive future conflicts.
How so?
Read Chapter 10 part 2. In short, while large bullying countries have always been a threat to individuals - but we have evolved international bodies which go some way to controlling them - our technological development is making it far easier for individuals and small groups to cause immense harm on a scale which was previously only possible for the large bullying countries. We have no means equivalent, for example, even to the rather ineffectual United Nations by which we can hope to identify or influence the kind of individuals or small groups who seek to carry out these potentially devastating attacks.
And if you don't think that has anything to do with Abortion, remember that we've already seen anti-abortionist terrorist attacks on Abortion clinics. Who is to say where those with that kind of blinkered mindset will draw the line? What stops them from deciding to fly a loaded passenger plane into a tall building if they think, for instance, that it's currently hosting a conference of gynaecologists, most of whom carry out abortions...
In this sense, I argue that who-ever is responsible for 9-11 actually did the human race a big favour. It has forced us to wake up and smell the coffee. The predictable government response has been to adopt an increasing range of authoritarian measures of the type I draw attention to in my "Police State of America" page.
Not only are most of these measures not even really aimed at terrorists (but rather at more tractable problems like tax evasion, illegal immigration, tracking dissent, gaining illegal electoral advantage and so on) but even the ones allegedly aimed at terrorists are pathetically incompetent (such as the blanket security checks at most American airports) and either divert resources from real and necessary security measures or produce increasing alienation within the host community.
If we do not find less harmful ways to resolve conflict and disputes than those practised by either MIFT or the increasingly Police State of America, or Israel against the Palestinians, or the Palestinians against Israel, or the Ganjaweed in Sudan, or Mugabe in Zimbabwe, or Kim Il Sung in North Korea, or the Chinese in Tibet (etc etc) then the human race is doomed to fail.
My "solution" is the replacement of all existing forms of government with fully democratic institutions whose remit is to seek consensus and, failing consensus, to pursue the highest level of support possible (in other words considerably more than simple "majority rule") before any law can be considered "legal". By such standards, it becomes immediately obvious, for example, that, with the exception of those few laws established by referenda around the world, almost no existing laws are democratically legitimate.
Our first task, therefore, is to sweep away all the existing illegitimate forms of government and establish genuine rule by "We The People" and that is really the message I need to try to get across in Chapter 7. I don't think I've achieved that in its current form which is why it needs a rewrite. I'll be interested to know, after I've rewritten it, whether you think I've succeeded in making the case. |
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