My intuition is that most people would say the would-be donor is at least immoral in this scenario, and many would say should be subject to punishment. Curious where you fall on this.
1. for lack of a term for people who have changed their mind.
First of all, pregnancy is overwhelmingly a choice (of course there are exceptions)--it's not our hypothetical organ donor's fault that the hypothetical recipient needs an organ, but it is the parents' "fault" that an unborn child (recall we're not debating point-of-life at this point in the thread) needs to be born insofar as the child's life is the result of a risk the parents knowingly entered into (again, there are exceptions).
Secondly, if our hypothetical organ donor backs out, our hypothetical recipient can get an organ from another donor--with few exceptions, there's no way to transfer a pregnancy (at least not outside of some extremely early window).
> The ability or non ability to alternatively source organs doesn't logically lead to a change in consequence.
But your analogy doesn't capture the responsibility of the donor for willfully creating the circumstances in which the recipient needs a kidney. Moreover, abortion is a procedure which actively kills a child which would likely otherwise live (without intervention); your analogy supposes a person who would naturally die without intervention. I'm sure we could contort your analogy to make it account for these things, but doing so would exhaust its utility.
At this point we've added mode of consequence to the analogy, but it seems you're introducing yet another constraint: active and passive intervention. I'm afraid I'll have to stop this here. It appears as though you will continue adding complexity until with the intention of forcing your result. Sorry, I don't debate with people acting in bad faith.
If you're really deeply committed to this analogy, we would have to suppose a world in which everyone knows that voluntary sex produces children with an organ deficiency which can only be satisfied by a donation from one parent.
> At this point we've added mode of consequence to the analogy, but it seems you're introducing yet another constraint: active and passive intervention. I'm afraid I'll have to stop this here. It appears as though you will continue adding complexity until with the intention of forcing your result. Sorry, I don't debate with people acting in bad faith.
Pointing out that your analogy fails to capture the relevant dynamics isn't "acting in bad faith".
EDIT: Removed some snark.
If a person poisons another person deliberately and causes their kidneys to fail, it is not an acceptable punishment to take their kidney and give it to their victim. This remains true even when the victim will die and has no other organ source available.
Right, did you miss my disclaimer?: "recall that we're not debating point-of-life at this point in the thread" (based on upthread: "I'll just add that many people who are pro-choice believe that the issue of whether a fetus is a person is irrelevant.")
> "fault" is too strong a term even in quotes
Yeah, I put it in quotes because I wasn't sure what the analogous term is. "responsibility" is probably better.
> If a person poisons another person deliberately and causes their kidneys to fail, it is not an acceptable punishment to take their kidney and give it to their victim. This remains true even when the victim will die and has no other organ source available.
It's not about punishment, but about making the victim whole. But as discussed elsewhere, I think this analogy is broken for other reasons--specifically, an abortion is an active procedure to kill a dependent party who would most likely otherwise survive, while our analogy posits a dependent party who would die without active intervention. The analogy postulates the state requiring an intervention to preserve life, but an abortion ban is a prohibition on interventions which stop life.
Also, mandatory organ donation after death should be obvious table stakes for a pro-life person, if they were logically consistent.
There's nothing inherent to the pro-life position that would require mandatory organ donation between parents and children or anyone else whether before or after death.
Medical realities currently play a role in viability calculus so it is a perfectly valid analogy in that medical advances in organ donation being a possibility are equally valid.
The pro-life position is that human life is so precious that preserving the human life of the fetus it is more important than any right the mother may have. There is no logical reason this argument would stop after birth - the mother (and presumably father as well) should maintain this obligation of preserving the life of their child by any means that don't require them to give up their own life.
Being legally required to, say, donate blood for their child should be a no-brainer, if you bleieve that the preservation of your child's life should be a legal requirement that trumps any other right you may have (except your own right to life). Donating their organs to their child after death should also be an obvious legal requirement.
Exceptions for rape are much more common among those who also accept at-will termination of pregnancy up to some gestational age (e.g. at-will abortion up to 12 weeks, or up to 20 weeks in cases of rape).
Edit to add: the vast majority of active pro-life campaigners are also opposed to sex education and free contraceptives, once more proving that the question of consensual unprotected sex is not in any way at the forefront of their ideology.
It seems like you're conflating "pro-life" and "people who want to ban abortion entirely". The pro-life position includes people who want to ban abortion in the general case even while allowing abortion for exceptional cases.
> Exceptions for rape are much more common among those who also accept at-will termination of pregnancy up to some gestational age (e.g. at-will abortion up to 12 weeks, or up to 20 weeks in cases of rape).
Agreed, but that doesn't refute pro-life people having rape exceptions (multiple groups can allow for rape exceptions).
> the vast majority of active pro-life campaigners are also opposed to sex education and free contraceptives, once more proving that the question of consensual unprotected sex is not in any way at the forefront of their ideology
Can you source this claim about the majority of pro-life campaigners (also, why does that seem indicative of pro-life people in general)? Also, even if it's accurate, I don't think it constitutes proof of much--in particular, they could hold that it's not the government's job to provide sex education or free contraception (I personally favor the government providing both of these, by the way).
In any case, rather than arguing about ONE pro-life position, it seems like it would be better to acknowledge that there can be multiple specific positions within a movement. I'm certainly happy to concede that the pro-life movement includes many people with extreme positions, why can't we agree that it includes some more moderate positions as well?
Yes, but pro-life people are more likely to see “balancing mortality risks” cases as exceptional than “circumstances of parenting” cases.
Just like people opposed to deliberate homicide in general are more likely to see “self defense” as an exception than “the existence of the person killed reminded me of a bad thing that that person didn't cause”.
Rape victims are an issue that resonates particularly strongly with people who see the central issue as one of the pregnant person’s bodily autonomy, not those who see it as about the fetus as a human life.
> Rape victims are an issue that resonates particularly strongly with people who see the central issue as one of the pregnant person’s bodily autonomy, not those who see it as about the fetus as a human life.
There are some pro-life people (per the parent's claim) who believe that a child's life is so precious that it overrides the mother's right to bodily autonomy even in rape cases; however, this doesn't mean that they care less about rape victims than people who care about bodily autonomy--for example, they could care the same amount (or even more), but value unborn life even more. Notably, the loudest (most popular?) pro-choice claim is that unborn children don't constitute human life, that they're mere "clumps of cells", so all we can say (at least as far as it concerns people who hold this view) is that they care more about rape-victims than they care about "clumps of cells" which isn't strong evidence that they care a lot about rape victims.
I also think it's reasonable to expect that those who actively campaign to ban abortion are more likely to have more extreme positions than those who simply passively accept these positions. I also think their positions are very relevant, as they have proven to have more sway over public policy than the majority of the population - so combating their arguments is more improtant than combating the beliefs of the more silent pro-life majority.
This is the part I'm most interested in exploring. Absent a debate about "life", under what pretext does this construction arise? It's hard not to view it as a post hoc rationalization of a just world fallacy. Are there any other ways to construct the consequence of a waiver of the right to forego birth that stems directly from the act of sex? Some sort of sex teleology? Something else?
I'm not sure if I understand your question, but the general rule is that the person with agency also bears responsibility (this is a widely-held axiom). In this case, we have parents who have agency to predictably create a life which depends on carriage and birth, and thus responsibility to provide carriage/birth (obviously biological realities preclude an identical share of the responsibility between parents).
> It's hard not to view it as a post hoc rationalization of a just world fallacy. Are there any other ways to construct the consequence of a waiver of the right to forego birth that stems directly from the act of sex? Some sort of sex teleology? Something else?
Again, not sure if I understand your question.
I feel like analogizing here might confuse rather than clarify, but I'm thinking of other cases where agents taking actions waive their rights and how those waivers are socially justified. For example contracts bind people in ways that limit their rights.
Ex: if you and I enter a futures contract for you to purchase wheat from me at a certain price, there is a constraint placed on each of us - me to pay you the money, and you to deliver the wheat. The reason we socially allow such contracts of obligation is to facilitate commerce. We allow for other waivers of rights for other reasons.
What is the underlying social reason for the agency-responsibility regarding pregnancy? I'm genuinely asking with the understanding that there may be multiple reasons, but I don't have an internal sense of agency-responsibility toward pregnancy that apparently others do. Under what principles is such a responsibility formulated?
This possibly confuses things more, but we socially recognize that some rights are non-alienatible, ex: you cannot voluntarily enslave one's self in a legally meaningful way. So there do seem to be some limits to which rights people can consent to void.
No worries!
> I feel like analogizing here might confuse rather than clarify
Agreed--finding accurate analogies is hard for most things, IMHO.
> What is the underlying social reason for the agency-responsibility regarding pregnancy? I'm genuinely asking with the understanding that there may be multiple reasons, but I don't have an internal sense of agency-responsibility toward pregnancy that apparently others do. Under what principles is such a responsibility formulated?
Protection of life. Indeed, as a society we purport to value life (especially vulnerable life) even above commerce.
We also don't let parents neglect children even though this restricts parents' liberties. When you elect into parenthood (e.g., via consensual sex or adoption), you have a legal/moral responsibility to provide vital necessities to your children while they're in your care. Of course, once a child has been born, parents can elect to transfer that responsibility (to the state or other parent/s), but for obvious reasons we can't transfer care of an unborn baby.
Of course, this is predicated on the axiom that an unborn baby constitutes human life.
If yes, in a hypothetical world in which giving a child up for adoption isn’t possible, would you support a parent killing their toddler because they don’t want to have to slave to support them (that is, their autonomy is harshly limited)? If no, how do you reconcile this with your position on abortion (e.g., perhaps you would draw some distinction between slavery/forced-labor and bodily autonomy?)?
This thread is also not about post-birth situations. I'm strictly interested in discussing the construction of a bodily autonomy right to abortion that is not predicated on the aliveness of anything. Maybe you'll have better luck elsewhere.
The government already has rights over your bodily autonomy in many ways; just the right to incarcerate someone is controlling their body pretty dramatically. They regulate where your body can go, and to an extent what you can put into your body.
Yes it does seem backwards. However, nobody here is making that argument.
> I'm over here trying to find a minimum amount of government authority over our bodies
Perhaps I'm just splitting hairs at this point, but "No one, not even the government, should have more authority over your body than you." is just such a broad brush that it's trivially refuted for certain scenarios. Maybe you're talking about medical authority?
In any case the rule of law is very concerned with what happens when rights collide. It is possible -- perhaps common -- for individual's rights to be in conflict.
Maybe. It has much less rhetorical flourish though ;) I still think it's a valid ideal and even if realistically unobtainable in the absolute, it still incredibly worthwhile north star.
We probably still would not force an organ donation in such a case, still leaving it entirely up to the person, but their choice could affect the consequences for them depending on how and why they caused the person to need the organ. If they choose to donate and save the person then they might only be looking at some kind of endangerment charge for causing the person to need an organ. If they choose to let the person die they might be looking at murder charges.
It might help to analogize with some other examples: say for instance I get into a car crash with another driver and am compensated by an insurance agency. It makes no difference to me that the money comes from the insurance account rather than the other person involved. The end result is the same for me - I can repair the damage. Would it seem as though other people are much more concerned in the other driver paying the obligation themselves? Or perhaps there are other reasons?
The more that I think about this, the stranger it gets. It feels like a categorical imperative-type argument to justify their own obligated existence.