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Comment by throwaway894345 | Hacker News Reader

Respectfully, I think this analogy breaks down pretty fast.

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).

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The term "unborn child" presupposes personhood, and "fault" is too strong a term even in quotes.

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.

The argument is an attempt to get around the personhood issue: it's basically an attempt to build a case for abortion even granting fetal personhood, because personhood is very messy, ambiguous, and contentious and an argument for abortion rights that short circuits it would be very powerful.

> The term "unborn child" presupposes personhood.

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.

Sorry, i just don't see those as compelling arguments. The ability or non ability to alternatively source organs doesn't logically lead to a change in consequence. If anything, our inability to fully supply donation requests makes it a greater imparative to force organ donations to save lives e.g. organ shortages with life ending consequences are a present reality.

You may not find them compelling, but your analogy fails to account for them nevertheless.

> 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.

It easily captures compelling parents for organ donation using the same voluntary sex mechanism we're examining for forced births. Should parents be compelled to donate their organs to their children when not doing so would result in the recipient's death?

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.

> It easily captures compelling parents for organ donation using the same voluntary sex mechanism we're examining for forced births. Should parents be compelled to donate their organs to their children when not doing so would result in the recipient's death?

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.

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