We go to Anonymous calling from Canada, Anonymous, you are on with Trent Horn,
why are you pro-choice? Hi there. I'm pro-choice because of the bodily rights
argument. The bodily rights argument basically to me says that no
one has a right to another person's body without their consent. And what I like
about this argument is it kind of simplifies things, gets away from whether
or not a fetus is a person and all that, it doesn't really matter to the argument.
Yeah and it also exposes the idea that abortion is murder as being false.
Right, so you're saying murder would be "unlawful killing," but this is not
unlawful or malicious killing; that, when you say "right to refuse," Anonymous, do you
mean that, well, just as if you're in the hospital
and you need my kidney, and I don't give you my kidney, and you die I didn't
murder you? Right. I think we would all agree with that. Yes. And it even goes
beyond--I mean, even if I was in the hospital and I needed a kidney and
another person had just died but has not yet given consent to organ donation, I
still couldn't take someone's kidney even though they're no longer living. Right.
But suppose--let me change the example a little bit for you--suppose you were in
the hospital, you need a kidney, and I give you my kidney; and you're living, and
I say, "You have no right to use my kidney, so I'm gonna take it back," and when I
take it back that kills you. I think that that is closer to abortion, because
abortion is not merely choosing to not donate a body to help someone who's
dying; it's causing someone to be dependent on you, and then taking away
their only source of life. So I think the example is not parallel to pregnancy. Do
you see where I'm going? Yeah, I see where you're going, but I don't
agree. Even by causing someone to require a kidney or something, right,
I think you still don't have a right to somebody else's body. So for
example, we all get in our cars, right, and drive around knowing full well that we
could get in an accident and potentially injure someone.
We might even cause the accident and cause someone to require some kind of
donation or they might die. It still gives no right to that person to
take somebody else's organ. And I see what you're saying, Anonymous; but I would argue
the difference here is that there is no intrinsic connection of responsibility
between driving a car and donating my body to save another person's life, even
if I caused an accident where they need my blood or they need my kidney to live.
I haven't done anything or entered into anything where I'm morally obligated to
help them. Driving a car has no connection to providing my body to aid
another person; whereas having sexual intercourse, I think, clearly has an
intrinsic connection to providing an unborn child with your body, for two
reasons. One: kidneys are for my blood, it's very clear they are for my body; but when
you look at like the uterus, we would say "Well, what is the uterus for?" Well, clearly
it's for the life of a child. And then second moving on from that...I
had a train of thought that I was going with that, that
there's no intrinsic...oh, here's the connection: to show the connection
between sex and pregnancy, do you see it's compelling that many people refer
to sex euphemistically as "making babies?" Yeah. But we don't say, we don't refer to
driving a car euphemistically as "hooking myself up to someone" or "donating blood."
But we do see that connection between sex and pregnancy. Well...
there are many euphemisms for sex that we could talk about...
That's just what--I'm just saying here that when two people engage in an act
that is ordered towards creating a helpless human being,
don't they have a responsibility to that human being? So for example, that's why we
say fathers have to provide child support, for example. Yeah.
Okay. I see what you're saying...and I fundamentally disagree. With what? Well,
just the notion that sex is only ever, at least in part, for procreation.
That wasn't my argument. I'm not saying it's only for that, I'm saying it's
ordered towards that; in the same way that eating chocolate cake is ordered
towards gaining calories, but obviously many people eat chocolate cake not to
gain calories, they enjoy the flavor. They may eat in spite of what happens, but there's
clearly a connection between the two at its primary level, and I would say that
there's that similar connection between sex and pregnancy, much to the effect
that when people have sex and they're unable to cause pregnancy, we say that
they are sick or they're infertile and so they have a medical problem. So I
think that puts it more towards the side that I'm making. Well, yeah, again, I
disagree that sex is ordered specifically for that. What is
sex ordered towards? What is it for? Well, it's for many things. What would you say,
at its most fundamental level, it's ordered towards? Intimacy. Creating a bond.
So there would be nothing wrong, then, with having sexual union with,
let's say, an animal or a close family member, since ultimately it's just about
intimacy and bonds? Yeah, well, no, I didn't say that.
Well, I guess for me that if sexual union at its most fundamental level is
just about intimacy and bonds, is there ever people you should-- I didn't say was just for
that. Okay. Yeah. But I'm talking about what's its most fundamental purpose for?
Yeah, that was--yeah, I agree. But it's not--here's the thing, though
it's not for me to say what it is for in other people's relationships. Yeah, we
can take a step back from that, because I think you and I agree,
when people have sex, many many many times
the the regular rule is it creates human beings, it creates children. Do
those parents have obligations to those human beings they create? Yes they do, but
those obligations do not include organ donation--or their kids do not have
a right to take or use their parents body. Okay. So when that child they create
is is unborn, or fetal, you said that they do have obligations to them, just not
organ donation. What would be those obligations they do have?
Sorry, I thought you were talking about a live child. Yes, a living
one in the womb that they create. What obligation would they have? Do they have
any obligations to that child? They engage in sex, the child comes into
existence, they live in the womb naturally ordered for them to live in; do
they have any obligations to that human being they have created? Well they may
not even know that they have the child in the womb. Well let's say they do know.
People don't go get abortions unless they know they have created
something. Yeah. So I'm guessing--before we have to go to
a break, do they have any obligations at all? Because it seems to me your position
is: two people can engage in an act that creates a human being and yet they have
no obligations to care for that human being. That seems odd to me. It may be the
fact that they do have a moral obligation, in that they would refrain
from smoking, refrain from drinking, and so on; but I think would be hard
to put a legal obligation on that. Would they have a moral--if they have a
moral obligation not hurt a child with smoking or drinking, could they at least
have a moral obligation to not hurt the child with abortion? Yeah, so I don't
see abortion as the objective as hurting the child; I see it as a right to refuse
their bodily organs. But isn't that similar, then, to a born woman who has a
two-month-old that she refuses to breastfeed at home, and she leaves in the
crib? Is she starving the child, or she just refusing to let the child use her
body? Well, she would have an obligation to feed the child, but she wouldn't have
to feed it breast milk. She could feed it formula. Well, let's say that's all
that she had. Let's say she's a very poor woman in a rural area, all she has is her
own breast milk. Does she then now have an obligation to sustain that child with
her body? I don't know. I'd have to think about that one. We're getting pretty far
afield from how abortion is used, you know, in most cases, though.
Okay. Well, unfortunately we'll have to to go to a break here, we went
long with this one. But I think actually we're not far afield; we
started with the bodily rights argument, and now we've ended with a case with a
born individual, a breastfeeding woman who, that is the only way she can
care for a two-month-old, that if she were to refuse to let the child have
access to her body, we wouldn't call that a moral right to refuse, we would call it
an immoral act of starvation. And I would say abortion is the same thing; it's not
merely refusing to let a child use an organ like a kidney,
it is evicting a child--causing their death in a violent way--from the organ
designed to sustain them; that the obligations from the parents who the
child has been entrusted to, that the mother and father have obligations to
the child, are unjustly causing the child's death,
not merely refusing to provide care to a stranger or things like that. I would
recommend, though, if you want to learn more about my take on this argument, in
chapter eight of my book "Persuasive Pro-Life," I have a whole treatment of
bodily rights arguments, including the specific right to refuse argument. But
thank you for calling in, maybe we'll hear back from you another time.
Thanks, Anonymous.