Yes, there are ways to defend the legality of abortion if fetuses are regarded as people or the moral equivalent of persons, but it's hard. Jim has to go out to analogize a fetus to a mad attacker, and that is only in the limited case of abortion that would endanger the life of a woman. (A lot of right wingers would make that exception even now.) A general defense, by which I mean the sort of right to an abortion the left should defend, absolute and unqualified, is a lot more difficult.
Abortion is a really interesting philosophical question. It's very difficult. There is no clear argument that anyone on any side who is intellectually honest can be satisfied with. It drags in about half the issues in metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of mind, philosophy of law, substantive law, and a good deal of empirical biology and psychology.
But I really do think all of that is profoundly irrelevant to the political debate. These disagreements are ways of expressing in an ideological form whatever is really at stake. People are just not as motivated as the actors in this matter are by metaphysics or even by ethical theory.
Another way to put this is that the abortion debate is what the Old Man would call a Robinsinade, it abstracts from the social context. You have a little world inhabited by an abortion provider, a woman and a fetus, possibly a rapist or incestuous family member. There has to have been a man somewhere in the story, since women do not produce sperm, but he can be gone except that capacity. That's it. Oh, I forgot, you may also have God. Some people would add the father or, way off on the side, a straight Christian married set of adoptive parents. And advocates of criminalization would add in a cop, a court, a prison guard or an executioner. Anyway, it's pretty spare no matter how you slice it.
Now I am the last person to decry the value of abstract models. They can reveal and explain important things. This one has its uses. (Intellectual amusement is one of them.) But they can also conceal and obfuscate if you don't remember they are only abstract models. This one does if we try to understand the issue politically and arrive at an acceptable political understanding and position. For that, we need to think about a lot more of society and the forces in it.
--- On Fri, 12/12/08, Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:
> From: Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Catholicism, was Re: blacks about as morally conservative as Republicans
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Cc: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Friday, December 12, 2008, 7:55 PM
> On Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:05:20 -0800 (PST) andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> writes:
> >
>
> >
> > Btw, if you think fetuses are people or have the moral
> rights of
> > people, it is very hard to see how you can defend the
> _legality_ of
> > abortion. One possible way is to say that we
> shouldn't make laws
> > based on highly debated deep philosophical views that
> are not widely
> > shared.
> >
> >
>
> Well if one does regard fetuses as persons, at least
> certain
> forms of abortion might still be defensible. Abortions for
> protecting the life or even the health of the mother could
> be defended on the grounds of self-defense. One has
> the right to use lethal force, if necessary, to protect
> one's own life. And the fact that a fetus might be
> considered to be "innocent" is irrelevant. If
> one
> is attacked by a mad person, one would still
> have the right to use lethal force, if required,
> despite the fact that the attacker cannot be
> considered to be morally responsible for
> his or her actions, and so would be innocent.
> The defense of abortion on the basis of
> a right to self-defense might be extended
> to ecompass the defense of abortions
> in the case of rape. If one has the right
> to use force, even lethal force to expel
> an unwanted intruder from one's home,
> then surely one would have at least the
> same right in the case of intruders into
> one's body. This might also extend
> to abortions in the case of incest,
> if one supposes that the sex in
> question is generally involuntary
> for at least of the partners. It might
> be possible to extend the principle
> that one has the right to defend one's
> body against unwanted intruders to
> make an even more general defense
> of abortion rights.
>
> Jim F.
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