Hello everyone welcome to the second part of this series where we discuss the topic of abortion. As I just said this indeed part 2 so I recommend listening to part one first as it gives the foundational arguments surrounding this topic and lays out a preliminary position that will give you a better understanding of what I will be discussing here. Now that being said, most of what we discussed in part 1 is largely irrelevant right now. For the sake of this episode, we will be accepting the position that the fetus from the moment of conception is a human being with personhood, has equal right to life and is deserving of the same moral consideration as you and me. But even accepting those premises, that still doesn’t prove the immorality of abortion and that is due to two words, Bodily Autonomy
In order to discuss why the argument of bodily autonomy holds validity, let’s refer back to a previous court case in 1978 being McFall v Schimp. Robert McFall suffered from a rare condition that was life-threatening and thus he required a bone marrow transplant in order to survive. The only matching donor was his first cousin David Schimp, but David refused to donate to Robert. Robert then sued David but the court ruled that David had no legal obligation to give Robert his bone marrow. I assume you agree with this decision but you probably have some critiques of this in comparison with the abortion argument. But first, let’s agree on a few facts about this situation. Robert McFall and David Schimp were both human beings with personhood and the same right to life as you and me, however that still didn’t give Robert a right to use David’s bone marrow without his consent. Now that alone doesn’t prove that abortion is moral or should be legal, but it does prove that you need to demonstrate not just that the fetus has personhood and the right to life, but that the right to life of the fetus alone isn’t grounds for abortion to be illegal and you have to ensure that the reasoning you provide on why it should be doesn’t implicate a situation where Schimp would be required to donate his bone marrow to McFall as I assume you already accepted that he shouldn’t.
Now I’ll set up a scenario to parallel this and show you why this court case can be used to prove the bodily autonomy argument for abortion. For example, Jim and Amy have sex, let’s say simply for the purpose of pleasure, and thus Amy conceives a child and since for this argument we are granting personhood from conception, this person is named Bob. Does Bob have the right to use Amy’s uterus without her consent, even though Bob is a human being with equal moral value to you and me? Now the first objection you probably have to the scenario is that Jim and Amy both willingly engaged in the act of intercourse which resulted in Bob needing her uterus and body to survive while in the case of McFall and Schimp, David Schimp didn’t willingly engage in an action that resulted in Robert McFall needing his body. But for sake of argument, let’s switch up this scenario. Let’s say that originally David willingly agreed to donate bone marrow to Robert for a period of time and thus willingly allowed Robert to be dependent on him. But after a while, David begins to feel serious pain and thus desires to disconnect from Robert. Should David have the ability to disconnect from Robert even though he willingly allowed Robert to be dependent on him for a period of time and more specifically, can the state force David to use his body to continue to give bone marrow to Robert? I assume you will answer no and that the state cannot force someone to use their body even if they willingly agree for a brief period of time and then refuse. To that, I say that if you accept that premise, you must also accept the fact that just because Jim and Amy willingly engaged in sex doesn’t give Bob the right to use Amy’s uterus to survive just because the act was willing at one point.
However, you might bring up the fact that David wasn’t the one who put Robert in the situation in which he was dependent on a bone marrow transplant in the first place and therefore to compare that to pregnancy in which the actions of the two parties led to the original dependence isn’t a valid comparison. And with that assertion, I ask that we modify the situation a little more. Let’s say that David and Robert were driving on the highway and David was driving recklessly without the concern for Robert’s safety and thus crashes into Robert causing him to need the bone marrow transplant to survive. In that situation do you believe the state should require David to donate the bone marrow? The legal answer is no. I agree with you that David’s choice in that modified situation, and honestly as well as the original one, is morally indefensible which the judge in the case actually agreed to as well. However, that does not change the fact that the state cannot compel David to donate his bone marrow, even in this modified scenario where David caused Robert to require a bone marrow transplant to survive.
However, you also might bring up the point that David and Robert were cousins which makes the situation different than Amy and her unborn son Bob in the uterus and that Amy has a particular parental obligation to her child Bob that David didn’t have to his cousin Robert. So let’s once again clarify a few things. For sake of argument let’s first modify the original situation and clarify what is meant by “parental obligation.” Let’s assume that instead of being first cousins, David was Robert’s father. But let’s also clarify the types of parental relationships that exist. There’s the obvious clear-cut biological definition which states that if your egg or sperm were used in the creation of that child then a biological parental relationship exists. But do you really believe that a biological parental obligation exists? For example, let’s say that some of Jim’s sperm is taken without his knowledge and is used to create a child via in-vitro fertilization, and that child is born but Jim doesn’t ever meet that child until he’s 45 when he is informed that unfortunately the child he never knew he had needs a bone marrow transplant to survive. Should the state force Jim to donate his bone marrow to save that child that is biologically his and therefore you would claim to which he has a biological parental obligation? I would assume the answer is no as he’s never met this child in his entire life and has had no such meaningful relationship with them.
But let’s assume Jim or Amy adopts a child shortly after birth and raises this child for years. This wouldn’t be a biological parental relationship but rather a custodial parental relationship. Would Jim or Amy have an obligation, or in other words could the state force them to donate bone marrow to save that child? The answer legally would still be no but I see how you could make a stronger moral argument as to why there is more of an ethical dilemma in this situation rather than the last where Jim merely had a biological relationship to a child he never met. To quote one of my favorite childhood movies called The Spy Next Door, Jackie Chan says, “Family isn’t whose blood you carry, it’s who you love and who loves you.” This goes to show that in many ways, a custodial parental relationship is indeed more valuable than a purely biological one. However, even outside the womb, parents can’t be forced to donate blood, tissue, organs, or any part of their body to save the life of their children. Another example for instance is let’s say that Jim and Amy have their child Bob together and raise Bob but at the age of 10, Bob needs a blood transfusion to survive and Jim his father is the only matching donor. Can the state force Jim to give his blood to save the life of his 10 year old child. That answer is indeed once again no. Now I’m not at all defending that action. I think refusing to donate your blood or organs to save the life of your child is once again morally indefensible. But that doesn’t change the fact that the state cannot force Jim to use his body to even save the life of his 10 year old son.
But let’s backtrack a bit to 10 years earlier, the relationship between Amy and her unborn child Bob is not custodial but solely biological and we agreed a biological relationship alone is not grounds for the state to force you to use your body to keep someone alive, even your own born child, as we saw with the situation where Jim’s sperm was taken and used to create a child that he didn’t raise and met 45 years later to which we agree the state couldn’t force him to donate his bone marrow to his biological child. So therefore the biological relationship between a fetus and a mother is not grounds for the state to force her to use her body to sustain that fetus. The last critique you may have is that it is natural for the uterus to gestate but it’s not natural for someone’s bone marrow to be extracted from their body and put into someone else. This is the natural process argument we covered in the last segment and just like last time, when broken down, it’s simply inconsistent and unfounded. So let’s clarify. Does Amy’s uterus only have an obligation to gestate the fetuses that she conceives or all fetuses? For example, if Amy is artificially inseminated without her knowledge, (think Jane the Virgin) does she have an obligation to that fetus? It doesn’t share her DNA so she’s not biologically related to it nor did she agree to have the fetus put inside of her. If you think she should still be obligated to carry that fetus to term even though it’s not her fetus and the process was not natural, then the unnatural nature of extracting bone marrow from one person to another has no moral bearing on the situation regardless, as bone marrow is designed to produce red blood cells for all humans the same way you just agreed that a uterus is designed to gestate all fetuses. So in summary, even when granting the fetus the right to life with personhood and equal moral consideration as you and me, the concept of bodily autonomy still outweighs those implications. But going back to the previous episode, it doesn’t make logical sense to grant the fetus personhood and moral value at conception anyways, so this entire segment was really just entirely for sake of argument.
Also it’s important to make the distinction between bodily autonomy and the concept of autonomy in general, which are very different concepts. There is the common argument or rather just talking point which is, “If the woman can kill the child then I shouldn’t have to pay for child support” The fundamental issue with this is that this doesn’t address the bodily autonomy argument at all, but rather brings up financial implications involved with raising a child, which just happens to be a main reason many women get abortions, but regardless, there is a difference between a financial obligation and a bodily obligation. For example, I may be obligated to pay taxes in which some of that money goes to medical research, but I will never be obligated to donate tissue or other parts of my body to that same research. That is because there is a huge difference and that extends to the difference between parental obligations in general and specifically bodily parental obligations which simply don’t exist. And to clarify, every time I’ve used the word obligation, I have meant a government obligation enforced by law unless I specifically state it to be a moral or societal obligation. Could you make a strong case that parents have a strong moral obligation to donate blood to save the lives of their children to which they have a custodial relationship? Of course and most of society would agree that is the case, but can the government mandate it? No they cannot. And once again that is a custodial relationship. Of course parents have obligations to their children, no one is denying that. But wouldn’t you say that the obligation is predicated more strongly on the relationship between a parent and child being custodial instead of being biological? Every time the argument surrounding obligations parents have to their children is brought up, it is almost always used in the custodial sense, while the relationship between a mother and a fetus is solely biological. The only thing the bodily autonomy argument for abortion states, is that people (including parents) cannot be forced to use specifically their organs and other body parts for someone else (including their children), even if without it, they will die. That’s the crux of this argument. And when people try to show parental obligations outside the womb to discredit bodily autonomy, they have completely strawmanned or misrepresented the entire argument.
Now, this is in no way a comprehensive ethical discussion surrounding the issue of Abortion and specifically even the concept of bodily autonomy, but rather using real-world examples as well as just logical and deductive reasoning skills to discuss why the concept of bodily autonomy is a valid defense of abortion, even when the fetus is granted equal moral consideration to you and me.
Now does this mean that there aren’t arguments out there surrounding this specific topic that could challenge the assertions that I made here? Oh Of course not! And that’s where you come in! Please feel free to email me with any comments, questions, concerns, or anything else surrounding this episode. This is much more complicated than just what I brought up so if you’re interested in learning more, I’ve linked down below a few online books that go more in-depth on this topic that I found to be insightful during the research and learning process. Books giving both perspectives are down below. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed this segment and that I stayed true to what I promised in the intro which was to respect everyone’s views and make this more of an educational and thought-provoking series rather than the heated emotional debate that seems to be the norm. If you’re willing, please leave a rating and review in Apple Podcasts and Subscribe for more of these segments. All else aside, regardless of where you stand on this issue, thank you for keeping an open mind and I hope to see you back here for the next segment. Take care.
