Dealing with Teleology Again

I recently came across an interesting Honors thesis by Nicholas Masferrer Ramirez, The Limping Violinist: Why Thomson’s Defense of Abortion Does Not Establish the Conclusion that Abortion is Morally Permissible. As the title suggests, it is yet another attempt to refute Judith Jarvis Thomson’s "A Defense of Abortion." Like other attempts, it fails. However, it is an eighty page pdf file, and even skipping over arguments I’ve already engaged, it would still take about forty pages to thoroughly debunk.

Instead, I’m opting to focus on Part IV: The Teleological Objection (55-68). This is the only section where Ramirez is arguing abortion is morally impermissible, rather than simply attempting to prove Thomson’s “Defense” doesn’t show abortion is permissible. Nothing in this part depends of Parts I-III being true, so we’re not missing anything important.

The interesting part of this argument is that it attempts to use teleological reasoning to show that abortion is impermissible. However, he is almost immediately reduced to admitting his argument “would only apply to those who accept a teleological metaphysical view” (55). This in itself seems odd. Ramirez is clear he finds abortion generally impermissible. Making a case only for those who accept a certain worldview will not get to general impermissibility. That would still leave open the question of why abortion would be impermissible to anyone who does not accept that worldview.

This is a problem that affects Ramirez's entire paper. He is attempting to show that Thomson's violinist scenario does not show abortion is permissible even if one is allowed to disconnect from the violinist. As reliant on teleological considerations as his arguments are, they can only find purchase with those who accept his worldview. Thus he fails in his task generally even if he is successful among those who hold to teleological metaphysics.

Nevertheless, Ramirez holds that pro-choice philosophers would do well to “grant an Aristotelian teleology” (56). But why should they? Typically a philosopher arguing for the permissibility of abortion aims to show that abortion is generally permissible, not that it is permissible for a certain subset of the population. If one accepts teleological metaphysics and believes Ramirez's arguments are sound, one is certainly free not to have an abortion.

While I do not fully accept Aristotelian metaphysics, as I mentioned elsewhere, I am inclined to accept as true statements such as “the purpose of uteruses is to gestate prenates.” However, I have serious doubts that such statements can be parleyed into moral obligations. While this may not precisely make me part of the audience Ramirez is addressing, there is enough common ground for Ramirez to work with.

The question before us is this: Even if one accepts uteruses are for gestation, does Ramirez’s argument defeat bodily rights?

Preliminary Clarifications

Ramirez perpetuates some misconceptions about pregnancy. Since the actual facts will have some bearing on my response, I will begin by clarifying those misconceptions.

Ramirez places great emphasis on the fact that uterus bearers can live without their uterus, but fetuses cannot live without them. This is true insofar as it goes, but it is radically incomplete. The uterus is not the only organ that the fetus needs to stay alive. It also needs the mother's circulatory system, respiratory system, digestive system and kidneys to stay alive. Cut off the blood flow to the placenta, and the fetus will not be able to obtain nutrients and oxygen and cannot dispose of carbon dioxide and urea. Therefore it will surely die.

Ramirez heavily relies on an argument by Jim Stone¹ and attempts to rebut criticisms made by David Boonin.² Ramierez responds to only two of Boonin's objections, going so far as to modify Stone's argument to clear the argument from the charge of begging the question. However, Boonin offered other, perhaps more substantial, criticisms of Stone’s argument. As we shall see, Ramirez's modified argument is still subject to the criticisms he ignored.

The Nucleus of the Argument

The basis of Ramirez’s argument is pointing out a disanalogy between Thomson’s violinist and pregnancy. The purpose of filtering kidneys is to filter blood, whereas the purpose of uteruses is to gestate fetusus, i.e., to provide for another person. “Thus, the violinist does not have a right to your kidneys in the same way an unborn child has a right to her mother’s uterus” (55).

The first thing we should notice is that, formulated this way, the argument is invalid. Just because something is meant to benefit someone other than oneself does not by itself give anyone a right to that thing. Apartment complexes are meant to shelter people other than the owner, but that does not mean I have the right to take up residence in a given apartment without the owner’s permission.

There is a missing middle, as it were. Ramirez is attempting to fill the gap.

Filling the Gap

To fill the gap, Ramirez draws upon a thought experiment proposed by Jim Stone. To briefly recapitulate, Stone proposes we imagine an alien species. At the age of seventy, a member of this species splits into two distinct entities and ceases to exist. Both newly formed individuals have an unambiguous right to life. However, the fissioning is not quite complete for an additional nine months. During this time, one of the individuals has fully developed and functioning organs, whereas the other has vital organs still in development. The two are connected by a band of flesh through which a common bloodstream allows the incompletely formed split to use the organs of the other.

Supposing Stone himself is the individual with fully formed organs, would he be entitled to separate himself from the needy offshoot, George? Stone (and Ramirez) say no, using this reasoning:

The principle which justifies such a claim seems to be this: An organism with a strong right to life has a right to the continued use of the biological equipment, the use of which it acquires through the normal process of biological creation typical to its species, upon which its life depends. (qtd at 57)

Having stated the case, Ramirez now turns to respond to two of Boonin’s objections. Remember these are not the only objections Boonin had to Stone’s argument. However, we will leave those other objections aside for the time being and deal with Ramirez’s responses.

Responding to Ramirez’s Argumentum Ad Absurdum

Assuming that it would be morally impermissible for Stone to unplug himself from George, Boonin argues there is a relevant difference between the fissioned individuals and a fetus making use of its mothers body. In the case of Stone and George, they both began using Stone’s organs at the same time. By contrast, pregnant people clearly had prior ownership of their uteruses well before a fetus took up residence in it (DoA 245).

Ramirez responds if we accept this argument, we would have to accept that living organ donors can reclaim their organs even at the cost of the recipient’s life. I am unclear how Ramirez gets this. Possibly the argument is inspired by Boonin's language showing the pregnant people have prior ownership of their uteruses: "The organs inside her body were provided to her by nature well before the fetus began to make use of them" (DoA 245). Ramirez is apparently equating prior ownership with original ownership.

If so, we need only make a slight modification that will have the same result without the implication Ramirez asserts.

Consider Jack and Jill. Jack is a transgender man who for obvious reasons has no desire to be pregnant. Jill does want to have children some day, but her uterus is defective and will not carry any pregnancy. Jack, nice guy that he is, decides to donate his uterus to Jill. Although Jill's uterus was provided to her by Jack rather than nature, nothing has changed. Jill can still claim prior ownership vis a vis the fetus, unlike the case of Stone and George. Even if we were forced to conclude Stone could not disconnect from George, that still wouldn't mean Jill couldn't have an abortion on Thomsonian grounds.

Presumably Boonin never had any intention to imply organ donors could reclaim their donations and would agree with this modification. Regardless, with this modification, Ramirez’s response fails.

Nevertheless, we’re not going to leave things here. The real concern is that Ramirez is trying to assert “prior ownership of an organ is irrelevant in regards to who is entitled to that organ” (59). But even if his counterargument against Boonin could be sustained, this conclusion would still be jumping the gun.

Consider Ramirez’s case of Mary and John. Presumably Ramirez would agree that Mary, the kidney recipient, could be unplugged from Thomson’s violinist. The fact that she is the prior owner of the kidney certainly would be a factor in that judgment.

Indeed, prior ownership certainly plays a role in judgments about who is entitled to what—and usually it is the decisive factor. If Stone and George jointly inherited a house, it is clear Stone could not deny George’s use of it. However, if Stone alone inherited the house, it is just as clear George can claim no entitlement to use it.

It is certainly possible that the pregnant person’s ownership of their uterus is in fact irrelevant to whether the fetus is entitled to that organ. But Ramirez would actually have to make that case.

Reformulating Stone’s Thought Experiment

In response to Boonin’s charge Stone was begging the question, Ramirez reformulates Stone’s argument as a syllogism:

(1) A person is entitled to use any organ whose natural function is to keep him alive.

(2) A fetus is a person. (Assumption granted by Boonin and Thomson for the sake of argument.)

(3) A fetus is entitled to use any organ whose natural function is to keep him alive. (Follows from 1 and 2)

(4) The uterus of a fetus’s mother is an organ whose natural function is to keep him alive.

Therefore,

(5) A fetus is entitled to use the uterus of his mother. (Follows from 3 and 4). (59-60)

Ramirez claims if Boonin denied premise (1), it would have unsavory implications, such as the state claiming the use of people’s vital organs. But it seems to me that premise (1) as it stands allows that anyway. It would give the violinist a claim to your kidneys because the natural function of a kidney is to keep someone alive. The key point of Ramirez’s formulation is left unstated in premise (1): it is irrelevant whether that organ is internal or external to the person in need of it. Indeed, he asserts that distinguishing internal and external organs is an ad hoc one. So if the fetus is entitled to the pregnant person’s uterus because he needs it to keep him alive, then Thomson’s violinist is entitled to your kidneys because he needs them to keep him alive.

Also remember that the uterus is not the only external organ the fetus needs to keep it alive. It also needs, at a minimum, the pregnant person’s heart, lungs, stomach, intestines and kidneys to keep it alive. Presumably, Ramirez would affirm that the fetus is also entitled to the use of these organs. Otherwise, he would have to agree that an abortion could be performed by a method that cuts off the fetus’ access to nutrients, oxygen, and waste disposal. But if he is unwilling to do this, then it becomes difficult to deny the violinist has a right to your kidneys.

Ramirez also says that if Boonin denied premise (1), he would also have to deny George has any right to use Stone’s organs. Here, it should be pointed out that is exactly what Boonin did. Now we turn to an objection made by Boonin but ignored by Ramirez.

Boonin pointed out that Stone’s principle contains two distinct claims. First, George acquired the use of Stone’s organs through a natural process. Second, that natural process was the normal means of reproducing for his species. Boonin rejects the first claim. It does not follow from the fact that George acquired the use of Stone’s organs through the function of the common band of flesh they happen to have means he has a right to use those organs. Thus, Stone can detach himself from George (DoA 243-244).

To illustrate, let us extend our earlier metaphor of Stone and George jointly inheriting a house. Suppose that instead of jointly inheriting the entire house, Stone only inherits one half the house and George the other. As it so happens, the air conditioning unit is on Stone’s side of the house. Thus, George receives heating and cooling because of the preexisting duct work. George will be able to install an air conditioner, but it will take nine months. Does it follow from these facts that George has a right to use the air conditioner that is clearly on Stone’s side of the property? No. Absent any compelling reason to the contrary, Stone is within his rights to cut off heating and cooling to George’s part of the house.

It is only if the first claim is vindicated that the objection Ramirez is addressing, that Stone is begging the question, comes into play. This means even if Ramirez has successfully reformulated the argument to avoid begging the question, Boonin’s rejection of the first claim still stands. And Ramirez doesn’t even try offering a rebuttal to Boonin’s rejection of the first claim.

Surrogate Mothers and Spaceships

Ramirez can escape the conclusion that you must remain hooked to the violinist by insisting on another unstated part of premise (1), that the use of the organs are acquired through the normal reproductive process. So now premise (1) will look like this:

(1)^c A person is entitled to use any organ, internal or external to himself, whose natural function is to keep him alive if he acquired the use of the organ through normal reproductive processes.

Even Ramirez sees an immediate problem with this formulation: it does not cover cases he wants it to cover. It is at best unclear whether rape is part of the normal reproductive process. And artificial methods of becoming pregnant certainly are not part of the normal reproductive process. Indeed, Ramirez agrees that, at least in the artificially achieved pregnancy, the fetus would not have a right to the pregnant person’s uterus.

Ramirez turns to another argument to establish that even if the fetus has no right to the pregnant person’s uterus, that still wouldn’t necessarily justify an abortion:

Let us return to our spaceship case. Recall in this example, I have a spaceship stocked with enough food for two people on this nine month voyage and I fully own the rights to the spaceship and everything on it. After taking off for my nine month voyage, I discover that my two-year-old son has snuck on board. Let us now ask a similar question that we asked in the original version: do I have the right to kick my son off the spaceship, thereby killing him, since he does not have any right to the spaceship? [cite]

Before getting to my substantial objections, the are a couple things to notice about this argument. First, if this argument is enough to prohibit someone who became pregnant through artificial means from having an abortion, then it is also enough to prohibit you from being unhooked from the violinist. After all, if not having a right to one’s uterus is not a sufficient condition for having an abortion, then the fact that the unconscious violinist has no right to your kidneys is not sufficient reason to demand unhooking. Second, if this argument is enough to prohibit someone from having an abortion, then it no longer matters whether uteruses are for gestating prenates. We are out of the realm of teleological metaphysics entirely.

Now on to more substantial objections. There is a huge difference between Ramirez’s stowaway son and an unwanted fetus using a pregnant person’s body. The stowaway son is violating Ramirez’s property rights, whereas the unwanted fetus is violating the pregnant person’s right to bodily integrity. So it would not follow that agreeing Ramirez may not eject his son means a pregnant person may not have an abortion. Indeed, the right to bodily integrity is so fundamental that we regard killing someone trying to rape or kidnap you as justified self-defense. By parity of reasoning, pregnant people may kill the fetus to end the violation of their bodily integrity.

But suppose Ramirez is willing to concede cases where the fetus did not obtain the use of the pregnant persons organs through the normal reproductive process. We are now confronted with another Boonin objection Ramirez ignored. Boonin asks why it should matter that the use of the organ was acquired through the normal reproductive process (DoA 244-245). Once again, Ramirez doesn’t even attempt to answer that question.

The provision that the organ usage be acquired through the normal reproductive process can only serve one purpose: accommodate the intuition you are allowed to unplug yourself from Thomson’s violinist. But without any reason to believe acquirement through the normal reproductive process makes any difference, we can only conclude it is an attempt to give the fetus special rights. This serves as another piece of evidence that the abortion debate is really about who gets to control the bodies of uterus bearers.

 NOTES

1Ramirez cites Jim Stone, “Abortion and the Control of Human Bodies,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 17, no. 1 (1983): 77-85.

2In A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge: Cambridgue University Press, 2005): 245-246. Hereafter, A Defense of Abortion will be cited in text as (DoA x), where x is the page number. Boonin also cites the same article as Ramirez. I currently have no access to Stone’s article, and therefore cannot properly evaluate whether Ramirez and/or Boonin have adequately captured Stone’s argument. However, since Ramirez does not allege Boonin misinterprets or misrepresents Stone’s argument, the point is moot.

Appreciating Judith Jarvis Thomson: Revisiting the Responsibility Argument

Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion” is the seminal essay on abortion. Whatever your position on abortion, no one can reasonably argue about it without having some familiarity with this essay. Personally speaking, this was the essay that made me truly understand what is meant by “my body, my choice.” Before reading this essay, I accepted the saying without truly understanding what it meant. I’ve been pro-choice since I first heard there was such a thing as abortion and that there was a massive political debate about it. I was around thirteen years old at the time, and it was my first instinct to side with women in the supposed conflict between their rights and the fetus’ rights. As I would have put it in those days, I can point at a woman; I can’t point at a fetus without a woman getting in the way. It was a somewhat simplistic way of looking at it. At that time I did not have the knowledge I needed to adjudicate the rights claimed for both women and fetuses. Thomson’s essay gave me the knowledge I needed and I haven’t looked back since.

However, it was not a matter of accepting Thomson’s argument because her essay adhered to my already existing bias in favor of women. I thought her argument was so devastating that I searched out counterarguments. The counterarguments did not have to convince me that Thomson was wrong, per se. They only needed to convince me that her resolution of that conflict didn’t fully solve the issue. This would have thrown me back to the fact I could point at a woman and not a fetus, while still acknowledging a genuine conflict was going on.

But none of the counterarguments could even do this much. Not that they tried. But even Beckwith, who I thought of as the premier voice of the anti-abortion movement, couldn’t touch her. So, whereas once upon a time I could have flipped to the pro-slavery side of the abortion debate, it has since became so unlikely that I wound up getting a pro-choice tattoo:

So if Thomson’s argument was so brilliant and so decisive, why did I write “Why Abortion is Permissible”?¹ Obviously I wouldn’t have taken the time and trouble I didn’t at least think I could improve on what she wrote (not to mention all the other pro-choice works I had read to that point). Also, there were some ways that my thinking about abortion evolved beyond Thomson while I was heavily debating the topic in various Internet forums. However, none of that means that I think Thomson’s essay is necessarily flawed. The slavers still have not managed to decisively defeat Thomson’s basic argument more than fifty years after its initial publication. That alone says something about the strength of the essay.

Moreover, my essay benefited from fifty years of people throwing shit at it to see what sticks. I don’t think any of it does, but when I wrote “Why Abortion is Permissible,” one of my goals was to construct an argument that would be immune to the criticisms hurled at Thomson. Object to the weirdness of the violinist scenario? Unfortunately, there is nothing weird or fantastic about rape, kidnapping, and slavery. Hold to the intending vs. foreseeing objection? My argument holds that (within certain limits) even if the death of the fetus is intended, it would still be permissible. Like Thomson, I don’t think that the distinction between direct and indirect killing makes a moral difference. If you feel that way, my argument makes the case that even if abortion is direct killing, it is still permissible.

In short, my essay stands on top of Thomson’s, and would not be possible without it. My argument shifts more to a self-defense model in contrast to Thomson’s right-to-refuse model. Even so, my argument is still rooted in her basic insight that one cannot use a person’s body without consent—even for life itself.

Since writing “Why Abortion is Permissible,” the argument I presented there has been the basis of almost everything else I’ve written on the topic. And I will admit that I derived a certain satisfaction when I could show that standard anti-Thomson arguments won’t fly against my argument.

A few years ago, I learned that Thomson had died. I wondered how well Thomson’s arguments still stood on their own terms. So I pursued anti-Thomson arguments and defended them as much as possible on Thomsonian terms while holding my argument as a backup. I found that I rarely had to use the backup. In fact, I’ve found that more often than not, I could defend Thomson’s work on her terms precisely because her opponents ignored what she said. Mind you, what she had to say may or may not be the best or strongest argument about a given objection. Even pro-choice philosophers have found some of her arguments inadequate if not outright flawed. The problem is that slavers ignore what she said entirely. You can see examples in my responses to Wagner and Lu.

Typically, the anti-Thomson argument focuses on the violinist scenario. They will make their argument that abortion is disanalogous to the violinist scenario for reasons X, Y, or Z. But they ignore the fact that Thomson had something to say about counterarguments X, Y, and Z. In these cases, all I have to do is point out what she did say about those counterarguments. I don’t even have to agree with those arguments (though I usually do). The point is that she said something about it, and ignoring what she said means, at best, the slaver’s argument is intellectually questionable.

In some cases, this might plausibly be attributed to ignorance. If all you’ve heard about Thomson’s argument is the violinist scenario, you may well think pointing out disanalogies is enough to defeat the argument. But let’s face it, Thomson’s essay has been easily accessible on the Internet since at least the 1990s when I first encountered it. To be ignorant of what Thomson said about counterarguments X, Y, and Z is to be willfully ignorant and says you really have nothing to say about her argument. If you know she said something about your argument and fail to address it, then you are just plain dishonest.

This brings me to the so-called Responsibility Argument. I have already done a post on the Responsibility Argument, but I’ve never been totally satisfied with it. Indeed, even after this post, I probably will still have more to say about it. But for this post, I want to focus on Thomson’s remarks about it. A fairly common argument against the violinist scenario is that, while it might apply to cases of rape, it does not apply in cases where the pregnant person had voluntarily engaged in sexual intercourse.

There are some who take the violinist scenario to justify the rape exception, while holding to the Responsibility Argument in all other cases. And they might even cite Thomson herself in this respect. “Can those who oppose abortion on the ground I mentioned make an exception for a pregnancy due to rape? Certainly.”

But Thomson does not really give you that option. If you only take the violinist scenario to justify the rape exception, then you are fundamentally missing the point. The point of the violinist example is not to justify the rape exception (though it does that). The point is to bring out the problem of the entire anti-abortion argument. And the problem with the anti-abortion argument is that the right to life does not grant anyone the right to use someone’s body to keep themselves alive.

Those who oppose the rape exception grasp this point. So, for example, Wagner and Lu argue against the rape exception. It is not just a matter of being particularly cruel (though they are). It’s a matter of realizing that the rape exception cracks open the entire anti-abortion argument. In my case against Wagner, I argued that if we could defeat his argument before the “this looks a lot like pregnancy” stage, we’ve defeated his entire argument. Similarly, if the slaver can stop the rape exception, they have defeated Thomson’s argument.

Thus, the Responsibility argument can only come into play if the rape exception is granted.² Thomson herself notes this:

But it might be argued that there are other ways one can have acquired the right to use of another person’s body than by having been invited to use it by that person. Suppose a woman voluntarily indulges in intercourse, knowing of the chance it will issue in pregnancy, and then she does become pregnant; is she not in part responsible for the presence, in fact the very existence, of the unborn person inside her? No doubt she did not invite it in. But doesn’t her partial responsibility for its being there itself give it a right to the use of her body? If so, then her aborting it would be more like the boy’s taking away the chocolates, and less like your unplugging yourself from the violinist—doing so would be depriving it of what it does have a right to, and thus would be doing it an injustice.

…

On the other hand, this argument would give the unborn person a right to its mother’s body only if her pregnancy resulted from a voluntary act, undertaken in full knowledge of the chance a pregnancy might result from it. It would leave out entirely the unborn person whose existence is due to rape. Pending the availability of some further argument, then, we would be left with the conclusion that unborn persons whose existence is due to rape have no right to the use of their mothers’ bodies, and thus that aborting them is not depriving of anything they have a right to and hence is not unjust killing.

Then follows a series of arguments that ultimately Boonin finds unsatisfactory.³ It strikes me that when pro-choice philosophers identify inadequate arguments Thomson made, they fail to appreciate how radically new Thomson’s argument was even when they note it. It must be remembered that when Thomson’s article was published, the abortion debate centered almost solely around whether the fetus was a person that had the right to life. If the fetus had the right to life, then the abortion argument was effectively over. Indeed, even today most slavers and even some pro-choice philosophers argue as if the abortion issue should be decided solely on the personhood of the fetus. Thomson was changing the basis of the debate entirely. Expecting her to have anticipated and responded adequately to all the shit that would be thrown against her thesis would be too much to expect of anyone in her position.

Indeed, the only reason Thomson said anything at all about the Responsibility Argument is because of responses to earlier presentations of her argument before her paper was published. And the first thing she said was “that it is something new.” It wasn’t something she anticipated when she first formulated her argument. She would have had very little idea how the Responsibility Argument would develop, and thus could only speak to it in relatively general terms. In the past, I myself thought she was merely content to muddy the waters as it were. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize I was wrong. Thomson was not trying to muddy the waters. She was throwing down a gauntlet. And it’s a gauntlet the slavers have refused to take up ever since. She was basically saying that we can discuss a person’s responsibility in becoming pregnant, but it needs to be a reasonable discussion. Here are the parameters.

Thomson’s response to the Responsibility Argument comes in two parts. In the first part, she writes, “And we should also notice that it is not at all plain that this argument really does go even as far as it purports to. For there are cases and cases, and the details make a difference.” She argues that if you open a window to let some air in, it would be absurd to say that this gives a burglar the right to be in your home—even if you open the window in full knowledge of the fact that burglars exist and are liable to enter your house through an open window. And it would even be more absurd to say that the burglar has a right to your home if you had bars installed on the windows and the burglar got in because of a defect.⁴ And it would remain absurd to say an innocent person who blunders into your home has a right to be there because you opened the window.

You might look at this and echo Lt. Elliott in Knives Out: Weak sauce. I am sure it is all too easy to come up with alternative cases where someone does something that leads to someone else having a bona fide claim to your care. Admittedly, this is the reason I thought Thomson was contenting herself with muddying the waters of the Responsibility Argument. Sure, there are cases, and then there are cases. But the problem for the person arguing the Responsibility Argument is not coming up with alternate cases. The problem is that they also have to show what they’re proposing is more like a person having intercourse knowing they might become pregnant, with or without using precautions, than Thomson’s burglar example. That’s not so easy, and partly explains why many of the alternative cases that are offered rely on some form of strict liability. However, Thomson excludes strict liability in the second part with her people seeds analogy and with the argumentum ad abusrdum that even those who have been raped could be held responsible for their pregnancy because they could have gotten a hysterectomy or never left home “without a (reliable!) army.”

Why does the Responsibility Argument almost always come down to some form of strict liability? As Ann Garry pointed out, it is the only model that “has the scope deemed appropriate by many opponents of abortion.” Someone pressing the case that voluntary sex creates the obligation to carry any resulting pregnancy to term needs to be able to accomplish two things. First, they need to explain exactly how having sex creates the obligation. Second, the explanation needs to cover everything except outright rape. Only strict liability models can do this.

Models that rely on some sort of fault cannot cover the scope necessary for the typical anti-abortion proponent. Setting aside all the other problems associated with fault models, they simply can’t cover all the cases the abortion opponent wants to include. For example, it is difficult if not impossible to argue people properly using birth control are being negligent or reckless. Few people who deliberately conceive subsequently seek abortions except for reasons that are more generally found permissible, such as endangerment of the pregnant person’s life or health. So even if it were granted that a person who deliberately conceived has an obligation to carry the pregnancy to term under normal conditions, it would cover far too few cases to satisfy abortion opponents.

With some form of strict liability, all that really matters is the pregnant person consented to sex. The precautions the person takes does not matter. Factors that would otherwise mitigate or absolve a person in a fault model, such as birth control sabotage, do not matter. With some forms of strict liability, one need not even know there is a connection between sex and pregnancy.

Using a strict liability standard has its own problems, but I am going to focus here on just one. Strict liability leaves uterus bearers with only a few ways of escaping the loss of their bodily rights: complete abstinence or having a hysterectomy or bilateral oophorectomy. This is a steep price to pay. No one else under any circumstances would ever have to pay such a high price to avoid losing a fundamental right. That abortion opponents pressing the Responsibility Argument are so willing to impose that price speaks volumes about what they really want—to control the lives of people with uteruses.

NOTES

1I developed the argument presented in that essay through several years of online debate about abortion in various forums. As I mentioned in the essay, my reading on the topic was not comprehensive. Some time after writing that essay, I found references to and finally obtained a copy of Eileen L. McDonagh’s Breaking the Abortion Deadlock: From Choice to Consent (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). McDonagh’s book-length treatment contains far more detail than my essay, but her central point is the same: in an unwanted pregnancy, the fetus is the aggressor and abortion can be seen as an act of self-defense. So my essay should not be seen as completely original. That we came to a similar argument independently speaks to the strength of McDonagh’s argument.

2I have encountered slavers who oppose the rape exception yet also push some variation of the Responsibility Argument. While arguing any version of the Responsibility Argument amounts to slut-shaming, when done by those who oppose abortion even in cases of rape, the slut-shaming is especially egregious. Here is the question I would pose to those who oppose abortion in cases of rape yet still want to push the Responsibility Argument: If you don’t care how the person became pregnant, why should I? If you oppose abortion in cases of rape, you simply have nothing to say about any supposed responsibility a pregnant person has about their situation.

3David Boonin, A Defense of Abortion (New York: Cambridge University Press), 150-152.

4This is an obvious analogy to using contraception. Occasionally, a slaver brings up the point that if a person doesn’t want to get pregnant, they can use birth control. I immediately ask if they allow abortions in cases where birth control fails. To a person, the slaver says no. This raises the same kind of question as in note 2: If the use of birth control doesn’t matter to you, why should it matter to me?

I Have Cancer

 I have been ill for some time. This week, I was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer with known spread to the adrenal glands and brain. I was told my condition is "treatable, but not curable." I am interpreting this to me that, if treatment goes well, I could still live for a long time. However, it is ultimately going to be a losing battle. Until we see how treatment will go, an actual prognosis is up in the air. 

Given the uncertainty and the fact that I still have a lot I want to say, the plan is to put up as many posts about different topics as I can get banged out. There will be more reflection, a little less "pure" scholarship.

I already have two articles on abortion that only needs final edits before posting. Look for those in the next couple days. I have another project, a defense of my belief in the so-called Inspired Fiction Theory for the Book of Mormon and its meaningfulness to believers who hold to it. My friend Trevor Luke reviewed a draft and made several suggestions for improvement. I have not actually finished this project. Nevertheless, I will be posting it soon more-or-less as it is now. The essay as it is already basically says what I want to say about it. So while I'm not completely happy with it, and intend to revisit it if/when I can, I want to get that message out.

After this, I want to write primarily about what my Mormonism means to me. There will be some scholarship, but these essays are meant to be more reflective about how Mormonism has affected me and is bringing me some comfort in this time of trouble. Here are some things you can expect in the upcoming days.

I want to talk about the genius of the Israelite religion, even though that original genius has been somewhat obscured because of modern conflicts with "secular" knowledge. The genius is precisely in historicizing its mythology. That is to say, the Israelites took the myths and legends they told each other to make sense of their world and incorporated it into a history encompassing a saga that begins with Creation and leading to the Babylonian exile. Obviously by modern scientific and historical standards, we cannot judge it to be accurate history. However, I will argue asking whether the Bible is accurate history largely misses the point. In historicizing their mythology, the Israelites weren't really trying to say something about history--they were saying something about God and his relationship to humanity.

This in turn is going is lead to some reflections on the nature of Scripture itself. Historicizing mythology and the process of canonizing the result has certainly led to problems down the road. Once canonized, the point the Israelites were making got lost and believers came to see Scripture as the Word of God to humanity. This seems to be the genesis of the problems of literalism, the conflicts between creation and evolution, and so on. Also, since Scripture is now a diverse set of different writings over time that is particularly given to cherrypicking, there is the problem picking and choosing the things that still appeal while ignoring the things we don't like. Even I would just as soon leave aside the genocide, rape, cannibalism and all the other ugliness we find in Scripture and focus on the higher ideals we find in Scripture and can still inspire us to this day.

But that wouldn't really be taking Scripture seriously. The problem, I think, is that we are now conditioned to see Scripture as the Word of God containing God's record of his dealings with us. Would I would like to do is flip this around. Instead of being God's record of dealing with us, what happens if we recognize Scripture is actually humanity's record of our dealing with God? Whereas it is hard to reconcile the highs and lows of Scripture from a God's eye; recognizing Scripture as humanity's dealings with God may help us make more sense of the ugliness.

Getting closer to modern Mormonism and its effect on me, I have three topics I especially want to explore. The first is the Mormon concept of Zion. Anybody who knows me well enough knows I am a political leftist, no matter what label I choose for myself at a given time. For example, some of my political stances could make Bernie Sanders look like a raving reactionary conservative. While the basic trajectory of my life and personality perhaps made it inevitable that I would fall on the left end of the political spectrum even before I became a Mormon, it is hard to escape the possibility that I may not have become quite as liberal as I am were it not for the fact that, as a Mormon, it is my duty to do my best to help bring about Zion. So unlike Sanders, who is still working within the broad world of capitalism, it is my goal to overthrow capitalism altogether. This is at least partly due to the fact that the more I grasped the implications of Mormon Zion the more I realized that Zion is simply incompatible with capitalism. You can have one, or you can have the other, but you can't have both. 

However much waffling the modern LDS Church does around the subject, I think that the ultimate culmination of Joseph Smith's Mormonism can be encapsulated in the Snow couplet: "As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.” For conservative Christianity, this is Smith's ultimate heresy. And indeed, it is a very radical statement. Coupled with the doctrine of eternal progression, this gives Mormonism a basically optimistic view of humanity that is lacking in much of traditional Christianity, and especially in Calvinistic forms which declare mankind is utterly depraved.

It also has implications. In the Bible, we are told, "Whoever does not love does not love God, for God is love" (1 John 4:8, NRSV). John goes so far as to say that he who declares if you do not love, you are still in the darkness (2:9) and are in fact murderers (3:19). It is fair to say that the ultimate ethic in Christianity is to love others as God loves us. But the Snow couplet actually demands a little more than this. In Mormonism, every single human being is a potential god. As such, each and every single human being needs to be looked at with a bit of the awe and wonder we ascribe to God himself. Don't get me wrong. I'm not there--not by a long shot. Hell, even the "simpler" goal of loving everyone with the love of God often proves elusive to me. But as a Mormon, that is what I strive for.

The fact that in Mormonism God is an exalted man has its own implications. Arguably restoring one of the original insights of Israelite religion, Mormonism puts God in our space/time continuum. Crucially, God did not create the world out of nothing; he worked with and organized eternally existent matter which he neither created nor can destroy. In other words, God is not omnipotent in the classic Christian sense. This too has implications, especially for the problem of evil. While I had seen hints in other places, the implication for the problem of evil was most forcefully brought to my attention reading chapter 33 of B. H. Roberts' The Truth, The Way, The Life. I will delve into this further, but the basic thought is that God must deal with two things: the intractableness of the laws of physics and the inability to interfere with man's free moral agency. 

Thus, it is quite possible that we have the best possible world, given the constraints that God himself must act under. When we add chaos theory to the mix, we also have to face the possibility that God has to be very careful about what he does. This is where it becomes very personal. Even a really small act by God can have effects that not even he cannot fully predict. Plunking an asteroid onto the dinosaurs might give room for humanity to evolve, but it certainly did not guarantee we would. So every time God performs a "miracle," this includes the risk that things could go horribly, terribly wrong in the long run. 

For this reason, I have no reasonable expectation that God will miraculously cure my cancer, and I'm not going to bother asking him to do so. I am simply not that important in the overall scheme of things and I certainly don't want God to wind up destroying life, the universe, and everything on my account. But if God is so constrained that he cannot help me with my illness, what can he do? Immanuel--God is with us. I have been thinking along these lines since I read Roberts some twenty-five years or so ago. But here, today, knowing what my likely fate is going to be, it is a thought that has become especially comforting.

So these are the kinds I of projects I have in mind in the immediate future. Let's see how far I can get with them.