Does the “Quadrilemma” Resolve the Abortion Debate in Cases of Doubt?

Assuming you are unsure about the permissibility of abortion, which side should you err on? An unstated premise in a paper by Mario Derksen suggests a fairly sound principle. Assuming the odds are sufficiently high enough to warrant treating abortion as if it were impermissible, then we should do so just to be safe. This naturally raises the question of how high the bar needs to be for us to have such warrant.

The answer will largely depend on whether we are talking about acting on a personal level or a social level. On a personal level, treating something as if it were impermissible only means not participating in that action. If it turns out that the action is indeed permissible, you do nothing wrong by refraining. This means that on the personal level, you can set the bar as low as you deem necessary to be safe.

However, to act socially as if something were impermissible means demanding no one in your society participate in that action, usually on pain of criminal penalty. Minimally, this means intruding on other people’s business. If it turns out that the action is indeed permissible, you have not only needlessly intruded on other people’s business, you will have denied people the expected benefits of the action. This means that on the social level, the bar needs to be high enough to at least be commensurate with the level of intrusion. The rest of this essay will therefore deal primarily with the question of how high that bar should be before acting socially as if abortion were impermissible.

With regard to abortion, Peter Kraft developed an argument that was subsequently modified and used by Derksen. Following their lead, I will call this argument the “quadrilemma.” While somewhat similar to an argument I’ve addressed already, the quadrilemma poses four possible options which the abortion debate may take. They conclude three of these options involves some serious wrongdoing. Assuming these options have equal weight, there is a 75% chance the doubter should act as if abortion were impermissible. If they are correct, this would be a very powerful argument. It is certainly worth taking the time to examine it carefully.

Here, I’m going to consider both Kraft and Derksen’s versions.¹ I conclude that Kraft’s version is obviously a false choice, since it excludes viable possibilities. While Derksen’s version is much stronger because it eliminates many of the viable possibilities in Kraft’s version, ultimately, it comes to conclusions that do not follow from the premises and is therefore invalid.

Kraft’s formulation of the quadrilemma proposes there are only four possibilities regarding whether the prenate is a person: it is not a person and we know it; it is a person and we know it; it is a person but we don’t know it; and it is a person and we don’t know it. However, in regard to the question of whether abortion is permissible, this hardly exhausts the range of viable possibilities. It simply assumes that if the prenate is a person, abortion is morally impermissible. But that is not a given, meaning the range of viable possibilities also include:

1. The prenate is a person, but killing it is justified.

2. The prenate is a person, but killing it is excused.

3. Other permutations that flow these possibilities, such as “The prenate is a person but killing it is justified and we know/don’t know it.”

4. Other possibilities not mentioned above along with the permutations associated with them. One possibility might be, “The prenate is not a person, but it is still wrong to kill it.”

When we include the full range of viable possibilities, assuming all these options have equal weight, it seems unlikely all the possible options will involve serious wrongdoing. Thus, it also seems likely the odds the doubter should act as if abortion were impermissible are less than 75%. How low that chance is will depend on the full range of viable possibilities.

Derksen makes a relatively simple change to the formula that results in a vast improvement over Kraft. In his formulation, the possibilities are: “(1) abortion is right and we know it; (2) abortion is wrong and we know it; (3) abortion is right and we don’t know it; and (4) abortion is wrong and we don’t know it.” By formulating the quadrilemma as a question about abortion rather than the status of the prenate, the number of viable possibilities with regard to whether abortion is permissible is significantly reduced. Indeed, this formulation is stronger than perhaps Derksen himself realizes.

By formulating the quadrilemma as a question of whether abortion itself is (im)permissible, Derksen renders the reasoning behind the (im)permissibility of abortion moot. It doesn’t matter why abortion is permissible; indeed, any plausible reason will do. And the same is true if abortion is impermissible; any plausible reason will do. Thus, this formulation appears to avoid the false choice fallacy.

However, the strength of this formulation means the conclusions Derksen asserts do not necessarily follow from the premises. Derksen simply imports Kraft’s conclusions wholesale without examining them in light of the new formulation. So although I am now addressing the argument made by Derksen, the criticisms I offer will largely apply to Kraft’s arguments as well.

If option (1) is true, then there is no problem. Kraft, Derksen, and I are in complete agreement here. But whereas Kraft gives a grossly inadequate rebuttal to the truthfullness of option (1), Derksen can at least claim to have a prima facie refutation: “we know that (1) is false, for, obviously, there is serious controversy about abortion, and hence we do not ‘know’ that abortion is morally right.” Though I will have something further to say about this rebuttal, for now, I will simply stipulate Derksen has successfully refuted option (1).

Derksen’s problem really begins when he simply imports Kraft’s conclusion to option (2): “if (2) obtains, then abortion is murder.” But the conclusion does not follow from the premise. To even get close to this conclusion, you would need to add an unstated premise like all moral wrongs are murder. However, that premise is clearly absurd. Remember, the strength of this formulation is due to the fact that it does not matter why abortion is wrong, only that it is a fact.

But if option (2) obtains, that tells us nothing about what kind of wrong it is. Abortion would be murder if, and only if, the fetus is a person and abortion can neither be justified nor excused. That would simply throw us back to Kraft’s formulation with its attendant problems. Additionally, some philosophers like Perry Hendricks have made serious arguments that abortion is immoral even if the prenate is not a person. Whether such arguments fly is, of course, an entirely different matter. Regardless, if it is true that abortion is wrong even though the fetus is not a person, the kind of wrong being committed is not necessarily murder.

The possibility that abortion might be wrong though not murder will have a serious impact on the doubter who is convinced by Derksen’s overall argument that we should treat abortion as if it were impermissible. If we are going to treat abortion as if it were impermissible, how then should we treat it? Presumably, we would treat it as the kind of wrong it actually is. It might be murder; it might not. Derksen would still have to make the argument that it is.

But suppose I’m wrong, and Derksen is correct that if (2) obtains, abortion is murder. Then it would not matter, since I can decisively show (2) is false. After all, there is serious disagreement about abortion, and we therefore do not know that abortion is morally wrong.

Derksen’s contention that if (4) obtains, then abortion is manslaughter faces the same kind of problem as his conclusion about (2). Manslaughter is a category of murder. So if it turns out that abortion is wrong but not murder, then it certainly isn’t manslaughter either. Again, the putative doubter treating abortion as if it were impermissible would still have to figure out what kind of wrong it actually is before determining how they should act.

And since option (2) is false, option (4) is, at best, doubtful. The quadrilemma is based on the contention that all the options other than (1) involves some level of wrongdoing and has a high degree of culpability attached to it. As such, (4) clearly depends on (2) being true. Option (2) is a paradigm case for full moral culpability. If you do something you know is wrong, you are fully culpable for doing it. If you do something that is wrong but you don’t know it is wrong, you are less culpable. However, if option (2) is false, then we don’t know if abortion is wrong in the first place. Given that option (2) is false, it is unclear if one is doing something wrong and how culpable one might be if option (4) is true.

Derksen again duplicates Kraft’s argument wholesale in concluding that if option (3) obtains, one is committing criminal negligence. A bit of reflection is all it takes to show that Kraft, and therefore Derksen is wrong, and wrong in a way that undermines their entire argument.

Most importantly, Derksen and Kraft completely misconstrue criminal negligence. In order for one to be criminally negligent, one must somehow be negligent in the first place. And to be negligent in the first place, one has to fail to exercise reasonable care in situations where they have a duty to take said precautions. But if option (3) obtains, one doesn’t have a duty to do anything in the first place. So if (3) is true, one can’t be negligent with respect to it, let alone criminally so. Derksen failed to attend to the ramifications of his formulation and makes an invalid argument.

But let’s suppose I’m wrong and Derksen is correct in importing Kraft’s argument. The fact remains that Kraft still misconstrues criminal negligence and the argument itself is contradictory. Again, I’ll use Derksen’s particular formulation to demonstrate this. In Kraft’s formulation, the option is that the prenate is not a person, and we don’t know that. But as with Derksen’s formulation, if the prenate is not a person, then one has no particular duty toward it that they can be negligent about, let alone criminally so.

Derksen and Kraft’s argument that option (3) commits criminal negligence relies on one’s duty to be sure no one is harmed through their actions. In Derksen’s wording:

Suppose you are a truck driver, and while you are driving at night, you suddenly see in front of you what looks like a man lying on the road, although you are not sure that it’s a man, for it might actually be a dummy. From your view, you simply cannot tell. Would it be morally justifiable for you to run over this “person”? Clearly, the answer is no. The very fact that you don’t know whether it’s a human or a dummy obliges you not to run over it in order to be on the safe side, and to do otherwise would be morally reprehensible. This is how we are to understand (3), that not knowing whether abortion is right or wrong when in fact it is right is still morally inadmissible, for the uncertainty obliges us to err on the side of life.

Derksen is certainly correct that the fact we don’t know what the object is entails a duty not to hit it. But the reason for this is precisely because it might be a man, i.e., a person. But the option given specifically states the prenate is not a person. So if we replace the man with a prenate in this example, you do nothing wrong by running it over even if you don’t know the prenate is not a person.

If this analogy applies at all, it applies to Derksen’s option (4). However, since option (4) is already doubtful, it is uncertain whether this analogy applies there either. Derksen has a lot a work ahead of him if he is going to make this analogy work.

Meanwhile, acting as if abortion were impermissible on the social level under option (3) does entail wrongdoing. If one acts as if abortion were impermissible on a social level, this probably means they are going to work to criminalize abortion. And if they are successful in criminalizing abortion, they will be massively violating the rights of every person with a uterus in their jurisdiction for no good reason. Since under option (3) it would in fact be wrong to engage in this massive violation of people’s rights, by acting to criminalize abortion, one would be doing something objectively wrong.

To see how this strikes at the heart of the entire quadrilemma argument, recall that the unstated premise is that, assuming the odds are sufficiently high enough to warrant treating abortion as if it were impermissible, then we should do so just to be safe. However, when we do these kinds of calculations, we need to include all the relevant factors in the assessment.

Derksen and Kraft do not do this. They leave out the most important factor that needs to be considered in the abortion debate—people who can become pregnant. At the social level, the abortion debate is not about whether the prenate is a person. It never was, and it never will be. It is about whether pregnant people can be forced to carry their pregnancies to term. Prenatal personhood may have a significant (though not decisive) part in making this decision, but it is not what the abortion debate is about.

So, now let’s assume Derksen and Kraft are right, and that there is a 75% chance you are doing something wrong if one acts as if abortion were permissible. Is that high enough to justify forcing pregnant people to carry their pregnancies, along with the attendant abrogation of several other rights? YMMV, but personally, I would say no.

However, even if 75% is high enough to warrant acting socially as if abortion were impermissible, this analysis shows Derksen doesn’t reach that figure. The first two available options are false, one is doing something wrong if they act socially as if abortion were impermissible in the third option, and what one is doing wrong and how culpable they are if one acts as if abortion were permissible in the fourth option is unclear. This means, at best, there is only a 50% chance one is doing something wrong if they act as if abortion were permissible. Putative doubters are now back where they started.

We can do better than this if you doubt the permissibility of abortion. Derksen’s dismissal of option (1) and my counter-dismissal of option (2) are both based on the implication that to “know” is to have 100% certainty about something, in this case, that abortion is or is not permissible. However, 100% certainty about anything is extremely hard to come by. And chances are, we are never going to be 100% certain about the permissibility of abortion. Unless and until we become omniscient, we’re simply going to have to make do the best way we can. The questions are how we should go about calculating the odds and determining how high those odds need to be.

First, start by keeping it absolutely clear what the abortion debate is about on the social level: whether or not we can force pregnant people to carry their pregnancies. This entails abrogating, at minimum, their right to life, liberty, and security of person; their right to be free from slavery; their right to be recognized as a person before the law; their right to equal protection under the law; their right to be free from torture; their right to bodily integrity; and their right to decide when and if to have children. It also entails abrogating all these rights without due process even though the pregnant person has done nothing wrong. It also entails accepting the possibility our hospital wards will again be filled by people with uteruses dying from botched illegal abortions.

Remember, if a pregnant person’s rights can be so abrogated, so can yours. So even if you can’t get pregnant, make sure you set that bar high enough that you would agree to have your rights similarly abrogated given the same level of certainty about the impermissibility of an action. You probably don’t need to be 100% certain, but I suspect that bar is going to be very, very high. Now start assessing the arguments for and against (criminalizing) abortion, giving each their due weight. You should only act socially as if abortion were wrong, if and only if that bar is met.

If our object is to guide those who have doubts about the permissibility of abortion, the quadrilemma fails. Though seemingly powerful and based on a relatively sound principle, on closer inspection the quadrilemma at best will only bring doubters back to where they started. When acting socially, we can use Derksen’s principle, but we have to set the bar based on what is actually being debated and what the stakes are. That means actually doing the necessary work and not relying on the quadrilemma’s easy way out.

1Derksen cites a different work by Kraft than the one provided in the link. This presumably accounts for the slight variation in the order of the options.

It should also be noted that neither Derksen nor Kraft make an explicit distinction in their respective articles between acting personally and acting socially. However, given the level of wrongdoing they believe abortion is, along with the levels of wrongness readers are supposedly committing given any option other than the first, it seems clear they expect readers to act socially based on their findings.

Physicians for Life's Fallacious Anti-Abortion Arguments Part 3

I am continuing my rebuttal of the Physicians for Life (PFL) article, “In Defense of Life: Rebuttals to Abortion Arguments.” In Part 1, I addressed the arguments directed at the bodily autonomy of pregnant people. In Part 2, I addressed arguments directed at prenatal personhood and considered the ethics of forcing one’s religious morality on others. While writing this post, it became obvious that I was not going to be able to mop up the rest of PFL’s arguments. It also became obvious I needed to write something that was more reflective after I was finished with the argumentation. Therefore, as it stands now, I will be writing two more posts in response to this article. This post will cover arguments related to the rights of self-determination, equality and privacy. Part 4 will hopefully wrap up the rest of the arguments. Part 5 will deal with the personal reflections I had while writing these posts.

Section 6 meant to address the popularity of the pro-choice stance. It’s a bit of a word salad. It is also out of date. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a clear majority of the public supports legal abortion in cases where pregnant people do not wish to be pregnant. This appears to be a significant improvement, but it also still means the public still views the permissibility of abortion through the lens of their judgments about pregnant people.ⁱ Among other things, this means we still have a long way to go before people with uteruses are recognized as fully human.

Let’s move on to the meat the PFL’s contention: “We all oppose ‘choice’ in the case of someone wishing to commit rape or wishing to beat up family members. ‘Choice’ is not an applicable concept when there are victims.” I absolutely agree here. The problem with PFL’s argument is that it identifies the victim incorrectly. If the pregnancy is unwanted, it is the pregnant person who is the victim. It is the pregnant person’s body that is being used without consent. And if abortion is prohibited, it is the pregnant person whose rights are violated.

Section 7 presents arguments meant to respond to the pro-choice advocate arguing, “I believe women should have a ‘choice.’” Their first response is that they are choosing to kill. But oddly, as part of this argument, PFL asserts that 90% of people having an abortion felt they were forced into the abortion and regretted it. Tellingly, they give no source for this assertion.

The reason they give no source for the assertion is because it is a lie. In The Turnaway Study, Diana Green Foster reports only about 1% of people seeking abortions in her study reported feeling coercion from others to have the abortion. None cited this as the main reason for having the abortion. This is consistent with other studies and the fact that abortion clinics assess pregnant people to ensure they are making the decision of their own free will. Furthermore, five years after the abortion, 95% of the study’s participants felt having the abortion was the right decision.ⁱⁱ

PFL then alleges “choice” is just a way of society telling pregnant people to deal with the unwanted pregnancy by getting rid of it so society does not have to give them the support they are entitled to. Then they cite Feminists for Life of America, an oxymoron if there ever was one, to much the same effect. These are odd assertions to make considering the slave monger party is also the party that wants to cut whatever support pregnant people can get from society.

Again citing Feminists for Life, PFL tries to address so-called informed choice material required by some states. It cherry picks a quote from the Supreme Court decision in Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that state-mandated material given to the pregnant person seeking an abortion is not “always relevant to the women’s decision, and may serve only to confuse her and heighten her anxiety.” It then accuses the court of patronizing the pregnant person’s ability to decide and forces pregnant people to make their decision in ignorance.

But read in context, the Thornburgh decision does no such thing. The decision explicitly states, “A requirement that the woman give what is truly a voluntary and informed consent, as a general proposition, is, of course, proper and is surely not unconstitutional.” Where the statute under contention went too far was in mandating the pregnant person be given information “not to inform the woman's consent but rather to persuade her to withhold it altogether” and that the mandated information be given “irrespective of the particular needs of the patient.” Rather than patronizing the pregnant person, the Court ruled the state was doing the patronizing and ordered it to stop.

PFL then encourages the slave monger to ask whether the pro-choice advocate supports abortions for sex selection. In the context of the United States, this is a red herring. Several studies of the reasons for having an abortion have been done over the years, and sex selection is not a factor. There is no evidence sex selection abortions is a problem in the United States. So basically the slave mongers are trying to rely on people’s discomfort with a non-existent problem to sneak through a general ban on abortion.

Next, PFL quotes Miriam J. Barth (without citing a source) to the effect that it is “sad” that “radical feminists” see abortion as necessary to women having the right to self-determination. I am not exactly sure what point the PFL is trying to make with this quote, or how it responds to the pro-choice advocate saying, “I believe women should have a ‘choice.’” It does not help their case. Just because something is sad does not necessarily mean it should be illegal.

In any case, however “sad” it may be, “radical feminists” are absolutely right that abortion rights are necessary for female-bodied people to have the right to self-determination. The Turnaway Study provides several lines of evidence showing how having an abortion vs. being refused one impacts the lives of women. On the physical level, those denied an abortion were more likely to have serious complications as a result of their pregnancy, an effect that carried over to subsequent pregnancies. Overall, those denied an abortion were less healthy than those who were able to obtain it. Those who are denied abortions may also have a higher risk of death from the pregnancy than the general population (146-150). Call me a radical feminist, but I think it is self-evident that living is a necessary precondition for the right to self-determination.

Women who are denied abortions significantly downgrade their aspirations. “[D]enying women wanted abortions causes them to scale back their plans for the coming year, while allowing women to have a wanted abortion enables them to set more aspirational plans for the coming year…. Women are changing their plans and dramatically scaling back their non-child-related plan in response to being denied a wanted abortion” (168). Even with these lowered aspirations, those denied an abortion were less likely to achieve those goals (169-170). “Women denied abortions tend to scale back their career and financial expectations, realizing that having a child—or another child—will affect their life trajectory. Women know that carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term will limit their other accomplishments” (170).

In the longer term, those who were denied an abortion became more likely to raise their children alone. Their employment situation is more erratic than those who had an abortion, and it takes four years to catch up, with the expected negative impact on their families’ economic well-being. Those denied an abortion were far more likely to depend on welfare benefits, including food stamps and WIC. They are more likely to live in poverty, and even after five years were more likely to report they do not have enough money for basic expenses (174-177). On top of a 78% increase in past due accounts, those who were denied an abortion also had increased incidences of evictions, bankruptcies, court judgments, and loan defaults (179-180).

Being denied an abortion also has ramifications for future relationships. For example, only 28% of those denied an abortion described themselves as being in a good relationship after two years compared to 47% who were able to get an abortion (235). Even more worrisome, those denied an abortion were more likely to be tethered to abusive partners, often because the partner’s income is their main source of survival. Not surprisingly, those who were denied an abortion were more likely to be physically assaulted by their partner than those who were able to have an abortion (232).

Note I am not saying that those who are denied abortions cannot or will not succeed. The Turnaway Study gives a number of examples of women who succeed despite being denied an abortion. However, a common theme of those successes was that these women had excellent support systems, usually a family that had the means to help. And arguably they would have succeeded much faster had they gotten the abortion they sought because they would not have had to face the socio-economic obstacles associated with being forced to bear and rear a child before they were ready. But for most female-bodied people, most of the time, abortion rights are necessary to fully exercising the right to self-determination.

Shifting away from the Turnaway Study, it has been shown that homicide is a (if not the) leading cause of pregnancy-related death. Often, they are murdered by their intimate partners. Obviously, we cannot how many murdered pregnant people wanted or planned to have an abortion. Still less, we cannot know how many of them would have gotten an abortion had they known they would be murdered. Once again, being alive is a necessary precondition for the right to self-determination.

PFL then returns to slut-shaming, arguing the real choice happens in the bedroom. Female-bodied people are urged to work out an understanding with their partner such that pregnancy is prevented in the first place. In any case, they should not “take out their frustration on a helpless little child.” I can only quote the absurd remark that follows: “Often, abortion advocates portray women as weak, vulnerable wimps who must give men all they want (blame men for their problems); then they turn around and demand that women are totally in charge of their destinies with total ‘control over their bodies’ (blame their babies for their problems) because they allow the abortionist (usually a male) to violate their bodies and destroy their preborn babies. The abortion advocates cannot have it both ways!” I can only at best guess what they are trying to say here.

So, where to begin? As I noted in Part 1, Physicians for Life are against abortion even in cases of rape, a fact we will deal with more fully later. As we will also see, these slave mongers are against abortion in cases where birth control failed. Logically, this means it does not matter what the female-bodied person does. What we have here is a case where the slave monger places the entire onus on female-bodied people to not get pregnant, and then say it does not matter what they do because if they get pregnant through no fault of their own, they are still going to be forced to gestate. And then they accuse the pro-choice side of wanting to have their cake and eat it too. Forgive me if I’m not impressed.

What I would really like to say here is that the slave mongers at PFL need to take off the rose-colored glasses. Rape happens. So does reproductive coercion. People don’t always keep their agreements. And even when both parties honor their agreements, accidents happen. There is no reversible birth control that is 100% effective, 100% foolproof, and 100% tamper proof. People cannot always afford the most effective birth control, and the cheapest methods are also the least effective ones. Do pro-choice advocates say that female-bodied people are weak to the point they have to give male-bodied people whatever they want? No, they just happen to live in the real world.

If these arguments do not work, PFL suggests asking pro-choice advocates why they fight against laws requiring informed consent. This was partly answered above in the discussion of Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The short answer is we do not oppose medically sound information being given to patients seeking an abortion. What we oppose is state-mandated interventions intended to intimidate pregnant people from having an abortion. We oppose states requiring abortion providers to tell lies about abortions causing breast cancer or mental health issues. We oppose mandating medically unnecessary procedures and TRAP laws.

If none of these arguments against choice work, the slave mongers ask what pro-choice advocates do besides providing abortions. Well, let’s take a look at the service categories Planned Parenthood provides beyond abortion, to take an example: birth control; emergency contraception; general health care; HIV services; LGBT services; men’s health services; patient education; pregnancy testing and services; STD testing, treatment, and vaccines; and women’s services. (So much for the remark that their income comes from the number of abortions they do.) Pro-choice advocates also tend to advocate for living wages and strong social safety nets so people who decide to have children are able to care for them. They also tend to advocate expanded medical coverage of pregnancy, up to and including Medicare for All so that people who decide to carry a pregnancy remain healthy and give birth to healthy babies. They also tend to support comprehensive sex education and no out-of-pocket cost for contraceptive coverage to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place. They also tend to fight against pregnancy discrimination in the workplace. They also tend to advocate for paid family leave so parents can bond better with their newborns. I could go on and on, but this should be enough to get started.

Moving onto section 10, the pro-choice advocate is said to ask how women can have equality if they cannot control their reproductive lives. PFL counters with questions like how female-bodied people are seen as needing surgery to avoid their second-class status and why they should have to become like men to be successful. These are strawmen. No one is saying any of this. As detailed above, in terms of just physical health, lowered aspirations, economic well-being, and future relationships, having a child one is not ready for has long-term ramifications on the ability of female-bodied people to live their lives on their own terms. Pro-choice advocates are not saying access to abortion is the only thing they need to overcome second-class status; but it surely is part of the puzzle.

PFL cites the oxymoronic Feminists for Life saying if there are barriers to equal participation of pregnant people and new mothers, that is the fault of society. I agree. But who are the people working to maintain the second-class status of female-bodied people? That would be the so-called pro-life party, as perfectly encapsulated in this cartoon:

 

 

The next section tries to address the right to privacy. Physicians for Life contend that the abortion debate is about whether violence is done, and if so privacy has nothing to do with it.

First, let me note that I may not be the best person to address the right to privacy as it relates to abortion. Though the right to privacy surely applies to abortion, I consider it too thin a thread to hang the legal right to have an abortion on. Nor am I the only pro-choice advocate to think there are stronger grounds to affirm the right to an abortion. Ruth Bader Ginsberg argued abortion rights are more properly situated in equal protection. Other arguments have been offered to ground the right to an abortion in bodily autonomy,ⁱⁱⁱ limits on the duty to aid others, and so on.

I myself think abortion rights should be grounded in the Thirteenth Amendement. The argument is simple and elegant. Prohibiting abortion makes the pregnant person the state-mandated slave (or, if you feel this word is too harsh, the involuntary servant) of the prenate. This is clearly prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment. Full stop.

Having said that, Physicians for Life is just plain wrong that the debate is about whether violence is done. An induced abortion forcibly removes or expels the prenate from the pregnant person’s body. No knowledgeable pro-choice advocate would deny this.

The abortion debate is about whether the pregnant person can be forced to carry the pregnancy to term. It’s not about whether violence is done; it’s about whether it is justified. Pro-choice advocates argue, generally speaking, that the violence is justified and that the pregnant person cannot be forced to carry the pregnancy to term. This being the case, the abortion decision is in fact a matter of privacy.

PFL would then ask the pro-choice advocate whether the right to privacy was absolute and whether that right exceeds another person’s right to live. PFL is begging the question of whether the prenate is a person, an issue I already dealt with in Part 2. Having already conceded that I think the right to privacy was a thin thread to hang abortion rights on, I am not going to contradict myself here. However, I think it can still be argued that, given current medical technology, abortion is covered by the right to privacy. I will concede that, generally speaking, the right to privacy does not outweigh a person’s right to life. I will even go so far as to stipulate prenatal personhood for this purpose.

What, after all, is the right to privacy? I think a good definition of the right to privacy is to be let alone by other people and/or the government so long as you are doing nothing wrong. This may not align precisely with the legal definition, but it does seem to be something like the definition most people use in their everyday lives. Already, we can see why, generally speaking, the right to privacy does not outweigh another person’s right to life: unjustly depriving someone of their right to life is wrong. But it is also why we can see that there are some cases where the right to privacy does outweigh another person’s right to life.

Recall my argument for the permissibility of abortion roughly runs as follows. In an unwanted pregnancy, the prenate is using the pregnant person’s body without consent. Because of this, the pregnant person is permitted to use any necessary means to end the nonconsensual use of their body, just as we are permitted to use any necessary means to evade/escape rape, slavery, kidnapping, involuntary scientific experimentation, and forced organ donations.

For a moment, let’s focus on forced organ or tissue donations. I have cited the case of McFall v. Shimp several times in my arguments on abortion. In this case, McFall had a blood condition and required a bone marrow transplant to live. Shimp, McFall’s cousin, consented to an initial test that indicated his marrow was compatible. It was only when Shimp refused to undergo the confirmatory test that McFall sued, asking the court to compel Shimp to undergo the confirmatory test and donate his bone marrow if compatibility was confirmed. Ultimately, the court ruled that, however morally detestable Shimp’s refusal to donate his bone marrow to McFall may be, he was doing nothing legally wrong and was to be let alone. Shimp’s right to privacy in this case did outweigh McFall’s right to life.

One could argue that in the case examples I used in my argument, these are not matters of privacy. If I killed such a perpetrator, I could still be charged with murder and I would have the burden of proof that I acted in self-defense. Further, much of the case would probably center around whether it was necessary to kill the offender. This much is true, but the reason is that there would be questions about whether the perpetrator was in fact trying to do these things and whether it was necessary to kill the offender.

This is not the case with abortion, particularly when procured before viability. In the case of the prenate, that they are using the pregnant person’s body is beyond the shadow of a doubt. By seeking an abortion, a pregnant person has proven they do not consent to that use.^iv There are simply no means of ending a pregnancy before viability without it resulting in the death of the prenate. Lacking any means of transferring the prenate to another person or an artificial womb, the question of necessity is settled. If stopping a rapist always and everywhere meant killing them, then necessity would not even come into play in my case for self-defense. The only thing I would have to prove is that the offender was really trying to rape me, i.e., trying to use my body without consent. Always and everywhere, the prenate is using the pregnant person’s body. Always and everywhere, a person seeking an abortion does not consent to the use of their body by the prenate. Before viability, the necessity of killing the prenate is unambiguous. There is clearly no question about whether the pregnant person is doing something wrong, so the decision to have an abortion is covered by the pregnant person’s right to privacy.

As stipulated in my essay, once the fetus becomes viable, things become more complicated as the necessity of killing the fetus becomes questionable. Let us be clear here. If the pregnant person no longer consents to the pregnancy even past viability, they still have the right to use any means necessary to end the nonconsensual use of their body by the prenate. This part is beyond question.

However, once the fetus becomes viable, options that will not necessarily kill it, like inducing labor and C-sections, become available. In the discussion of necessity, I argued that is not required to take heroic measures to avoid killing the offender. As applied to ending an unwanted pregnancy, this means if inducing labor or having a C-section is riskier than having an abortion, an abortion may still be considered necessary.

At the time I wrote the essay, I admitted I was not a medical expert and could not answer the question of risk definitively. However, the question of just how risky in terms of death from various forms of late-term abortions, inducing labor, and having a C-section came up in the comments. Finding these statistics does help me to start answering the question of necessity. So, let’s list the mortality rates:

• There are 8.8 deaths per 100,00 live births. This is the baseline.

• There are 4.9 deaths per 100,000 dilation and evacuation abortions.

• There are 9.6 deaths per 100,000 for instillation methods of abortion.

• There are 60 deaths per 100,000 for hysterotomies and hysterectomies.

• There are 13 deaths per 100,000 C-sections.

I could not find any readily available death rate for inducing labor. I found that inducing labor increases the risk of fatal embolisms and postpartum hemorrhage, but not a solid deaths per 100,000 cases of induced labor. I would presume that heightened risks of potentially fatal complications translates into at least a slightly higher risk of death than the baseline, but I cannot verify it. Nor do I know how the potential benefits weigh against the risks. So I will stipulate for the sake of this discussion that inducing labor is no more risky than the baseline.

Looking at these statistics, two things stand out. First, a C-section is far riskier than the baseline. A pregnant person cannot be required to have a C-section in an effort to avoid the death of the fetus. However, a D&E is still far less risky than the baseline, and presumably inducing labor. In terms of my argument, an abortion can still be considered necessary because the other options would be considered heroic. A pregnant person does nothing wrong in requesting a D&E, and properly trained personnel do nothing wrong in providing it. And this falls within the right to privacy.

I have already dealt with section 12 in part 2, so before closing this post, I will comment on section 13. In response to the pro-choice argument, “The government should not interfere in this highly personal issue,” PFL responds by saying the real issue is about the government preserving and protecting life. This response still begs the question of whether the prenate has the right to life in the first place, which, as I explained in part 2, they have failed to show. Beyond that, it also begs the question of whether an abortion unjustly deprives the prenate of their right to life, assuming they have it. PFL does not even try to make a case here. In light of these two basic, fundamental failures, PFL’s assertions about what the “real issue” is falls flat.

Perhaps realizing this, PFL urges slave mongers to divert to the issue of the government paying for abortions. They think they have caught pro-choice advocates in a contradiction. Pro-choice advocates are said to both want the government stay out of abortion but also pay for it. However, a pro-choice advocate would be more likely to actually say something like, “The government should not interfere with decisions pregnant people make about their pregnancies.” Once the strawman has been dealt with, the apparent contradiction disappears.

I should note here that not all pro-choice advocates think the government should pay for abortions beyond the normal rape and maternal health exceptions already contained in the Hyde Amendment. One can hold without contradiction that abortion should be legal but that it should not be paid for using taxpayer money. They are in fact separate issues.

While I can only speak for myself, what follows is the general sense I get from those who do advocate the government should pay for abortions. Abortion care is health care. I have already already discussed some of the findings from The Turnaway Study regarding the health effects of being denied a wanted abortion. I have also shown that even late-term abortions are far safer than childbirth. In this post, I have not discussed the effect being denied an abortion has on children (those who already exist, the one the pregnant person is forced to bear, and/or future children). Spoiler alert: It’s not good.

Furthermore, the earlier one has an abortion, the easier and safer the procedure. But as The Turnaway Study notes, “Needing time to raise money to cover travel and procedure costs was the most common reason for delay among our study participants, with nearly two-thirds of women who showed up close to the clinic’s gestational limit reporting such costs as a reason for delay” (65).

So it is in everyone’s best interest that the government pay for abortions should the pregnant person decide to have one. But more than that, as I already mentioned, pro-choice advocates tend to advocate expanded medical coverage of pregnancy. I myself advocate Medicare for All, so that everyone can receive the medical care they need regardless of their individual situations and choices.

 Edited on 2 Nov 2021 to fix bad hyperlinks.

iPollitt, Katha. Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights (p. 46). Picador. Kindle Edition. Pollitt appears to be dealing with attitudes toward the reasons pregnant people abort in general, and not just legal permissibility. It is possible, and even likely respondents who think abortion should be legal for people simply not wanting to be pregnant would still disagree that it is morally permissible. Therefore, I am not going to attempt a reconciliation between the Kaiser survey I cited and Pollitt’s figures.

iiFoster, Diana Greene. The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—an Abortion (p. 42-43, 124-126). Scribner. Kindle Edition.

iiiManninen, B.. “Rethinking Roe v. Wade: Defending the Abortion Right in the Face of Contemporary Opposition.” The American Journal of Bioethics 10 (2010): 33-46.

ivA slave monger may try to appeal to implicit consent, but Holly M. Smith refuted that notion nearly forty years ago. It is sufficient to say that in a case of a theoretical argument the pregnant person consented by having voluntary sex and an actual person saying here and now they do not consent, the actual person wins.

Thoughts on the Sentencing of Derek Chauvin

I have wanted to write about the conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd since the verdict came in on 20 April 2021. I hoped we were about to witness the dawn of justice, but I knew I should wait until Chauvin was sentenced. So I waited. Beyond cheering about the conviction with my family, I said nothing. I deliberately avoided reading commentary about the conviction while I developed my own thoughts. And I hoped. And I waited.

On 25 June 2021, Chauvin was sentenced to twenty-two and a half years. And my hopes were dashed. Again. I have still avoided any commentary on this decision. I discussed it with a few of my Black workmates, most of whom knew about the decision. I wanted a sense of how they felt and to see if my disappointment was misplaced. I do not offer this as a scientific survey. When I asked those who knew about the sentence what they thought, all felt the sentence should have been heavier, though their reasons varied. It took most of the morning to articulate just to myself exactly why I was disappointed with Chauvin’s sentence.

Explaining what I hoped for and why I am disappointed will take some time. What follows is my personal reflection. If it is not already obvious, I am writing from the perspective of a white man who considers himself an ally of the Black community. As such, I have my blind spots. For my Black readers, I am pretty sure those blind spots are obvious and that you will point them out to me. I have been stopped by the police for being poor, but I do not and cannot know the sheer terror many members of the Black community feel when they are stopped by law enforcement. I can only talk about George Floyd’s murder in the abstract, however enraged and horrified I feel about it. But it is not visceral in the sense I seriously wonder whether I am going to be next.

Before going on, I have a confession to make. I have not watched the video, and I will not link to it here. I have seen enough videos of police brutality toward Black people, whether it includes outright murder or not. The written descriptions are and have been enough for me to be horrified and enraged by Chauvin’s treatment of Floyd. And for all intents and purposes, I have watched a person die horribly in real time. Next to that experience, simply watching a video…. I don’t need to see it.

I followed the case as closely as I could. I followed the protests and the police brutality used against them. I watched as the media dragged Floyd’s name through the mud—as if anything could possibly justify the nine and a half minutes of sheer torture he endured while dying. I watched when Chauvin and his accomplices were indicted for unintentional murder and became enraged. For God’s sake! Chauvin pressed down on Floyd’s neck and back for nine and a half minutes while he was handcuffed and the crowd was shouting for Chauvin to back off! How many fucking minutes would it have taken for it to be declared intentional? Ten minutes? An hour?

I calmed down eventually. I let myself have faith the prosecutors were taking things cautiously to ensure a conviction. That was why they added the charges of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Give the jurors some options and (hopefully) they will convict him of something. It may not have been what I would personally like to see, and it almost certainly would not have been what the Black community would like to see. But something was better than nothing, which is all the justice Breonna Taylor is likely to get.

I followed the trial as closely as I could, mostly through the Guardian. On the morning of 20 April 2021, I was doing something on the computer when I heard the television in another room announcing the verdict was about to be read. I went to that room to watch. And I found myself holding my breath.

It isn’t hard to understand why. The subject of police brutality, especially toward Black people, first truly burst into my consciousnessⁱ when the video of the Rodney King beating became national news in March 1991. I was not quite twenty years old at the time. To say I was shocked by the video footage would be an understatement. But it was still nothing compared to the shock I felt when the four officers charged in the case were not convicted, with three officers being acquitted outright.

And then to see it happen time and again. I cannot possibly list all the names here. Here are some that have prominent places in my memory: Amadou Diallo. Abner Louima. Jannie Ligons. Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Freddie Gray. Sandra Bland. Philando Castile. Sometimes, there was video in these cases; sometimes not. Few of these cases resulted in convictions, assuming anyone was charged at all.

I was holding my breath because I genuinely feared Chauvin would be acquitted of all charges. We had been through this before. Indeed, I suspect part of the reason Chauvin tortured Floyd to death was precisely because we had been through this before, and he thought he would get away with it. What else could possibly explain the brazenness of Chauvin’s actions? Chauvin acted in full view of a crowd, his accomplices keeping them from intervening, with at least one camera capturing everything. These are the actions of someone confident they will not face any serious consequences of their actions.

I also feared what an acquittal would mean. It would be an announcement to law enforcement that they are literally above the law. If Chauvin can get away practically scot-free with such a brazen and egregiously cruel murder—on camera—what do they have to fear? It would also be an announcement to BIPOC communities that no matter how brazen, no matter how outrageous, no matter how cruel law enforcement is toward members of their communities, they can’t even hope for justice. At least, not until we start seeing more white mothers crying on TV.ⁱⁱ And even then….

So when Judge Peter Cahill read the guilty verdict for the most serious charge of unintentional second-degree murder, I explosively shouted, “Yes!” Then guilty for third degree murder. “Yes!” And finally guilty for second-degree manslaughter. “Yes!” I never expected Chauvin would be convicted of all the charges. I expected that, at most, he would have been convicted for second-degree manslaughter. Maybe there was hope that justice had dawned.

But I still knew it was not over yet. Yes, the jury got it right, and thank God for that. But while waiting for sentencing, another case kept coming back to my mind: Brock Turner sexually assaulting Chanel Miller. I do not want to overemphasize the similarities between these two cases; there are significant differences between them. However, these are the things that came to my mind:

• There is a racial component to both cases. Miller, who is half Chinese, was raped by a white male. Floyd, an African American, was murdered by a white police officer.

• Bystanders at the scene intervened or tried to intervene. In Miller’s case, graduate students Peter Lars Jonsson and Carl-Fredrik Arndt caught Turner red-handed, successfully stopped the assault and captured Turner. In Floyd’s case, at least one bystander was physically held back from helping Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Tou Thao.

• In both cases, Turner and Chauvin’s defenders resorted to blaming-the-victim tactics as if Miller and Floyd got what they deserved for whatever perceived or real crimes they may have committed.

• In both cases, the juries rejected those arguments, rightly finding Turner and Chauvin guilty of the most serious crime they were allowed to consider.

So in Miller’s case, so far so good. The bystanders intervened and stopped Turner. They got it right. Stanford University banned Turner from the campus, getting at least that part right. USA Swimming banned Turner from competing. They got it right. The prosecutors pressed the most serious charges they could. They got it right. The jury rejected Turner’s lies. They got it right.

And then that fucking judge let Turner off with a slap on the wrist.

Could this have happened in Floyd’s murder? Yes—easily. Remember a prime similarity in these cases: in both cases the offender is white and the victim was a person of color. While neither Turner nor Chauvin had pristine records before these particular criminal acts, this was their first criminal conviction. Both also have class privilege and were represented by private attorneys. And judges have wide discretion in sentencing.

Then on 12 May 2021, Judge Cahill ruled that four aggravating factors applied to the case. I began to hope that Chauvin would indeed get a heavy sentence. A sentence that was at least commensurate to the aggravating factors. I did not expect Cahill would sentence Chauvin with the forty-year maximum sentence, but things looked good for Chauvin to get the thirty years the prosecutors requested.

Twenty-two and a half years. Two hundred and seventy months. A little over half the maximum sentence.

So much for the dawn of justice.

I wanted to see a sentence that would make the police sit up and take notice. I wanted a sentence that said, “You’re not going to get away with this shit anymore.” Chauvin’s sentence does not do that. At best, this only tells the cops to be careful about being so egregious. It is a sentence that only means the next Derek Chauvin who tortures the next George Floyd to death will make sure there are no cameras around.

iI did know about police brutality towards Black people during the Civil Rights Era from my history classes, of course. In my naivete, I thought that era was over.

iiThe allusion is to the opening portion of Chris Rock’s Tamborine (2018).

TRULY SHOCKING NEWS!

 From the 19 April 2021 issue of the National Enquirer:

When I saw this headline I was flabbergasted! When investigating the origin of COVID-19, who would have ever thought to look at facilities developing and testing dinnerware? 

This is why the Enquirer gets the big scoops, folks!

Nariah Johnson: A Story of a Senseless Tragedy

 This post is going to be far more personal than I usually write. I am going to tell the story of Nariah Johnson, a four-year-old girl who was killed yesterday in a bizarre accident that took place in the parking lot of the Walmart where I work. The accident occurred around 1030 on 3 March 2021.

I was on my lunch period sitting outside when I heard several thunking sounds, followed by what sounded like screaming and shouting. Minor accidents occur all the time in the parking lot, so when I  investigated the screaming, my initial thought was that a couple drivers were about to get into a fight. What I saw when I got to the area was something like this:

The screaming was because a child, three-year-old Robert Johnson was still trapped underneath the truck. There were perhaps ten people trying to lift the truck to free the child. As I went to help, I caught a glimpse of another woman who had a bloodied face and was crying in panic. The people managed to free Robert before I found a position to help. Robert walked away with obvious shoulder injuries, so I turned my attention to a little girl lying on the sidewalk where you can see the dark spot on the sidewalk.

The little girl was Nariah Johnson. I knelt next to her. Her head was a bloody mess, and I could not feel a pulse. Two other people and I performed CPR on Nariah, switching as we got tired and continuing until the paramedics arrived. At that point, we still did not have a pulse. 

Once the paramedics arrived, I left the area so they could do their work. I was already breaking down in uncontrollable sobs as I gathered my things and went back into the store. I called my nephew to pick me up while I headed to my work area to tell my team leader I couldn't stay. All I knew at that point was that I had failed to save that little girl's life. At the time, I still did not even know her name.

In due time, my nephew arrived. We loaded my bicycle into the truck and he drove me home. Talking about what happened left me sobbing again. My store manager called me later to be sure I got home safely. I was informed at that time that the paramedics had restored Nariah's pulse before taking her to the hospital. I learned it was indeed possible to laugh and cry at the same time.

But whatever hope I had that Nariah might survive was shortlived. By refreshing my news search on the accident over and over, I learned that Nariah died at the hospital of brain injuries. I also learned that Nariah had been dragged completely underneath the truck. I can't even begin to imagine the horror Nariah and her family went through.

At last check, the reason the truck jumped the curb and hit the Johnson family is still under investigation, though the police seem to have ruled out driver impairment. The driver may face charges of reckless driving, which I find hard to wrap my mind around. A child was killed and at most, the driver will have to spend six months in jail. I am one of the last people in the world who would advocate for vengeance, but a mere charge of reckless driving for killing someone in such a horrific way is incredibly shallow.

Once I felt calm enough, I called the Glendale Police Department to give them my information. Although I did not actually see the accident happen, the things I saw and did at the accident scene may still be helpful for any prosecution. As of now, they had not called me back.

Through the news, I also learned that a vigil for Nariah would be held last night. I went back to the store, intending to participate in the vigil. Unfortunately, when I got there, there were a number of mixed messages as to whether and when it would took place. This morning, I learned the vigil happened after all. I deeply regret missing it.

The family has set up a GoFundMe asking funds for Nariah's funeral expenses. As of this writing, they have nearly achieved their goal. Presumably, the Johnson family will also need help with medical expenses. Robert went through surgery, but the last word I've had is that he will pull through. 

Before 1030 of 3 March 2021, just yesterday, I did not know Nariah Johnson. She was presumably one of the many young children I made it a point to wave to while asking the adults if they needed any help in my store. After 1030 of 3 March 2021, Nariah Johnson is someone I will never forget.

The following photos come from the Johnson family via fox10phoenix.com.

Post updated 4 March 2021 1430