You have been kidnapped. You find yourself in a dark corridor; there are no windows, no doors, except for one door at the end of the corridor. You are told to proceed through the door. You do so, and find yourself in a room. There are no windows, but a chair, a TV, and a video game console. The walls are covered with wallpaper of strange pattern, which you quickly dismiss. You are instructed to play the game; if you win, you will be freed. If not, you will remain trapped.
You play the game, finding its rules and controls difficult and unclear. You eventually beat the game, and a hidden door opens to allow you free passage to the outside. Upon leaving, you find that the "secret" door was in fact visible all along, its doorknob hidden in the pattern of the wallpaper.
What you do not know is that, when you won, a signal was sent out from the console to your captors outside, instructing them to kill your child.
Should you be held guilty for your child's death?
Granted, the scenario is far-fetched. Yet this is almost the exact situation a million women find themselves in every year, trapped in a place they feel there is no escape from, willing to do anything to "just get out." They do not know that some chances for escape may involve the death of another human being. They do not know that other chances for escape require merely looking beyond the most obvious. They are, at worst, guilty of involuntarily acting as an agent of the abortionist, but certainly not murder. There is no question but that women seeking abortion are deceived, and you cannot be guilty of murder if you are unaware that your actions may contribute to the deaths of others.
Comments (11)
This is a strange take on human moral agency. If you hire a hit man to kill your child, you're certainly culpable. One could more easily argue the reverse: it is the doctor who is acting as an agent of the woman. Given the nature of the transaction involved, in which one party actively seeks out another and provides compensation for a particular service, that's a far more conceptually robust statement.
I understand why you need to make this argument. If you do not, then the only way a pro-lifer can approach a woman who has had an abortion is to say: "I'm sorry, but you could have chosen life. Instead, you murdered your baby. You paid someone to kill it, and in making that choice, you have committed murder." It is far easier to tell someone that they were manipulated, but it undercuts the integrity of your argument.
I'm not sure that denying the moral agency of women...by asserting that they are just manipulated by doctors...really gets to the core of what the pro-life movement seems to be saying about women who terminate their pregnancies. Unless they've spent their lives inside a hermetically sealed container, women who seek abortions are as aware of the primary pro-life arguments as the doctors who perform abortions. They simply don't believe them, in precisely the same way that the doctors don't believe them. Unless you're going to make a postmodern argument about the contextual nature of morality here, not being aware of the humanity of another or being convinced otherwise isn't an excuse for murder. By the core metric of the pro-life movement, that can't make you innocent, any more than the guards at Buchenwald were "innocent."
I do not hold this position, obviously. But if abortion is invariably murder, as you assert that it is, then the women who choose it would seem by necessity to be as culpable as the doctors who perform it.
@Beloved Spear - I think you are confusing the difference between objective guilt and subjective guilt. Objectively the mother is undoubtedly guilty of killing an innocent life, which is the definition of murder. However, if she was invincibly ignorant of the nature of her choice, or was mentally coerced into ignoring it, or through some other means she was not fully aware of what she was doing this lessons her subjective guilt of the murder. Of course the question of whether or not any particular woman is or is not ignorant of this is another question altogether. Nor is it necessary to provide reasons to excuse the mother. God can forgive them anyway, whether they have an excuse or not. What I think GermanWrench is trying to do is to appreciate that even such a morally unambiguous choice as whether to kill your child or not can be fogged up and fudged to the point that the woman may not be able to see it clearly, and so may make a choice that she is not entirely responsible for. Too many women find out what they have done too late, and when they realise this, no one need condemn them. They condemn themselves.
@Beloved Spear - This logic would apply on a pre-1973 world, but not in the modern one. Those of us born after the federal revocation of the rights of the unborn spend our lives getting information on the nature of the beginning of life from sources invariably tainted with bias. Most develop their opinions on the humanity of the unborn based on what their particular culture believes, not based on objective facts. I have yet to meet a person who has conceived no particular feelings or thoughts one way or the other, has objectively noted all the evidence from only non-biased sources, and has reached a logical conclusion based on that evidence. For all intents and purposes, in this world, such an option -- "choice" -- is unattainable. For all your speech on total freedom of "choice," the bottom line is that for most women, any evidence for or against abortion is tainted by recall bias; she either already conceives of the unborn as nonlife, or as life worthy of full human rights.
I don't deny the ambiguity of such a situation; what I deny is that women are somehow able to be thrust into what is, for most, the most difficult, scary. and confusing time in their lives, and somehow remain able to formulate a rational, logical, and completely wanted "choice," after having examined all possible options. Hell, I'm happily married to the father of my child, but even I freaked out a little when I found out I was pregnant -- I find it difficult bordering on impossible that women make the choice to obtain an abortion based on full clarity of thought and full access to all information. In fact, in most states, full access to all available information is prohibitted by laws which do not allow women access to view their ultrasounds, or to have access to alternative information in abortion clinics, or to be fully informed of all possible side-effects (including mental and emotional long-term effects) following an abortion, or any other number of factors involved in full, informed consent.
@P_Obrien - Exactly what I was trying to say -- thank you, dear. The law does not hold responsible those people who commit acts of aggression if they are not aware that their actions contribute to the detriment of others, or if their actions are committed under durress.
I won't say that all abortion is wrong. There are circumstances and situations that may justify it, but they are few. In most cases, the woman knows what she doing, and she knows she is taking a life for her own convenience.. She may tell herself otherwise in an attempt to ease her conscience, but that won't change the facts.
@thereluctantsinger - I agree that there is a specific circumstance under which abortion should be a matter of the mother's choice, and that is the eventuality of death should she continue the pregnancy (although I do not believe that anything short of the threat of certain death justifies abortion).
I'm not necessarily certain, though, that every woman obtaining an abortion is fully aware, or fully informed, of her child's status as a member of humanity. I've met too many post-abortive women who have said, in their own words, "I didn't know," either the stage of their child's development, or what other options are available to them. I once spoke with a woman who told me that she didn't know, until nearly 15 years after her first abortion, that her child had had a heartbeat at the time of her "choice." Granted, such mechanical features should not be a basis of humanity, but it does illustrate the lack of informed consent facing most, if not all, women experience when making the decision for abortion. Many state laws forbid abortion clinics to provide a full scope of information to such women, practically ensuring that they will not change their minds.
I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt; I simply cannot bring myself to honestly think that women are fully aware that their children are fully living human beings at the time they choose to kill them.
A good allegory. You tend to come up with very good illustrations, like the one about the drowning men where you said there was a third at the bottom of the lake whom Jesus then rescued and resuscitated. Your statement: "I simply cannot bring myself to honestly think that women are fully aware that their children are fully living human beings at tthe time they choose to kill them." That really sums up how I feel about that, too. I really don't think that if a woman fully believes her unborn child is truly a person that she would actually want to kill it except in the minority of extreme cases. The hard thing now that this issue has become so political is actually convincing people that an unborn child is an honest-to-goodness human being. Really, I think that most of the women who honestly, fully believe a fetus is fully, truly human wouldn't feel trapped into having one. It simply wouldn't be an option for them. But I don't know, can't say, haven't been there, so I've never had to face such a situation.
ryc - awww. I wanted drone-y destruction! Guess I'll have to go for being a Specter pilot...
Which I can't ever be because of genetics/eyesight. FAIL.
As for killing babies - all the cool kids are doing it! Obama doesn't want his daughters preggers so it must be uncool!
i like the things you write about so i sent a request :)
@ Germanwrench and @P_Obrien: I do understand your perspective on this, but think that if this is your position, you have to also allow that the doctors who perform abortions are in precisely the same category as the women who request them. They do what they do because, as Aoife puts it, they truly believe that a fetus is "non-life." Guilt, if such a thing can even be said to exist in this instance, becomes entirely socio-cultural and decoupled from the individual and their particular actions. I'm used to hearing this in the context of postmodern academe...but it's a bit odd hearing it here.
It's a little unsettling to find myself less liberal than you, Aoife.
thanks for the comment!