It seems like there's a difference between coercing somebody into doing something, and coercing them into *not* doing something. Consider the CABIN* case, with the following modification: Sarah has *already* strapped the child to her body, and now she wants to remove them. Let's also suppose (for the sake of making the case more analogous to abortion) that Sarah is the child's mother. It seems obvious to me that Sarah is doing something seriously wrong (i.e. morally equivalent to murder) by removing the child, and it seems plausible that society would be within its rights to stop her from doing so.
I think this intuition makes problems for Boonin's McFall v. Shimp example as well: there's a big difference between the state forcing McFall to undergo a painful medical procedure, and the state PREVENTING a pregnant woman from procuring an abortion. Consider: the state has the right to prevent people with body integrity disorder from amputating their healthy limbs, but it doesn't have the right to force people to undergo unwanted surgeries.
I guess I don’t have that intuition, at all. I only have it in cases where removing the child involves destroying its body. (Suppose Shimp were plugged into a machine that was funnelling bone marrow from his body to McFall’s. Seems to me like he should be about to disconnect, even though that requires an action and not an inaction. And since breastfeeding for 18 months in that way is more demanding than a bone marrow extraction, the case for being allowed to unstrap the child is even stronger.)
Less relevant, but I also don’t think there’s a compelling state interest in preventing people from electing to have operations (under conditions of valid consent) to having their limbs amputated if they’re incurably suffering from BIID.
Still, it seems to me that the asymmetry applies to the McFall case. Your example (where McFall is already connected to the machine) does not seem to contradict my claim, since in that case, if the state forced McFall to remain connected to the machine, they *would* be forcing him to undergo a medicine procedure. Perhaps I should make the point narrower: it seems like there is a difference between the state coercing somebody to undergo a procedure and *prohibiting* someone from undergoing a procedure. Even if we do not hold to the general asymmetry between coercing and preventing, it seems like it applies in that case.
His Equality one and basically all his reasoning laid out on his website, and his twitter replies. I've read his initial paper on the equality argument and think it presupposes some form of Animalism ("being human" as he terms it) thought he didn't argue for it, do you agree? I am not sure what Dr Miller's views on personal identity are.
Is your main barrier to being pro-life a rejection of Animalism? Or do you find bodily autonomy arguments persuasive also.
David Hershenov has beaten you to this and made this same argument but for the pro-life position. If you don't have this intuition, I guess we are just at the "end" of our intuitions as I just don't think it's okay to tear an infant apart for 9 months of non-pregnancy convenience. I also think it's okay to force them to stop. Perry linked me to Hershenov's excellent paper that addresses almost every major pro-choice argument ("If abortion, than infanticide") a while back, and it says this:
> Imagine a tornado throws you and a newborn (a potential person in the Neo-Lockean conception of “person”) onto the roof of an extremely damaged building. The newborn is on your lap and wiggling. Her wiggling will cause the roof to collapse and you both to fall. If she had remained still, you both would have been fine. Given your current positions, you will hit the ground first and will thus cushion the infant who will emerge unscathed. The position you are in when you hit the ground will make the impact as painful as an actual delivery that ends a pregnancy. In addition, it will cause you nine months of back pain, abdominal swelling, nausea, frequent urination and bodily discomfort comparable to that endured in a pregnancy. If you rotate before the roof gives way, then you will cause the child hit the ground first and the impact will fatally crush her skull but you will be able to land on your feet and walk away unharmed. Are you morally permitted to rotate and kill the infant to avoid nine months of physical pain? It would seem not. And that is true even though the newborn has no right to be on your body and her wiggling will be the cause of your burdens just as the fetus produces the pregnant woman’s hardships.
I think you can make this case more analogous to an abortion doctor by it being a person tossing the baby off. Perhaps it also falls into pieces like a fetus, and it's your own child.
Hendricks’s argument was distinct from the killing vs letting die considerations—it was purely about the enforceable duty to provide substantial bodily aid for 9 months. It’s supposed to succeed on its own terms, without appealing to our intuitions about tearing the persons apart.
My main point was to respond to the burdens argument, not defend Hendricks' original argument. Regardless, you could probably redo the thought experiment where instead of the skull being smashed, the baby is taken of your lap and placed on the roof where it will starve to death. Seems plausibly worse because of the suffering the baby will experience.
This might be one of those cases where the state can permissibly force you not to do X, but can’t force you not to do Y, even though Y is morally worse than X. (E.g., the state can permissibly force you not to steal a chicken but can’t force you not to cheat on your wife of 30 years).
I think the more demanding the task that the woman has to commit to to keep her child alive with her body, the less inclined we are to say that she can be permissibly forced to do so. Wherever a commitment to 9 months of breastfeeding sits on that scale, it’s plausible (to me) that all cases of pregnancy—but especially unwanted ones—are way above the threshold.
(Side note: on the mother-who-is-forced-to-breastfeed for 9 months case, I think it will turn out to matter intuitively whether she’s a mother in a merely biological sense, or whether she’s also a mother in the custodial sense, having formed a relationship with the child during pregnancy and after birth. Our duties of partiality typically strengthen over time as we’ve known the other party for longer, so it’s more plausible to me that a custodial mother with a longer-standing relationship to her child could be forced to undertake more demanding tasks to keep the child alive with her body (as compared to a merely biological mother who doesn’t know the child and merely shared half of its genes)).
It seems like there's a difference between coercing somebody into doing something, and coercing them into *not* doing something. Consider the CABIN* case, with the following modification: Sarah has *already* strapped the child to her body, and now she wants to remove them. Let's also suppose (for the sake of making the case more analogous to abortion) that Sarah is the child's mother. It seems obvious to me that Sarah is doing something seriously wrong (i.e. morally equivalent to murder) by removing the child, and it seems plausible that society would be within its rights to stop her from doing so.
I think this intuition makes problems for Boonin's McFall v. Shimp example as well: there's a big difference between the state forcing McFall to undergo a painful medical procedure, and the state PREVENTING a pregnant woman from procuring an abortion. Consider: the state has the right to prevent people with body integrity disorder from amputating their healthy limbs, but it doesn't have the right to force people to undergo unwanted surgeries.
I guess I don’t have that intuition, at all. I only have it in cases where removing the child involves destroying its body. (Suppose Shimp were plugged into a machine that was funnelling bone marrow from his body to McFall’s. Seems to me like he should be about to disconnect, even though that requires an action and not an inaction. And since breastfeeding for 18 months in that way is more demanding than a bone marrow extraction, the case for being allowed to unstrap the child is even stronger.)
Less relevant, but I also don’t think there’s a compelling state interest in preventing people from electing to have operations (under conditions of valid consent) to having their limbs amputated if they’re incurably suffering from BIID.
Still, it seems to me that the asymmetry applies to the McFall case. Your example (where McFall is already connected to the machine) does not seem to contradict my claim, since in that case, if the state forced McFall to remain connected to the machine, they *would* be forcing him to undergo a medicine procedure. Perhaps I should make the point narrower: it seems like there is a difference between the state coercing somebody to undergo a procedure and *prohibiting* someone from undergoing a procedure. Even if we do not hold to the general asymmetry between coercing and preventing, it seems like it applies in that case.
What do you think of Dr Calum Miller's arguments against abortion?
Which ones? Are there arguments besides the Equality Argument that are unique to him?
His Equality one and basically all his reasoning laid out on his website, and his twitter replies. I've read his initial paper on the equality argument and think it presupposes some form of Animalism ("being human" as he terms it) thought he didn't argue for it, do you agree? I am not sure what Dr Miller's views on personal identity are.
Is your main barrier to being pro-life a rejection of Animalism? Or do you find bodily autonomy arguments persuasive also.
David Hershenov has beaten you to this and made this same argument but for the pro-life position. If you don't have this intuition, I guess we are just at the "end" of our intuitions as I just don't think it's okay to tear an infant apart for 9 months of non-pregnancy convenience. I also think it's okay to force them to stop. Perry linked me to Hershenov's excellent paper that addresses almost every major pro-choice argument ("If abortion, than infanticide") a while back, and it says this:
> Imagine a tornado throws you and a newborn (a potential person in the Neo-Lockean conception of “person”) onto the roof of an extremely damaged building. The newborn is on your lap and wiggling. Her wiggling will cause the roof to collapse and you both to fall. If she had remained still, you both would have been fine. Given your current positions, you will hit the ground first and will thus cushion the infant who will emerge unscathed. The position you are in when you hit the ground will make the impact as painful as an actual delivery that ends a pregnancy. In addition, it will cause you nine months of back pain, abdominal swelling, nausea, frequent urination and bodily discomfort comparable to that endured in a pregnancy. If you rotate before the roof gives way, then you will cause the child hit the ground first and the impact will fatally crush her skull but you will be able to land on your feet and walk away unharmed. Are you morally permitted to rotate and kill the infant to avoid nine months of physical pain? It would seem not. And that is true even though the newborn has no right to be on your body and her wiggling will be the cause of your burdens just as the fetus produces the pregnant woman’s hardships.
I think you can make this case more analogous to an abortion doctor by it being a person tossing the baby off. Perhaps it also falls into pieces like a fetus, and it's your own child.
“ I just don't think it's okay to tear an infant apart for 9 months of non-pregnancy convenience”
I think the killing vs letting die objection—which is what drives our intuition in the rooftop case—succeeds. If I were pro-life I’d endorse it. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10790-022-09921-6
Hendricks’s argument was distinct from the killing vs letting die considerations—it was purely about the enforceable duty to provide substantial bodily aid for 9 months. It’s supposed to succeed on its own terms, without appealing to our intuitions about tearing the persons apart.
My main point was to respond to the burdens argument, not defend Hendricks' original argument. Regardless, you could probably redo the thought experiment where instead of the skull being smashed, the baby is taken of your lap and placed on the roof where it will starve to death. Seems plausibly worse because of the suffering the baby will experience.
Right, but then it’s not so obvious that you can be permissibly forced to take the fall Hershenov describes
Maybe, but it seems worse. I think it's okay to force a mother to feed their child even when it's 9 months of that inconvenience.
This might be one of those cases where the state can permissibly force you not to do X, but can’t force you not to do Y, even though Y is morally worse than X. (E.g., the state can permissibly force you not to steal a chicken but can’t force you not to cheat on your wife of 30 years).
I think the more demanding the task that the woman has to commit to to keep her child alive with her body, the less inclined we are to say that she can be permissibly forced to do so. Wherever a commitment to 9 months of breastfeeding sits on that scale, it’s plausible (to me) that all cases of pregnancy—but especially unwanted ones—are way above the threshold.
(Side note: on the mother-who-is-forced-to-breastfeed for 9 months case, I think it will turn out to matter intuitively whether she’s a mother in a merely biological sense, or whether she’s also a mother in the custodial sense, having formed a relationship with the child during pregnancy and after birth. Our duties of partiality typically strengthen over time as we’ve known the other party for longer, so it’s more plausible to me that a custodial mother with a longer-standing relationship to her child could be forced to undertake more demanding tasks to keep the child alive with her body (as compared to a merely biological mother who doesn’t know the child and merely shared half of its genes)).