Hey KJ, Thanks for the reply! I really appreciate the fact that you took the time to interact with what I had to say.

I think again you have a lot of really good thoughts here.

Of course, we still disagree, so I have differing thoughts on some of the issues (although I did find myself nodding in agreement quite often!). Here are some of the thoughts that I have:

You’ve made an implicit assumption that self defense cannot be premeditated. I think that’s incorrect. Specifically, a woman seeking an abortion because she doesn’t want another human inside her is exactly acting in self defense — defending herself from the non-consensual occupation of her body.

This seems to me to be saying something like “the thing we’re looking at here is the exception to the rule.” That may or may not be true, but it’s one of the key things we disagree over, so using it as evidence seems a little circular.

When thinking about self defense vs abortion, self-defense sees you defending yourself against someone else’s actions. With abortion, whose actions are you defending yourself against? The answer seems to be your own (or in the case of rape, the rapist’s — all the more reason to want as harsh a punishment as possible for rape). When someone attacks you, they are violating your autonomy. With pregnancy, who is violating your autonomy? You? Nature? It’s definitely not the child, who is there on the orders of the other two.

I’ve tried to avoid analogies to other situations because I think they are distracting, but you seem to prefer them, so I’ll include one here: a woman with an abusive husband who hides a knife under her pillow to use in self-defense next time he beats her is clearly premeditating the act of stabbing him — and yet it is still an act of self-defense.

I don’t think this works. The woman is not premeditating killing her husband, she’s premeditating the potential need to defend herself which may or may not include the use of lethal force. That’s very different.

I failed to include a definition, so that’s my bad. Here is a definition:

Bodily autonomy means a person has control over who or what uses their body, for what, and for how long. This is why you can’t be forced to donate blood, tissue, or organs, even if you are dead.

Thus, prohibition against using your body to kill someone is not a violation of bodily autonomy. Bodily autonomy is a concept describing your right to not be subject to unwanted actions. It has nothing to do with what actions you have the right to take (other than self-defense).

This is a common pro-life misconception and I really don’t understand why, it seems to me that bodily autonomy is a very straightforward concept and the often-repeated idea that “prohibitions on stealing/murdering etc. are a violation of bodily autonomy” are just such an obvious logical fallacy that I didn’t think it necessary to deal with it. Please explain if you somehow think this is not a logical fallacy.

I guess the “misconception” comes from the fact that many people in the pro-life camp actually have a higher definition of bodily autonomy than this (which is very ironic). Under this higher view, bodily autonomy includes not just the right to stop people from using their body, but the right to do what they want with their body (although there are limitations, such as the hierarchy of rights we spoke about earlier).

But, since “bodily autonomy” is something that humans define, there are bound to be different definitions and I’m happy using yours from now on.

I dealt explicitly with the right to end a life that is not in danger: we have this right when it is self-defense.

Yes, but we disagree on whether abortion is self-defense. This is where it gets tricky to talk about these things. There are two things that are exacerbating this. First of all, the topic so far has been atomized and each piece examined outside of the whole context. Second, we are dealing with a topic that is incredibly unique. We are trying to establish moral principles and cite possible exceptions, when the topic we are dealing with is exceptional. This is how the species reproduces. It’s inconvenient for everyone, especially women that it works out this way, but we have to work with the hand that we are dealt.

I dealt explicitly with the dichotomy you set up by discussing the difference (or lack thereof) between action and inaction — so I do indeed think these questions fall under the same moral question. I dealt explicitly with the idea of the special duty (or responsibility, as you put it) of the mother as well.

How do you think they fall under the same moral question? How does the action/inaction distinction/lack of distinction factor in? How does “you can’t kill people” inevitably logically lead to “you must save someone”? You mentioned the trolley problem, but in the trolley problem, the “killer” is whoever tied the people to the tracks. In a cruel twist you are “forced” to decide who lives and yes, “inaction” is a form of action in that scenario, but that is a unique scenario where you don’t get to decide whether someone dies, only who dies. If you chose inaction and the five people get run over and then you go shoot the one person in the head, that would be a completely different story.

So we have four different scenarios:

• Trolley problem: action/inaction determines who dies among innocent people, not whether someone dies.
• Organ donation/Medical intervention: action/inaction determines whether someone who was dying before intervention dies, but it was something else that killed them.
• Self-defense (defending your life, not rape): action/inaction determines whether the innocent victim or guilty perpetrator lives (although the death of the perpetrator is not inevitable. This one is reasonable close to the trolley problem though).
• Abortion/murder/accidental killing/self-defense (other): no one was going to die with inaction, someone dies with action.

You could also throw in the rare medical case where the doctor has to choose whether to prioritize the life of the mother or the baby when both are in jeopardy. That’s pretty close to the trolley problem with the difference that no one is at fault (in the trolley problem the guy who tied people to the tracks is at fault).

So, it’s not a categorical thing where we can say action and inaction are the same thing or entirely different. In each of the four scenarios there is a different extent to which action and inaction are the same or different.

But notice, abortion ends up in the category with self-defense and murder. This means that the self-defense route is still open to you, but the murder route is still open to the other side. It’s hard to lump abortion in with organ donation here, which is what you were trying to do.

I dealt explicitly with the idea of the special duty (or responsibility, as you put it) of the mother as well

You did, here that is:

But surely a stranger’s right to life also trumps my right to bodily autonomy. Otherwise this is totally illogical: only my offspring’s right to life trumps my right to bodily autonomy, but my right to bodily autonomy trumps my niece’s right to life? Or maybe that’s too closely related, it only trumps my granddaughter’s right to life? What about second cousins? How unrelated should a person be before my right to bodily autonomy trumps their right to life? This is nonsensical. Not to mention the fact that the unborn child is essentially a stranger, and on top of that, we don’t even have mandatory organ donation to one’s own children

This is obviously related to what we were talking about before. Killing someone yourself is very different than failing to take action to save someone. If you killed your niece, that would be very different than not donating an organ. Yes, by your definition your bodily autonomy is called into question only in the latter case, but bodily autonomy clearly isn’t the determining factor under this definition, since you are also not responsible to save your niece in a great variety of circumstances that don’t involve giving a kidney or some other invasion of bodily autonomy.

And clearly, your children are different than any other person — no matter how closely related — in one very important respect: they are the only people who come from your womb. There is a clear cut responsibility here. This responsibility carries into other areas as well. Once the child is born, a mother is expected to continue to provide for it. Yes, as we have discussed, she has the option of passing on this responsibility, but the fact that she has to pass it on indicates that it is a real responsibility.

Pregnancy is dangerous. Forcing people to remain pregnant is literally putting them in harm’s way. And before we get into, “it’s natural, it’s not thaaaat dangerous,” let’s just be aware of some stats: over 1.5% of pregnancies result in severe complications for the mother in first world countries like the states and Canada. Over 87% report at least one health problem immediately following pregnancy, and 31% experience lasting health problems. It’s difficult to get stats on the “natural” danger of pregnancy, but in Nigeria over 0.8% of pregnancies result in death for the mother. For context, the rate of death for kidney donors is only 0.03%.

This is a really good point.

This is one of the strongest points in favor of abortion in my view.

That said, do the complications of pregnancy and delivery warrant killing a child? Going back to the self-defense idea, who or what is responsible for the health complication of pregnancy? We unfortunately have to deal with the hand nature dealt us and thankfully the same medical technology that makes safe abortion possible in the first place is making pregnancy and delivery safer. Of course, there is a long way to go, both in terms of advances in safety and access to medical care.

All that said, yes, the fact that pregnancy/delivery is so difficult/dangerous is a very tough aspect of the reality that we live in.

Of course motherhood is wonderful for people who want to be mothers. People who want abortions, by definition, are trying to avoid this.

People who want abortions, by definition, have failed at avoiding this.

And from the perspective of such a person, the fetus is an unwanted stranger occupying the uterus.

And in reality the fetus is her child.

Now, you get into the idea of intent being required for self-defense to be valid. I had originally included an analogy about this in my article, but I took it out in the interest of limiting distractions. Apparently it is actually needed, so consider this situation. A mentally unwell person, not in control of themselves and with no particular intent, for unknown reasons decides to attack you. Clearly, you have the right to self-defense, even if you have to kill them, despite the fact that they didn’t intend you harm (or at least not consciously).

This is a good example of what I mean when I say that actions and intents are intertwined. There is obvious and clear cut intentions to do you harm in the case of someone violently attacking you. Like you say, the person may not be consciously aware of particular reasons for attacking someone such as malice, but the actions themselves are indications of ill intent. Hence why you even feel the need to defend yourself. The person’s actions indicate that if you don’t do something, you’re going to die.

Your analogy is not so good, because there was another way to stop the guy from violating her. In the case of abortion, there is no other way to stop the fetus from violating the person’s consent. Their helplessness/innocence/lack of intent does not mean the woman loses the right to revoke consent, or to defend herself.

But how does the presence of an alternative materially affect the situation? If she is being violated, clearly she has the right to self defense. A person being assaulted (almost) always has alternatives. They can fight or flee. The fact that there’s another option doesn’t affect their right to use lethal force to defend themselves. It seems to me the reason why it is wrong for the woman in the analogy to kill the man she hasn’t informed that she has revoked consent to is not because she had an alternative, but because he is helpless in the matter, not having been informed. The woman has a right to choose consent or not, but she doesn’t have a right to define reality by her preferences.

“if you didn’t want your toddler could you abandon them to death? I would hope that you would say no, but it’s hard to see on what grounds.”

The grounds are: a person who already agreed to raising this kid to toddlerhood has already agreed to caregiving responsibilities, and requiring someone to make a phone call to send the child to child services is not mandating them to put themselves in harm’s way.

Why has someone at this stage agreed to parenting responsibilities but someone who has gotten pregnant hasn’t? You could in some cases argue that the pregnancy was an accident, but did this person really not know that pregnancy was a potential result of sex, even protected sex?

Plus, does motherhood come from the consent of the mother or the fact of motherhood? I have a really hard time understanding how it makes any sense to be anything but the latter.

and requiring someone to make a phone call to send the child to child services is not mandating them to put themselves in harm’s way.

That’s true, but why are they required to make the phone call? Why aren’t I required to make a phone call for them if they decide they just want to ghost? This implies that a mother has responsibility for her child and if she wishes to abdicate it it must be transferred appropriately, which implies she had a special relationship with her child.

The interesting stuff!

First off, I actually don’t believe in free will, I just think it’s useful to act as if we have free will.

Yeah, free will is really weird. I don’t know what to make of it. I desperately want to believe in free will — I think everyone does — but it’s really really hard to make that work with any coherent picture of reality.

Under materialism, everything is cause and effect. Presumably, our minds are the same way, it’s just that the causes and effects are more complicated than we can fully tease out. Under theism it’s maybe possible, but most monotheists believe that either a) God predestines stuff or b) he knows the future, either one of which essentially destroys free will.

Another interesting question between the lines on your statement is whether we can be morally culpable if there is no free will. I think the answer is yes, but man is that a weird question and I don’t know if I’m qualified to tackle it.

So, we can act as if we’re coming up with moral rules, and that’s good enough for “mindless matter”

Yes, we can, or not. And anything would be good enough for “mindless matter.”

But we’ve just pushed the problem one step along: the opinion about which rule to use to decide “rightness” or “wrongness” of an opinion, is, after all, just an opinion.

Yup, this is an admirable summary of the problem. There’s really only one way around it, and it requires two things: 1) God exists 2) He has created a set of moral rules that bind our behavior. It has to be a monothesitic God, because otherwise there might be competing opinions (we can’t believe in dualism for the same reason). It has to be a transcendent creator of all things who is able to dictate the appropriate behavior for his creation.

Implicitly, I think you mean, “If there is God, there is a correct morality.”

Right 😃

However, even in the absence of a universal faith, we can still have governments base their rulings on what the majority agrees, e.g. the majority agrees that murder and rape should be illegal. This is, in fact, more or less how our society works, and by comparing it to theocracies in other times and places, I certainly prefer our secular democracy. And so, this is how morality can exist without God — by majority rule. It’s just shoddy, messy, incomplete morality — but, I would argue, religion is also messy and incomplete, in that it hasn’t yet found answers to every moral question, and that a lot of it’s moral rules lead to increased physical suffering.

I think pretty much everything in this paragraph is true. But it’s worth pointing out that we just have to go with what everyone agrees, so if they change their minds and say that rape is okay or that the government is evil and we should revert to anarchy… well…

It’s worth noting that under this method of pretending in morality and governing based on majority rule, we can’t really fault people for being illogical in their moral beliefs. All beliefs are made up and the important thing is that you believe them. Logical consistency isn’t an issue because all moral beliefs are inherently logically inconsistent with reality. So we just wasted a bunch of time probing each others thoughts in depths. Since the real way to change someone’s opinion is through the heart, not the mind, I would have been much better off showing pictures of babies and saying “look, cute” and you would have been much better off doing nothing but the maternal mortality stats.

I agree that religion is messy and incomplete, but it’s one avenue to search for the answers. I’ve found the answers that I’ve found compelling, but I realize that convincing others is about as difficult as convincing them of my moral beliefs!

Again, thanks for taking the time to write out such a thorough response, I’m always happy to find someone from “the other side” interested in civilized debate! Hopefully we can both learn something.

Yeah, this has been a lot of fun! I think when you are trying to get to the truth there’s a certain enjoyment in having your ideas stress tested.