miseleigh Posted September 4, 2008 Report Share Posted September 4, 2008 I wake up in a hospital with no recollection of how or why I'm there. I don’t feel any pain or illness – I wiggle my fingers and toes, and nothing seems broken. I try to move around, and I can get out of bed – there is nothing wrong with me as far as I can tell, but for some strange reason there are IVs in my arm. I follow them, and am shocked at the bridge they form to the old man in the next bed. A doctor comes in, and I ask her what’s going on. The old man was dying, she tells me as she checks the man’s pulse. He needs life support and I am the only life support available. I’ll be able to leave as soon as he wakes up, but the old man will have to follow me wherever I go from now on just to keep him from dying. I’ll be free in less than a year, the doctor adds, when the old man can fend for himself again. The doctor leaves before I can ask her more questions. I am stunned; what gives anyone the right to do this to me? I live in a free country. This is not freedom. The man wakes up, smiles at me, and says nothing. We leave. Most of the time I’m hardly aware he’s even there – he’s so quiet, and follows me around well enough that there are no tugs on the IVs. But he is always there, and whenever I think about his attachment to me I get angry. I notice that I’ve been eating more than I used to. He’s taking my nutrients from me and it’s harder to keep myself healthy. It only takes a week or two before I realize that I can’t handle taking care of another person, and I begin to think about how I can get rid of him. I don’t even know his name, and I don’t care. I don’t want him around. Another week and I begin to feel weak and ill in the mornings, after a night of feeding two bodies. I drag him back to the hospital. He puts up no resistance. It’s almost like he has no will of his own, and can only feed and follow. The doctor says it would be unethical to separate us, to let the old man die. He’s a human being, she lectures; he has the right to live. But then so do I, and being chained to him is not truly life. It’s slavery. We shudder at the thought of tapeworms feeding off of us, tremble at the idea of vampires, and are horrified at the idea of slavery, yet too often we condone parasitic tendencies. I cut the IVs and let the doctors do their best to save the old man, but I do not feel pity for him. He has no right to my life. I wake up in the hospital. I have been raped, the doctor tells me, and I am pregnant. I live in a free country, and I will not harbor a fetus I do not want. I tell the doctor to get rid of it. This is my life now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
01503 Posted September 4, 2008 Report Share Posted September 4, 2008 I've never heard that parallel before, but I think it's the best one I've heard on abortion. It's true: the unwilling support of a human by another because they have a "right" to you is slavery. You must work against your will for the sake of another. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miseleigh Posted September 4, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 4, 2008 I've never heard that parallel before, but I think it's the best one I've heard on abortion. A pro-life friend of mine mentioned this parallel to me as the only argument he'd ever heard that actually made him consider abortion a moral possibility. Since he and I had argued fruitlessly about abortion before, I thought it would make an effective story-argument in support of abortion. All that's left is editing and finding a good forum for it. I would love some help strengthening the comparison and making the parasitic old man more repugnant, if anyone has some ideas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softwareNerd Posted September 4, 2008 Report Share Posted September 4, 2008 Playing devil's advocate, what if you were a the person who caused the old man's dependent state? Personally, I'm the most pro-choice person I know; but, I don't think the analogy will sway an unsympathetic audience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
01503 Posted September 4, 2008 Report Share Posted September 4, 2008 Playing devil's advocate, what if you were a the person who caused the old man's dependent state? Personally, I'm the most pro-choice person I know; but, I don't think the analogy will sway an unsympathetic audience. True. Considering the fact that you didn't do anything to get into this state in the above parallel, it doesn't cover the fact if you have consensual sex and become pregnant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve D'Ippolito Posted September 4, 2008 Report Share Posted September 4, 2008 (edited) The previous two posters have a point (the counter argument that the other side would offer amounts to "you play, you pay"), and thinking about it for a while made me realize this story is faulty for a reason they didn't quite identify. [devil's advocate mode ON] "You play, you pay," contrary to arguments I've seen raised by some Objectivists, would work as an argument against abortion even if one had taken all possible precautions against pregnancy before engaging in sex. Clearly one knew the risk was there--in fact taking all those precautions makes it worse because doing so demonstrates knowlege of the risk--and did it anyway, now one is unwilling to face the consequences of their action? What an evasion of reality! [devil's advocate mode OFF] No, the ONLY way to cut through this fog is to correctly identify that the consequence of the action is NOT something that you could be obligated not to kill. In other words to identify that the consequence is not a rights-bearing human being. Your story equates the old man and the fetus. Even though you correctly identify that it would be wrong to connect the old man to you as a parasite, because it equates the two, you are implicitly conceding that the fetus is a (rights-bearing) human being, leaving the door open to a bunch of counter arguments that you shouldn't have to deal with. It goes back to something I realized quite some time ago: ONLY the explicit identification of the fact that a fetus is not a human being will win the issue for the "pro choice" camp. Almost every "pro choice" bumper sticker, and just about all of the rhetoric outside of the Objectivist realm, that I see simply ignores this issue. "Keep your laws off my body" is irrelevant if the law in question is viewed as preventing a murder. "It is not a choice, it is a child" is the *perfect* argument by the "pro life" faction so long as the "pro choice" faction simply ignores the premise it is based on. (Every time I step back from this issue and watch the argument, I get the sense that the two sides are simply talking past each other; this is why. Except that the "pro-life" side does explicitly make the argument that the fetus is a human being; hence pictures of late term fetuses paraded about.) If you accept the premise that the fetus is a human being, you can make a lot of secular arguments in favor of banning abortion; it isn't just a bunch of religious nutters screaming about God's Will. If the "pro choice" crowd cannot or will not take this premise head on, they (and us along with them) will lose. Once the culture at large accepts the "fact" that the fetus is a human being, the "pro-choice" side is doomed. (By the way, this is why I refused to sign a letter that a local Objectivist passed around that demanded that candidates drop a bunch of theocratic items from their platforms--one of them was abortion and I am all too aware of the fact that you don't have to be a religious nutter to oppose abortion. Abortion is not a separation-of-church-and-state issue.) Okay, now lets say we succeed in reversing our current scary trend and convincing society at large that the fetus is not a human being. Then, and only then, will the other side--what's left of it--have no choice to fall back on arguments that is is immoral to stop what god started or that it is god's will that the pregnancy continue. These are explicitly religious arguments and will be crushed by bugs--as long as this isn't a theocracy, but that's another topic. [edit--punctuation, spacing and one pronoun with a vague referent replaced with its referent.] Edited September 4, 2008 by Steve D'Ippolito Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve D'Ippolito Posted September 4, 2008 Report Share Posted September 4, 2008 (edited) I just found this example of what I was just ranting against; had to post it: http://www.opposingviews.com/questions/sho...ortion-be-legal It's two pro- and two con- organizations duking it out. Note that NAF, the national abortion federation, posts the following summaries: Illegal Abortion Hurts Women Legal Abortion Promotes Health and Justice for Women Politicians Shouldn’t Interfere in Private Medical Matters If a fetus or embryo is assumed to be a human being, and killing it is murder, none of these arguments make any damned sense. Anyone believing this would have the wits to respond as follows: It hurts the fetus more At the expense of killing someone? What kind of "justice" is this? Private medical matters? Is wifebeating a private marital matter? MUCH better is the ARC (Ayn Rand Center's) take: Abortion Rights are Pro-Life and Must be Defended in Fundamental Terms The Status of the Embryo in the First Trimester is the Basic Issue There are Legitimate Reasons Why a Woman Might Have an Abortion Anti-Abortionists' Claim to Being "Pro-Life" is a Classic Big Lie The second bullet is the ONLY one that attacks the faulty premise, and in that context the other three bullets make a lot of sense and cover a lot more ground (though granted a non-Objectivist would have to read the explanation of the first and last ones). Edited September 4, 2008 by Steve D'Ippolito Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
volco Posted September 7, 2008 Report Share Posted September 7, 2008 Truly, from the first sentence to the last, the story caught me and it was quiet shocking. I see artistic merit in it, I wouldn't judge it as a pro-real life pamphlet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinDW78 Posted September 7, 2008 Report Share Posted September 7, 2008 (edited) Oops, I hate to rain on your parade, but your story has already been nearly identically portrayed in an article against abortion from the 70s. I had to read it this past semester for my ethics class. I'll see if I can dig it up. More or less though the article posed the debate in context of being abducted and waking up in a hospital with a critical ill patient attached to you using sharing your ograns to stay alive. Then continues the hypothetical in several situations (what if they had to be attached for 20 years to stay alive? WHat about 1 Year? What about an hour?) ok Looked it up, it was by Judith Jarvis Thomson and you can read her article here: http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160...l02/thomson.htm Edited September 7, 2008 by KevinDW78 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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