In your argument against abortion, you deny parts of Ayn Rand’s philosophy. You have a different notion of rights than Ayn Rand has, and you have a different notion of what qualifies as a human being.
Though I see your point, Philosophy doesn’t have the power or the authority to override scientific determinations and classifications. Rand’s use of the term “human being” is unfortunate. She should have stuck with the philosophical term “person”. As a result of not doing that, there is the perception of many that she was imposing philosophical meanings on scientific terms – an improper practice to say the least.
Point taken; I have not seen that in Rand’s work but other Objectivists have given the same explanation. I’d like more explanation, though. Why does bringing the child into existence create an obligation? I’m thinking especially of cases where a woman gets pregnant accidentally rather than choosing to have a child. Why can she just not abandon the child after it is born? Why does a child have “positive rights”?
I can’t argue for or against abortion here. Like I said, I find the whole issue to be the most confusing in Objectivism. But in any case, if someone were to procreate a human being, intentionally or unintentionally, and if simultaneously all human beings are persons with rights, then to abort that person who did not choose the situation would be to subject him to a willful death trap. A parent who procreates and thus initiates conception and the immediate state of absolute dependency would owe a moral obligation to meet that need so long as it posed no threat to her life.
This actually isn’t against what Rand might have said herself. She certainly gave sanction to Nathaniel Branden’s article in the December 1962 issue of “The Objectivist Newsletter”. That article was entitled “What are the respective obligations of parents to children, and children to parents?” In it, Branden stated with Rand’s approval that parents have an obligation to their born children because they created their state of absolute dependency, and because that act happened outside of the consent of the child. Of course, Branden made a distinction between born and unborn children, but he didn’t really give a very relevant objective reason why.
In any case, its clear from the ethics that if the purpose of the sex act was something other than procreation, the reality that procreation occured was the undenable fact. If that child is also a “person”, then it doesn’t really matter what the original intent was, anymore than it matters in other activities. If I were to go out for a joyride for instance, there is hardly any desire on my part to run over an innocent pedestrian. If it happens though, what I intended is irrelevant in comparison to what actually happened.
Btw, a woman’s ability to get an abortion is significant because it means that having a child is always a choice, and obligations (and moral judgements) only apply to the realm of choice.
Yes but that assumes that she hasn’t already had a child. If there is no “person” then I agree with you. If there is a “person”, then the choice has already been made and the child already exists. His exit from the womb wouldn’t be meaningful to his identity at that point or his existence.
Of course, even if abortions were not possible, there is always the choice to have sex, but in that case, a woman who was raped and did not have access to an abortion would not be obligated to raise that child.
True, but claiming that the choice to kill a “person” (if one exists) in all cases because of the very minute number who are actually conceived in a non-consensual sex act would be the fallacy of the excluded middle, would it not?
It would be tantamount to claiming that I may kill anyone on my property, regardless of their reason for being there, even if they are there through some action of mine through which they had no choice or were invited, simply because the possibility exists that someone can come onto my property without my consent and through no action of my own.
Of course, that’s only if unborn children are “persons”. If they are not, then its no different than removing a wart, a real parasite, or even an organ if we wanted to. We just don’t get to call any of them, except for the last one, a part of the woman’s body.
First, is a fetus really part of the mother’s body in the same way that the heart is? It seems to me more like a tapeworm; that is, a parasitic organism that has its own identity but happens to live inside the body of another organism.
I can give you a few medical reasons why a fetus is not a parasite. Unless you are using the term “parasite” in a social/perjorative sense (such as an unhappy worker might call himself a “slave” to his job), the term “parasite” has a very specific meaning in biology with very specific criteria.
In any case, a fetus is not a part of the mother’s body, again in a scientific sense. It might end up functionally the same, but we don’t get to reinvent terms to fit wandering concepts.
