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You've touched on an important issue, Withiel—the essential difference between a thing being morally desirable and not being morally undesirable. A positive good and a negative good, in other words.
It's hard—but, I think, possible—to make a case for abortion as a positive moral good. I think the test is: Can you make a case for the thing in itself?
Over in the execution thread, Ganesh argues that we cannot argue the relative merits of the death penalty without also considering the possibility of wrongful convictions. I repectfully disagree. I think that we can sometimes shed light on complex situations by examining their components individually—in a vacuum, as it were—in a series of hypotheticals. The process can lead us to some basic assumptions, upon which we can build.
Abortion is a complex issue because it works on at least two levels: it ends pregnancies, and prevents births. The two are related, but not the same. To frame abortion solely as a women's issue—as Nina has explicitly done—focuses entirely on the former, while conveniently ignoring that there is another party—another life—dammit, let's call a spade a spade, another person involved in the decision.
That, I think, is what so rankles me about that framing of the issue—it's a reductionist argument, and not one that holds up under close examination. To claim that abortion is entirely about women's reproductive freedom—when there are so many other ways of dealing with the issue of unwanted pregnancy, most of which quite sensibly focus on prevention—seems incredibly disingenuous to me.
So let's reduce it the other way, and see if there's a positive moral good to be found. Let's focus less on the fact of pregnancy itself, and more on outcomes.
Thought experiment: Assume, if you will, the existence of a 100% safe, effective, and pleasant contraceptive method. Assume that all pregnancies in our hypothetical society are wanted. In such a hypothetical, is there still a place for abortion?
I would argue yes, for the reasons outlined in my initial post. The focus is placed not on the pregnancy, but on the birth and life of the child. But if your support for abortion is predicated solely on the appeal to a woman's right to choose when and whether to bear children at all, then, it seems to me, you're on shakier ground. |
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