On Guns and Abortion

Academically, the "slippery slope" argument is considered a logical fallacy; it’s the unsubstantiated belief that one action will inevitably lead to a worst-case conclusion. In politics - which is seldom logical - the "slippery slope" is used with wedge issues, trumpeting the undeniable disaster that will follow any compromise on a matter of morality. It’s used to inflame and manipulate voters, to encourage distrust and the fear of mutual concession.

So let’s turn down the flame and apply some common sense to two such topics - gun rights and abortion rights. First, the guns.

The Second Amendment, in its awkwardly worded entirety: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." The ultimate question - is this right conferred to the people, or to the state? - has never been resolved by our highest court, despite recent efforts to force their hand: "The Supreme Court passed up a chance…to rule on the Bush administration’s assertion that the Second Amendment gives individuals the right to bear firearms." (NewsMax.com, 6/11/2002)

In the absence of such judicial clarity - and accepting that the Supreme Court has generally upheld federal gun laws - the issue of private gun ownership could be effectively addressed by the United States Congress. One reasonable approach might look something like this:

Consider firearms as the rough equivalent of a motor vehicle. Both require a degree of maturity and skill for proper operation. Both face concerns over safety and lawful application, since both are potentially deadly weapons. Both have restrictive provisions for their use (such as age, criminal background, drug abuse, etc.). Using the template of a driver’s license, we could explore federal legislation on firearms that would involve a test-based license - one for simple ownership, with a more extensive test for a concealed-carry permit. These exams - uniform, and nationally administered - would encompass knowledge of gun safety, gun laws, and a shooting-range assessment of minimal skill levels.

An effort at such legislation would no doubt be attacked from both sides. Advocates of gun rights would claim that such testing is an abridgement of the Second Amendment; that the tests would not be devised or administered fairly; that the licensing records would be used as a ‘national registry’ for eventual gun seizure by a restrictive federal government. Gun control supporters would reject any law that endorses private gun ownership, even if its intent is to ensure responsible gun ownership; they would insist that such an action would see a soaring rate of handgun deaths.

And, perhaps, that’s our cue: The merits of such a compromise might indeed be measured by the volume of the outrage from both extremes.

Philosophically, the debate regarding abortion is more complex than that of gun ownership. The basic question, however, is pretty straight-forward: At what point, if any, do the rights of a fetus supercede a woman’s rights?

There are three basic categories within the anti-abortion population. The first group opposes abortion under any circumstances. They believe that life begins at conception, and the right to life of a fetus takes precedence over all other concerns - including the life of the woman. Their beliefs, and efforts, are aimed at making abortion illegal, period. Within this group - a small percentage, one hopes - are those who find it heroic to murder doctors who perform abortions.

The second group opposes abortion in all cases, except when the woman’s life is endangered. This is a quantum leap from the first tier, since the rights conferred to the fetus have become negotiable. One may disagree with the position, but at least it shows an attempt to rationally reconcile conflicting values. The third group - those who would allow abortion in cases of rape or incest - have staked out a bizarre corner in the debate. Their moral interest is not in the fetus itself; instead, they would use pregnancy as a punishment for willful sex - a woman is only eligible for an abortion if she didn’t consent to the act. Those that support abortion in these cases are - from their logic - inflicting the death penalty on the fetus itself, as if it were a guilty party to the means of its own conception.

The flip side of the argument, succinctly stated by Judith Jarvis Thompson ("A Defense of Abortion," Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1971): "…nobody is morally required to make large sacrifices, of health, of all other interests and concerns, of all other duties and commitments…for nine months, in order to keep a person alive."

Even in the face of such a emotional issue, surely there is some common ground to at least begin a discussion. If, to the pro-lifers, abortion is the ultimate evil, shouldn’t their efforts - concurrent with encouraging anti-abortion legislation - also entail broadening birth control knowledge and availability? Even if they find this morally distasteful, surely it is a minor sin when weighed against its greater good - the minimizing of abortions. In addition, to be true to their values, they should be supporting scientific efforts to expand contraceptive reliability.

Surely, to the pro-choice faction, there is leeway on the question of the "Intrauterine Cranial Decompression" procedure (termed, by the pro-lifers, "partial birth abortion"). Allowing for certain exceptions - when the woman’s life is endangered, or when the fetus suffers from serious genetic defects - couldn’t an agreement be reached that, at some point late in the pregnancy, the woman has sacrificed the right to "abortion-on-demand?" After all, every "right" - including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms - has its legal limits.

Those on the extreme edges of both these controversies will find all attempts at compromise unacceptable. For the rest of us - living in an increasingly polarized America - finding common ground on such divisive issues may be the key to our survival. There is a limit on how much damage a foreign terrorist can inflict on this nation. Unfortunately, there is no such limit on the damage we can do to ourselves.

"I'm not interested in whether the fetus is "fully human" or something less, the real question is whether the fetus can survive outside the womb, and if not, is it reasonable to make the mother into a slave to the fetus by forcing her to let it live off her organs for nine months." If the pregnancy was not due to rape or incest (thus parents may perceive the pregnancy as involuntary), the little one is not an intruder of force or the presence of the alive little one forcing slavery. Additionally, a crib-bound infant cannot survive without life support ... should women have the right to terminate life support they began by their voluntary actions?

If I were to give you the benefit of the doubt, I'd say you've bought the lies of the liberal abortion defenders and have their perspective when considering matters regarding abortion on demand. If you're going to use the term 'slavery', use it correctly; forced servitude is not the relationship of fetal aged child and life supporting mother because the child is there by invitation, albeit in most cases a very tenuous invitation due to ignoring the likelihood of becoming a mother when engaging voluntarily in sexual intercourse.

You might get an eyeopener if you were to consider that the same folks using terms like slavery when defending abortion on demand are quick to defend lab conception of embryonic age humans and dissection of these alive individuals at their earliest age, to get their body parts for experimentation and medical treatments yet to be defined specifically. but then, once you accomplish the dehumanization of a class of human beings, you may do with them as you desire, with no thought to their humanity merely their utility.

If I were to give you the benefit of the doubt, I'd say you've bought the lies of the liberal abortion defenders and have their perspective when considering matters regarding abortion on demand.

I have no personal interest in "abortion on demand", I just do not believe that it is right to force a women to risk her life and health for nine months, regardless of how she happened to become pregnant, just because the final end result of the nine-month-long process is a baby, a person who has equal rights (but not superior rights) to the mother. Everybody wants to talk about how a handful of cells is more important than the person in whom those cells are embedded.

If the pregnancy was not due to rape or incest (thus parents may perceive the pregnancy as involuntary), the little one is not an intruder of force or the presence of the alive little one forcing slavery. Additionally, a crib-bound infant cannot survive without life support

You're forgetting one thing -- a person cannot legitimately enter into a contract to enslave themselves. Thus, the agreement/consent is nonbinding, and can be revoked at any time, regardless of the mortal consequences to the other party.

You might say that pregnancy is not slavery, that if all goes well, after nine months of pregnancy, a baby is born. This ignores the facts that those nine months aren't exactly a cakewalk; if all does not go go so well, the mother may have her health permanently compromised, or may die.

The state does not generally have a right to force one person to directly endanger themselves to benefit another, even if the risk is low, you always have a choice, always have the right to withdraw your consent.

If the choice is "to not be pregnant", and the unborn child is not developed to the point where the child can survive outside of the womb, can the state force a women to remain pregnant for another six months or longer, in order to give the child time to develop?

Additionally, a crib-bound infant cannot survive without life support ... should women have the right to terminate life support they began by their voluntary actions?

That's an invalid comparison. There's a difference in kind between financial support or a ventilator and having somebody literally living off of your bloodstream directly embedded in your abdomen.

To quote myself:

There is no legal tradition that suggests that a parent can be forced to give up part of their liver for a child, that an individual can be forced to donate blood.
. . .
... 47 states have enacted "safe haven" laws. Generally these laws allow the mother to anonymous "give up" a newborn, less than seven days old, with no legal penalty.

Back on the slavery theme, MHGinTN wrote:

If you're going to use the term 'slavery', use it correctly; forced servitude is not the relationship of fetal aged child and life supporting mother because the child is there by invitation, albeit in most cases a very tenuous invitation due to ignoring the likelihood of becoming a mother when engaging voluntarily in sexual intercourse.

I'm going to ignore the obvious straight line here (Pregnancy is punishment for having sex, etc, etc), and stick with the "slavery" theme, and the original point of this thread -- the right to self defense.

I could write a long argument showing the flaws in this position, but it's easier to just go back to Thomson's "famous violinist":

Of course it may be said that the case of pregnancy is entirely different from the violinist. In the latter, the victim has been acted upon against his will, while (except in the case of rape) the woman voluntarily enters into an act that could result in the conception of a fetus. Thomson tackles this concern by explaining that the intention of an act can be very different from its actual consequences. She gives the examples of leaving a window open to let the breeze in and later a burglar slips in, too. It is absurd to say that the resident has given the burglar the right to enter the house just because the avenue of entry was opened. She goes on to alter the role of the burglar, who intentionally seeks to enter the house, with that of an innocent individual who accidentally blunders in.
. . .
While Thomson argues that the perpetrator of the act, whether they be burglars or spermatozoa, have no right to do what they do without permission or having been given the right, she puts forth the idea of the 'Minimally Decent Samaritan". At some point the abridgment of the 'victims' right becomes smaller than the rights of the perpetrator. Thomson says that if the violinist only needed to be connected to your kidneys an hour to be cured and your health would be in no way permanently affected, in fact the only thing you would have to endure is being inconvenienced for an hour. It would be indecent of you to refuse him the use of your kidneys; you ought to help him. But, that said, you are still not morally required to do anything to help the dying violinist. It would be deplorable and even despicable to refuse to lift a finger to help someone in need, but the important thing is, it isn't required. I feel that Thomson introduces this concept due to the fact that, like most compassionate human beings, she is appalled with the senseless killing of another human life. Again, though, she holds that sometimes the killing is justified and that the continued action of the individual killed is more unjust than the death.
The chief difference between Thomson's view and the pro-life view is that of obligation. Thomson holds that we are not obligated to give whatever is needed to sustain another's life while the pro-lifers at least say that we are morally required to give aid or withhold harm from the unborn fetus. In the end, Thomson's Violinist argument seems to be a good one. It addresses the issue of whether or not it is morally permissible to abort a fetus and does succeed in defending her claim that it is sometimes morally permissible to abort the fetus. While the metaphor may be a bit stretched with the violinist (who has already been living) and the fetus (who has not previously existed), it still has much merit. The issue of whether the woman's rights to her body are more important than the fetus's right to life can be examined.
Thomson's Violinist argument has been praised by some and abhorred by others. I feel that her's is one of the better arguments put forth in support of abortion. She side-steps the issue of the fetus's designation as a human being (a source of much controversy between the pro-life and pro-choice camps) by arguing in such a way that it doesn't matter one way or the other. The other being does not have a right to use anything needed to prolong (or begin) its life.

(Text quoted verbatim from http://www.mwillett.org/atheism/abortion.htm, I just highlighted the most relevant portions.)

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