Monday, September 01, 2008

Except in the Case of Incest, Rape, or a Threat to the Life or Health of the Mother

These exceptions don't hold water. It's rather easy to prove this.

Suppose you had been impregnated by rape or incest and were living in a mountain cabin with the child, now two months old. It's just the two of you, isolated in a remote and rugged region. Winter sets in. You decide you don't want to care for the baby, so you take it out of your cabin and leave it there. It dies of exposure. That's murder. Also, there is no relevant distinction between this case and the abortion of the same organism when it is a six-month-old fetus. Your child has a right to your care. If you cut it off, foreseeing its resulting death, this is murder.

Suppose instead that you are ill up in the cabin and the baby is not the product of rape or incest, but the result of sex with your ordinary boyfriend or husband. Since you are ill, caring for the baby during the rough winter has a 50% chance of killing or crippling you. If you don't have to care for the baby, you will certainly survive. So, you take the baby out of your cabin and leave it there. It dies of exposure. That's murder. Again, there is no relevant distinction between this case and the abortion of the same organism when it is a six-month-old fetus. Your child has a right to your care. If you cut it off, foreseeing its resulting death, this is murder.

It's not morally permissible to crush your child's skull, chop him into pieces and throw the corpse away. He has a right to your body. As I mentioned in a previous post, there is an exception when the fetus does not yet have a brain, because then, the person that will inhabit it does not exist yet. But this is for the most part a pro-life position, as it allows only this single exception.