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A full response to the 'Mandatory Organ Donation Fallacy.'
I was abducted & you were banging patchouli: What do they mean by ‘life begins at conception’?
Bangingpatchouli -
People who say this aren’t talking about ‘life’ in a literal biological way. They are referring to a religious idea that at the moment an egg is fertilized, it becomes ensouled.
This is an important distinction because that is really the sticking point for them, but they frame their assertion as though they are talking about a biological event, which makes it difficult to argue. Furthermore, even if we agree that the cells that make up a zygote or even an embryo are alive, that doesn’t make it a separate, independent life. It isn’t. If it were it could survive outside the uterus.
If we are just arguing about the value of life in the sense living tissue — that’s a whole different thing from an ensouled being. If I had to choose between my dog and a zygote, there would be no contest. I’d choose my dog. Some people will be outraged by that (apparently they think that human cells have more intrinsic value than dog cells, or cow cells, or what have you), but I value the actual life of an animal over the potential life of a few human cells.
More importantly, I value the actual life of a woman — and her family — over a potential life, but as long as we allow the “pro-life” faction to frame this issue, we are playing by their rules, and will always be on the defense. We need to take back this issue and frame it in a way that shows their duplicitous language.
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Nikosnature -
Actually, when people say ‘life begins at conception’ they are saying ‘Human life begins at conception.’ And this is true. There is no human in an egg, nor in a sperm. They are both gametes, having only half the number of DNA, and do not have the possibility of separately growing into an adult member of the species. Together, they form a fertilized egg which is a member of the human species, and if allowed to grow, will become an adult member of the species.
Just because it can’t survive on its own until it is born, doesn’t mean it is not fully alive, fully human, and fully person. There are many people who are physically and socially dependent on other people and things, yet we don’t diminish their personhood because of that. Your bigotry towards the unborn is unfounded.
Since people are equal under the law, and we believe all people are created equal as an integral precept of a free and just society, it flies in the face of justice to claim a born human being is worth more than an unborn one.
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Moochiethinks -
The idea, expressed by bangingpatchouli, of “a potential life” is insulting to me. It’s an untenable point that any embryologist would refute with ease. And, frankly, it pisses me off. News flash: We all started that way; we were all a zygote, an embryo, a fetus, a human baby in development.
What was the difference between that so-called “potential” human life bangingpatchouli thinks is not worthy of ascribing value to (as she does to a pregnant woman & her family) & us when we were at that stage of development?
Answer: Nothing. Nothing at all. According to this irrational thinking, we all were unworthy of being called human, unworthy of personhood at one point.
And, that, my friends, is how you diminish & dehumanize the weakest among us.
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Bangingpatchouli -
And this my friends is how you diminish and dehumanize the worth of a woman. This is how you argue that she is nothing more than an incubator — that a clump of living, all be it human cells, has the same worth as an independent human being with a life of her own, with perhaps dependent children to raise.
That anyone can argue that a fertilized egg has the same value and rights as they do is irrational and beyond my imagining.
If it’s true that all human life is that valuable then why isn’t organ donation mandatory? Why isn’t everyone on the donor list? And why aren’t they required by law to donate a kidney or part of their liver to save another person’s life? Why do “pro-life” folks only apply their right to life values to women and embryos?
BTW, don’t give me ‘the weakest among us’ defense when you speak for an organization that has not only systematically turned a blind eye to the sexual abuse of children, but has sheltered the perpetrators and allowed continued abuse. Your church does not have the moral high ground here
We are not dehumanizing the woman, we are recognizing the humanity of the fetus. This is not the zero-sum game you believe it to be. Stop with your false dichotomy.
You’re only real argument that doesn’t rely on ad hominem attacks or false dichotomies is the ‘Mandatory Organ Donation Fallacy’ which I have talked about it before.
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The ‘Mandated Organ Donation Fallacy’ is perhaps the second most widely used argument in the prochoice movement after ‘A fetus is not a person.’ While there are many different manifestations in which this argument surfaces, the unifying factor is that an innocent person is forced to undergo transplant surgery to give an organ to a recipient who needs it. They claim this is similar to what a ‘forced pregnancy,’ would be like if abortion were made illegal. This is what a typical ‘Mandatory Organ Donation Fallacy’ looks like:
“A man in the hospital experiences kidney failure, and needs a kidney transplant right away or he will die. You are in the same hospital getting a routine health check-up. During the check-up they find that you are a perfect match for the man who needs a kidney. Would it be right for the doctors to take a kidney from you, and give it to the man who needs a kidney, without your consent?
The argument is that the man forced to give up his kidney for the dying man would occupy a position analogous to a woman who is forced to give up her uterus for the child she doesn’t want, should abortion be made illegal. Making abortion illegal, pro-choice advocates claim, has the same moral problems with mandating forced organ donation. This comparison runs into three major problems: there is an unequal comparison between losing an organ permanently and losing one temporarily; the organ donor had nothing to do with the reason why the recipient needed a kidney, presumably, the woman had some part in causing the pregnancy; (except in cases of rape, later discussed,) finally, and most importantly, there is a difference between forcing someone to save someone’s life, and preventing someone from killing another person.
When one donates an organ, it is typically on a permanent basis. Though I’m sure that there has been at least one example in the history of medicine where an organ was removed put into another person and then given back again, the normal organ donations are not loaners. Contrast this to pregnancy, which only lasts 9 to 10 months, and you see that there is a disproportion between the demands of the conditions. If the fetus were to use the mother’s body permanently, then the cause for abortion would be made that much stronger, if it were not for all the other objections to be made to abortion. However, it is not the case that pregnancy is a permanent condition, but rather it is a temporary one, and in modern, civilized society, we can expect one to make a temporary sacrifice, especially if the alternative would be killing another human being.
Despite the quite thorough propaganda of the prochoice movement, most educated people, and even most uneducated people recognize that pregnancies do not just happen. (Religion and Immaculate Conceptions aside.) Rather, they require actions of some kind, which tend to be of a rather sexual nature, to which the woman either consents, or does not consent. If she does consent, we see the first difference between her, and the organ donor. The woman in a sense caused the situation in which her uterus was needed, thus she cannot claim moral indifference to the situation. She consented to an act, which had the potential to create a child, and thus gave implied consent to taking care of that child. The organ donor has nothing to do with why the man with kidney failure needs his kidney. The mother, (and the father, by the way,) by consenting to having sex, assumed responsibility for any child created through that sex, and therefore, has a responsibility towards the child, that the organ donor does not have to the organ recipient. Now some people would assert that there is no reason to believe women who consent to sex also consent to pregnancy. They’ll argue, “Consent to driving is not consent to getting into an accident.” This argument is supposed to suggest that one can consent to a ‘cause’ without consenting to an ‘effect.’ I can see the possible strengths in this argument. If the relationship between driving and crashing, and sex can be shown to be morally equivalent, then I would agree that it would be wrong to say a person consents to pregnancy when they consent to sex. However, the two are not equal, and the reason for this is evolutionary.
If one wishes to take the evolutionary view, sex was designed for one thing, procreation. Yes, it was made to unify husband and wife, (at least I believe so,) and it was made to be enjoyable, but all this was to facilitate reproduction. Organisms with a desire for sex tended to have sex more than organisms without a desire for sex, and thus they reproduced more often and their offspring, who carried the trait of deriving joy from sex began making up the overwhelming majority of the species. So all other aspects of the sexual act were designed to fulfill the procreative. From this, we can ascertain that the purpose of the sexual act is inherently procreative. Therefore, it is not just a matter of conception of a child being an effect of intercourse, but rather conception of a child being the intended effect of intercourse. This biological intention creates a unity between the act and the effect. Procreation is not just an effect of intercourse but also the intended effect. It is the goal of the act! Procreation happens when sex works. This is inherently different from choosing to drive and getting in an accident. When you get into an accident it is not fulfilling an auto-vehicular imperative in the same way that procreation is fulfilling the sexual imperative. For that reason, procreation is not just a result of sexual intercourse, but also the intended biological goal of sexual intercourse, thus when one consents to sexual intercourse they consent to procreation through implication or by implied consent. Thus, when a woman consents to sex, she does consent to pregnancy. Thus, the ‘mandated organ donation fallacy’ fails because it is not a fair analogy between the woman ‘forced’ to continue her pregnancy, and the forced organ donor because the woman consents to pregnancy and the organ donor does not.
Now, some will notice that the implied consent of the woman relies on the fact that she did consent to having sex. This is not the case for all pregnancies ended by abortions. In fact, 1% of pregnancies aborted are because of the cause of rape. It is important to note that anyone justifying abortion by throwing out the extreme case of rape, only stands to justify 1% of abortions. Thus, the pro choice advocate standing on cases of rape in this manner concedes 99% of abortions as immoral, in order to justify 1% of abortions. However, even in circumstances where a woman does not consent, abortion is still not justified by the ‘mandated organ donation fallacy.’ Abortion is still not justified by comparing ‘forced pregnancy’ to forced organ donation because of a fundamental moral difference between choosing not to kill someone through abortion and saving someone’s life through organ donation and there is a fundamental difference between killing someone through abortion and choosing not to save them by organ donation.
It would of course be immoral, to force someone else to give up an organ to save someone’s life. It would be an incredibly morally virtuous act for someone to volunteer to give up one of his or her own organs, but to force someone else to do it, would be morally wrong. The reason is that would be forcing someone to make a sacrifice they do not want to make, and while it is for the good of saving someone’s life, (in fact, some might argue, for the greater good,) you cannot force someone to make a serious sacrifice like an organ donation. It should be a free choice made by the donor and if the donor chooses not to donate, even if that means the other person would die, we should respect the donor’s bodily autonomy. Many would argue that this can be compared to pregnancy, and if a mother does not want to carry her child any more, she should have the right to abort it. This is not a fair comparison because the mother would be actually killing the person in an abortion, not merely letting it die which would be the case in refusing to donate an organ. It is a subtle distinction, but one that changes the morality of the situation distinctly. A mother isn’t just refusing to care for someone when she aborts- she is actually killing someone. This can be compared to a situation on a beach. There is a big difference between choosing not to swim out to shore to save someone’s life, and thus letting them drown, verses holding their head underwater yourself. Abortion is killing someone in the same way as holding someone’s head underwater while refusing organ donation is more like choosing not to save a drowning person. Thus, it is unfair to compare ‘forced organ donations’ and ‘forced pregnancies.’
The ‘Mandated Organ Donation Fallacy’ is one of the most commonly used arguments by pro-choice advocates. Yet, it fails to take into account the fundamental differences between the two scenarios. It is an analogy that fails under inspection, and for all the reasons enumerated above, the ‘Mandated Organ Donation Fallacy’ cannot be used to justify abortion.
