re: #130 alexknyc

Violinist argument?

” You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.”

The paper goes onto argue that obviously it wouldn’t be illegal for you to unplug yourself from the violinist and let him die….

It then argues that all pregnancy can be seen in these terms and that having sex does not imply giving consent to carry a child to term, only consenting to carry a child to term (not getting an abortion) can do that.

Thus if we were to argue that abortion is wrong, we’d be arguing that people’s private organs aren’t actually private… and if you can be forced to allow another being to use them without your approval then that opens up a great many options of an invasive government action….