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From: egs@epsilon.UUCP (Ed Sheppard)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: Madelyn's question (actually Andrew's question)
Message-ID: <58@epsilon.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Apr-85 19:51:51 EST
Article-I.D.: epsilon.58
Posted: Tue Apr 23 19:51:51 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Apr-85 05:09:13 EST
References: <3624@alice.UUCP>
Organization: BELLCORE, Livingston, NJ
Lines: 38

Andrew:

> I was really trying to address the argument that Paul Dubuc and
> others have been advancing lately that goes something like this:
> 
> 	"A woman who has sex runs the risk of becoming
> 	pregnant.  Having an abortion is an attempt to
> 	evade the responsibility for taking that risk,
> 	and is therefore immoral."
> 
> I wanted to illustrate that that argument is bogus by applying the
> same argument to some other everyday risk.

Yes, you're quite right. That argument, as it stands, is bogus (kind
of nice we can agree about something :-).  The important question is
"how does one go about evading the responsibility" (i.e. what are the
implications of fixing things up)? In the auto accident case, there are
no externalities.  If you terminate a pregnancy, there are.

Suppose, however, that you are in an accident, and some vital organ
were destroyed. The doctors inform you that a transplant will work with
little risk to yourself, but there just aren't any donors. You could,
of course, force someone else to give you one, but that person would
then die. What do you do?

Suppose the organ wasn't vital, but lack of it would have a very negative
impact on your life. What then?

An even more interesting question (which I think has been asked
before): what if the organ were vital for you, but not for the other
person?

To sum up: yeah, we all take risks and make mistakes, but how far
should you be allowed to go in righting them?

					Just asking,
					Ed Sheppard
					Bellcore