Philosophy quiz section discussions have been quite thought-provoking lately, so I thought I'd share some. The current topic is abortion. But don't worry, I'm not going to slap down all my views on the subject here -- I just have two issues which were raised in discussion and that have somewhat widespread implications.

The first is responsibility. Generally, one of the justifications for abortion in the case of rape, even for pro-life advocates (though there's often no real *argument* for it, at least as I've heard) is the weight of responsibility. Meaning, the choice to engage in X with the (possible) result of Y confers responsibility for Y, while in cases where no choice was involved (or given the chance to be made), there can be no enforced responsibility for Y. This premise makes sense, especially for those who take a very strict view of responsibility -- such as, for example, believing that they have no obligation to donate to charities that help starving people whose conditions they say they had no hand in bringing about. (How much this actually is or isn't true can be ignored for the moment.)

Let's generalize for a bit here. Liberals are often knocked for not taking responsibility. Abortion, after all, is often called an easy way out. But ... let's look at it this way. A man is stabbed after getting into a fight -- one he is "responsible" for because, let's say, he walked through a street which he knew was notorious for violence. He falls down next to you. You, being a doctor, know how to save him. But you have no idea if he can pay you, if he can legitimately request your services in a fair exchange. Can we say, then, that you, having had no part in this man's stabbing, have absolutely no moral requirement to save his life? Of course you would be seen as indecent if you didn't; but there would be no reason to call your actions, or lack thereof, immoral.

Conversely, since this man "chose" to engage in an action which was very likely to produce just this result, should he "accept the consequences" and bleed to death? Or, to draw this a bit closer to the abortion argument, should he be forced to endure the severe discomfort of the wound? Assume we know that it won't kill him and that it will heal fully in, oh, say, nine months.

Yeah, there are holes in the example. In the case of feeding starving people, you are not the only one who can save them; you might be able to assume that there is some altruist who will step up, while it's unlikely there's another doctor on the street. Also, killing a fetus is not the same as healing a knife wound. But -- this is just to say why I don't think responsibility and choice should be the determining factors in everything. And why it's hardly the sole domain of liberals to shirk responsibility ... it's just a case of different evaluations of how much responsibility there is, and how much that matters.

Also, I don't think the responsibility argument stands as a justification for a pro-life advocate to allow for abortions in the case of rape -- at least, assuming the reason behind that person's position is that the fetus is a person with full-fledged rights. The simple fact is that it switches the objection against abortion from "right to life" to "responsibility" and back again. If it's always the case of responsibility, then anyone who was raped or whose birth control failed can get one, while someone who willingly had intercourse but whose life is threatened by the baby cannot. Additionally, this reduces the fetus to a mere consequence, and, according to the rhetoric of some, a punishment.

Of course, people don't have to embrace one guiding moral exclusively. There can be a reasonable blend of responsibility and preservation of right-to-life used for this issue ... As I can't come up with a consistent system myself, if anyone does have one, I would like to hear/read it.

One last remark about the characterization of abortion as nothing more than a resort for the irresponsible, and then I'll shut up: think people who have abortions are the only ones who kill for the sake of convenience? Because we do it all the damn time. Why do I eat meat, instead of getting all my nutrients from plants? Okay, so we're talking about humans? Then why do I go feed my anime habit instead of donating to charities? Why do musicians spend a million bucks on a music video instead of donating *that* to charities? Why do I not go out of my way to deliver food to every starving person in the city? It would help a lot of people -- it would save lives, in fact. And none of this would kill me, or even make me destitute. Simply put, it would merely be inconvenient. And that seems rather flimsy in the light of a woman barely makes ends meet with two jobs, and who has an abortion in order to keep working and earn enough to live on.

(Of course, one could take the stance that the latter is a case of actively killing a person -- if you do indeed view a fetus as such -- and the former is merely passively letting a person die. Can't go around saving everyone's life, after all. But I could also "let" a person die if they're choking to death ten feet away from me. Pretty fine line, and hardly wide enough to be ridden as a moral high horse, if you ask me.)

And then, of course, I'd say that a woman who knows she can neither carry the fetus nor raise the child and decides to have an abortion beats out someone who abandons her newborn or "mothers" the child by just making sure it keeps breathing. In both responsibility *and* respect for life. Perspective and circumstances do so much (there's wonderful gray areas to be swimming in, if you want to drive yourself crazy ^_~). My main gripe here was not this or that opinion, but just the unimpeachable, uncompromising, and/or unilateral approach some people take.

And now, I will shut up.