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Notes -
Pregnancy is a risk of sex but it is not a 1:1 relationship.
So what if you didn't consent to getting pregnant? You are pregnant. -> "ok doc what are my options to get rid of this pregnancy"
So what if you didn't consent to lung cancer, you have lung cancer. -> "ok doc what are my options to get rid of lung cancer"
For reference, I voted in favour of legalising abortion in Ireland. This is one of those "there's nothing I hate more than bad arguments for views I hold dear" situations.
Regardless of whether one believes a fetus is "alive" – unlike a tumour in one's lungs, it has the potential to develop into a sentient human being. Removing a malignant tumour presents no moral quandaries even if the presence of the tumour is the direct result of actions you freely undertook. You can't escape the moral quandary associated with abortion just by saying you never consented to getting pregnant.
Maybe lung cancer is a bad example. Supposing Alice has a lot to drink and knowingly gets in the driver's seat of her car, fully cognisant of the fact that she's too inebriated to drive safely. Predictably, they have an accident in which a pedestrian, Bob, is killed. Upon their arrest, Alice defends herself by claiming that, while she did drive drunk of her own volition, she never consented to hitting Bob with her car, so she can't be held responsible for it.
No one would be persuaded by this reasoning: the entire reason drink-driving is illegal is because it makes motor accidents vastly more likely. Choosing to drive drunk entails choosing the likely consequences of driving drunk. Choosing to have unprotected sex entails choosing the likely consequences of unprotected sex. As a society we might still determine that abortion should be legal, but the idea that we can just dissolve the ethical dilemma by announcing "I never consented to getting pregnant, so you have to let me do whatever I want" strikes me as exactly insane as letting Alice off the hook because she never consented to hitting Bob with her car.
I think this analogy smuggles in a bunch of separate elements that actually break is usefulness as an abortion comparison.
A better analogy would be something were you voluntarily did something that carried a known risk of creating a needy dependent condition and in that analogy whether you had a duty sustain it's life. I think that is why organ donation is common analogy. We usually do not infer from “you knowingly took a risk” to “you must surrender bodily autonomy for months to sustain another life.” Even if I cause someone to need my kidney, the law generally does not force me to donate my kidney.
And to be clear consent to sex is not identical to consent to gestation.
Regardless I think my general argument here is: Taking a known risk does not automatically create an unlimited duty to endure every consequence of that risk.
I think, once again, you're interpreting me as making an anti-abortion argument when I'm really not. I'm not saying that every woman who gets pregnant should be forced to carry to term. I'm simply saying that it's dumb and facile to argue "I may have consented to sex, but I never consented to pregnancy" as some kind of automatic get-out-of-jail-free card. If Y is a likely and foreseeable consequence of X, and you know that Y is a foreseeable consequence of X (i.e. you are informed when you make your decision), then voluntarily consenting to X entails voluntary consent to Y. Abortion is the only case I'm aware of in which people claim otherwise. I would genuinely love to see a second example of a situation in which consenting to X is not taken to consenting to Y where Y is a likely, foreseeable consequence of X. Actually, even "foreseeable consequence" is underselling the point I'm making: pregnancy is the purpose of heterosexual sex! It's like claiming you consented to aiming and pulling the trigger, but never consented to firing the gun.
If pro-abortion activists argued "when I had sex, I implicitly consented to getting pregnant, but I didn't fully appreciate the gravity of that decision until after I actually got pregnant, and now I've changed my mind", I would find that line of reasoning perfectly coherent. When they argue "I consented to unprotected sex but never consented to pregnancy, therefore abortion should be legal", this just strikes me as a complete non sequitur.
Hmmm I got that you are pro-abortion but I think I disagree on the perceived weakness of the risk/responsibility argument.
If Y is a possible and foreseeable consequence of X, and you know that Y is a potential risk of X (i.e. you are informed when you make your decision), then voluntarily consenting to X does not entail voluntary consent to Y or require a duty to endure Y without mitigation.
I'd say that abortion is the only case where people have a special pleading that this is not the case. I think there a great many arguments where people would get significantly up in arms at the insinuation that by doing X you need to endure all the consequences of Y even if Y is a very known and common risk associated with X.
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