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Notes -
Maybe for unprotected sex.
I don’t think we apply such a black and white understanding of causality to every risky activity. Is there some point at which you’d say “yeah, neither he nor she could have reasonably expected a pregnancy?”
The reverse came up last time we discussed miscarriage. A surprising amount of fertilizations don’t result in a viable pregnancy.
Most risky activities don't potentially create and subsequently harm a third party. I'm open to better comparisons here but off the top of my head, pregnancy is unique in terms of causality.
Like... if two people go rock climbing, use their equipment poorly, and risk injury, it's quite unlikely that they fall and crush a third person that was just walking around the base of the cliff. Or whatever.
Most risky activities that injure third parties, there is a lot of regulation! Smoking bans come to mind. Pollution. Hmm... Maybe vehicular accidents are a better comparator- harm comes from (generally) unintentional misuse, and there's relatively lower consequences compared to other forms of manslaughter.
Shooting into an occupied dwelling is illegal even if no person gets shot, so there are also other situations where causality and consequence are treated in quite a black and white manner. Bit of a stretch though.
This has also been my issue with abortion in general and especially arguments over whether the fetus is really an actual person. Ok, so let's say for the sake of the argument we truly can't tell if it's just a "clump of cells" or a human being. Fine. Isn't this a case where we should be more cautious, not less? It is quite similar to the scenario of a building that could be occupied. You shouldn't shoot into it unless you know for sure that no one is in there, and if you can't look for whatever reason, that has no relevance on whether it's morally harmful to shoot into it or not.
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As tempting as the strict liability standard is, I'd rather avoid the need to answer that question than set a threshold.
Imagine you're golfing, and your ball goes flying through someone's window. Are you responsible for that in the case where:
By that standard, any pregnancy short of the Virgin Mary's would be covered.
The more interesting question IMO is: Given that it happened due to your actions, what is the range of your acceptable responses? I think it does include abortion even in cases of recklessness, but you wouldn't be able to think about that in the sudden-surprise-baby framing.
Right. It splits into two questions: Can you act shocked? And is being shocked reason enough to allow an abortion?
I think the answer to the first question is yes in cases with most any precaution. I’d certainly expect it from your cases 2-4. As a consequence, I don’t think protected sex qualifies as “signing up for baby making.”
Same goes for @FtttG’s tumblr encounter. It would be quite reasonable to say “I signed up for golf, not wasp-induced vandalism!” Even if you’re still responsible for the damage, you shouldn’t be blamed.
For what it’s worth, I think I agree that abortion is justifiable even in the case of recklessness, but that you also can’t get there from violinist-type arguments. It’s the dismissal of “acting shocked” that bothered me.
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