File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9801, message 483


Date: Sat, 24 Jan 98 10:46:23 EST
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Britain's abortion row







		To whom....,



	
	I find that it is best, when parsing up an ethical question, to
separate out the negative and positive obligations that pertain.  A
negative obligation I understand to be that harm one must not do before
one does the good demanded by a positive obligation.  In a just ethical
order, negative obligations must be fulfilled before positive obligations
- to avoid oppression.  Rights express those negative obligations the
society has towards a member of it.


	One might ask whether we have to parse up the question of abortion
rights.  I would say that we do, especially if we then intend to recombine
the separate issues.  To start with, there is no such thing as the right
to abortion.  I, being a man, have no right to abortion.  The society in
general, as represented by the state, (despite what the Chinese may think)
has no right to abortion.  The right to abortion is a complex of rights
enjoyed by a pregnant woman.  Those rights are in the context of many
positive and negative obligations among society (persons and the state),
the woman (as individual, pregnant, and as sex partner), her lover, and
even the fetus.



Does Society have a positive obligation to protect a fetus? :  Yes.  If we
have an obligation to prevent cruelty to animals, we have an obligation to
protect a human fetus from deliberate destruction.  We ban thalidomide,
not because it harms adult women, but because it harms fetuses.  This is
the product of simple compassion.  Practically, however, we must recognize
that attempts to benefit the fetus not only affect the woman - for all
practical purposes woman and fetus are two souls in the same body.  We
cannot, therefore, abridge any negative obligation to interfere with
the woman in an effort to help the fetus. 


Does a woman have a positive obligation to protect the fetus? : Yes, by
the same reasoning although she, as sole possessor of her body, has the
privilege to benefit the fetus to her detriment if she wishes and to
confer that privilege to others in a medical context.  


Does a sexual couple have a positive obligation towards a fetus? : Yes,
they should take care not to put a fetus into harm's way.  


Does society have a negative obligation to harm a fetus? :  Yes, it is
not our place to harm anything human, even if it is not sentient, unless
we are fulfilling a greater human obligation. 


Does a woman have a negative obligation to harm a fetus? : Yes, but this
cannot be presumed.  A woman is the sole legitimate possessor of her body
and she has primacy in determining its course.  Because whatever she does
with her body affects the fetus, her actions must be somehow separated
into those which are independent of her relationship with the fetus and
those which are not.  While this is a difficult question, I will define
those actions of a pregnant woman informed by her negative obligation
towards the fetus to be: those actions that through negligence,
indifference or ill intent towards the fetus might harm it.


Does a couple having sex have a negative obligation towards fetus? :  The
relationship between having sex and harming a fetus is distant enough in
causality and likelihood that it really amounts to a strengthened positive
obligation. However, they do have a negative obligation to treat the
possibility of an aborted or harmed fetus with negligence, indifference or
ill intent. 


Does society have a positive obligation towards a pregnant woman? :  Yes,
and more so.  Since a pregnant woman and her fetus are not separable in
terms of most actions, the positive obligation towards a woman is
increased by the presence of the fetal passenger.  Also, because a
pregnant woman is more vulnerable to pain and poverty, our obligation is
increased.


Does a fetus have a positive obligation towards a a woman? :  No, it is
impossible and therefore moot.


Does a man have a positive obligation to his sex partner? : Of course, and
more so because he knows that the possibility of her getting pregnant wil
increase his responsibility. 


Does society have a negative obligation towards a pregnant woman? :  Yes,
All the negative obligations that society has towards a woman : not to
restrain her behavior, harm her in any way, or invade her privacy clearly
pertain.  These obligations can only be abridged after legal process (a
time when a society, understanding there may be a real and imminent danger
of a citizen's infringing the rights of others - ignoring his negative
obligations - demands time for deliberation) or unless she poses an
immediate, wrongful threat to another.


Does a woman have a negative obligation towards herself? : Yes and very
important.  A person has a *presumed* right and intent not to harm herself
or be exposed to harm.  It is a negative obligation, not because she is
not free to harm herself, but because an ethical order assumes that the
participants are looking for freedom from the threat of harm.  This is the
reason for the primacy of negative obligations.  People participate in an
ethical order so that they will not be harmed and, with that assurance in
place, may maximize the compassion with which they act.  Essentially, the
negative obligation a person has towards himself is not to enter the
ethical order with the intent of upsetting it through self-destructive
behavior.


Does a fetus have a negative obligation towards a woman? :  Strange to
hear, but the answer must be "Yes".  All that can do harm to a human being
has a negative obligation, in a human system of ethics, not to do that
harm.  This sounds odd, but practically it means that one can shoot a
tiger about to eat another human being even though that tiger doesn't know
any better.  In human ethics, the tiger has the responsibility not to eat
a human. That responsibility is more important than our positive
responsibility to the tiger (compassion) or our negative responsibility
not to kill the tiger.  First, the tiger is not fully sentient or human,
thereby reducing all negative obligations towards him below those towards
sentient humans.  Second, and most important, the tiger is acting.  This
does not imply volition on the tiger's part or blame.  It only means that
the tiger is the thing prompting the moral decision.


	If a person was falling from a tree, thereby threatening to kill a
baby, one could rightfully knock him away even if the tree was on the edge
of a cliff and he then fell to his death.  The fact that he had no intent
to land on the baby is immaterial.  That is because the thing acting first
must have its responsibility judged first - that which causes the moral
decision should be acted upon. The reason that this last example is
confusing is that we always have a strong positive obligation to save the
life of another human being.  Take the case of a pregnant woman brought in
from a car wreck.  The doctor sees her losing blood and miscarrying.  He
decides to abort the fetus because the blood loss from delivery will kill
the woman.  In this case the fetus is "falling out of the tree" and about
to kill the woman.  Then the woman goes brain dead or awakes, moments
before her imminent demise, and demands that the baby be saved.  Now her
imminent death is falling out of the tree about to squash the fetus, so
the doctor fights to deliver the same fetus he would have aborted minutes
before. 


	Society has a positive obligation to save the woman's life.  The
woman has a PRESUMED RIGHT AND INTENT to save her own life and protect her
body.  That's why the doctor operates to save her first.  Not only that,
but a doctor has a positive obligation to help her that is so strong, it
borders on a negative obligation not to help her.  A doctor can abort a
fetus morally and must if a woman indicates the fetus is unwanted. His
obligation stems from the fact that he knows that the fetus is doing her
harm (it will certainly result in injuries of childbirth, for starters) 
and he presumes her right and intent to defend herself from harm.  He has
chosen to be the agent by which people defend themselves from the harm
that nature causes.


	We say the fetus is harming her because, as with the tiger and the
falling person, it is not a question of volition or blame, only action
that prompts the decision.  Even if that action is intrinsic to the being
or nature of that fetus, it makes no difference.  That simply means that
the action and the being are not ethically separable.  (They are not
practically separable either.  Even in cases that are not extreme, helping
the fetus to be born will certainly harm the woman.  They are one in the
same act.)



Does a man have a negative obligation to his sex partner? : Yes, getting
her pregnant is implicitly harmful to her, because the fetus cannot help
but harm her.  



Does a woman have a negative obligation to herself vis-a-vis pregnancy
specifically? : Yes, she must not get herself pregnant for the purpose of
hurting herself or be negligent of or indifferent to that possibility. 



Does society have a negative obligation towards a sexual couple? : Yes, it
cannot restrain their behavior because they have no clear negative
obligation to anyone else, including a possible fetus.  The state would
have to prove, after the fact, that a couple acted with a specific intent
both to produce the fetus and to destroy it before any sanction could even
be considered. 



Does society have a negative obligation towards a woman having an
abortion? :  The ultimate answer to the $64,000 question is "Yes". 


	Society has a clear negative obligation towards interfering with
or punishing a woman who is exercising her rights to self-defense and
self-determination through abortion.  It also cannot invade her privacy,
and must assume her to be acting within her rights.  Society *may* decide
that its positive obligation to save the woman from the harming fetus is
trumped by its negative obligation not to kill the fetus.  It makes no
difference.  If she then finds the help of a person who takes that
positive obligation more seriously or even sees for himself a negative
obligation *not* to help her (a doctor), society must acknowledge her
presumed right and intent to protect herself.  It must also acknowledge
the fact that the fetus is the actor causing the moral decision to come
about. In addition, the fetus is something less than sentient, for some
part of the pregnancy, further diminishing the status of obligations to
it. Furthermore, because (practically and for society) the fetus and the
woman are two souls inhabiting the same body, serving the negative
obligation not to harm the fetus is abrogating the negative obligation not
to harm the woman. The fetus is by its very existence part of the woman
and harmful to her. (This last conclusion makes it seem as though the
decision is a medical he one. Yet the fetus is not a tumor, because we
have no responsibility to a tumor, either negative or positive.) 



Can society act to enforce the woman's negative obligation not to harm the
fetus? :  Because of the primacy of a woman's authority over her own body;
because an ethical order relies on a presumed right and intent of the
individual to protect herself; because of the negative obligations society
towards interfering with a woman's self-defense, towards harming her,
towards invading her privacy, and towards restraining her; the answer is
"No."


	That remains, unless the society can make a contrary claim through
due process of law and case by case.  It must be case by case because of
the presumption of innocence, the presumption of a right to self-defense,
and the strictures on restraint prior to proof of a material danger to
rights - which flows out of the primacy of one's authority over one's own
person. In other words, the state must honor its initial negative
obligations toward the woman in the process of law.  To prove that the
woman had abrogated her negative obligation towards the fetus, the state
would have to prove that the woman acted with negligence, indifference, or
ill intent towards the fetus either throughout the process and/or
overwhelmingly so.  To assert that it can rightfully treat the woman and
the fetus as two individuals, the state would have to prove that the fetus
is viable, sentient and can be separated from the mother with such little
physical danger that the separation does not constitute an abrogation of
the obligation not to harm the woman.  Then it would have to bolster its
case by proving that a person or state has a strong positive obligation
towards the fetus that it can carry out responsibly.



	Only under these unusual circumstances would the state have a
claim that the aborting woman was abrogating her negative obligation
towards harming the fetus instead of simply defending herself.  At that
point, with proof of a strong, positive obligation towards the fetus, and
an ability to deal practically and morally with the fetus as a separate
individual, the state *might* be able to punish a woman for or restrain
her from having an abortion.  At that point the state would be balancing
its authority to take responsibility for an infant's life with its
authority to deliberately do physical harm to a citizen or punish her for
protecting herself from that harm.  That would be an unusual circumstance. 



	If we analyze the question morally we see that the "innocent" 
fetus is *doing harm* from the moment of conception.  The harm is the key. 
Politically it is vital that we assure women that this harm they endure
for the propagation of the species is freely undertaken and not another
example of patriarchy and injustice.  That kind of assurance only comes
from self-assurance. Women must come to feel that they are in control of
these kinds of decisions. That is why feminism is so important to Marxism:
Women, as an exploited class, have to engender a revolution against
patriarchy so that the *political* mode of production represents the whole
proletariat.






	peace






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