axiomata
Member
- Joined
- May 16, 2007
- Messages
- 3,581
Ohhh sweet, so by then thanks to medical and technological advancements fetuses could evicted from the womb and still viable at any stage... so there is no problem. Great!
The whole premise is comically inept. If you're assuming we're 400 years into the future living in biodomes... it's entirely accurate to suggest that by then fetuses could be aborted at any stage and still be viable. So there is literally no problem.
If you take the trajectory of current medical advancements and timeline which Block points out in the short clip; it'd be possible by then if not sooner. In 2007 fetuses were evicted at 23 weeks and survive! Five years on essentially, who knows what it is? In another 400!? lol...
It's almost like you've never seen an ethical thought experiment before. A biodome in 2400 is the stage, the ethical dilemma is timeless. It just simply does not matter what the age of viability is in the year 2400 since thought experiment isn't addressing abortion directly. You wasted four paragraphs on nothing. I could have said it took place 70 years ago in a steam punk biodome and your rant would not apply.
Finally, you start criticizing the actual meat of the analogy...
Against their will? Right, so kidnapping... it's taking someone who already exists. When sexual intercourse happens, there is no fetus, no-one exists yet. Life begins at conception, yes... you are NOT putting the fetus in a worse position; you are IPSO FACTO putting it in a BETTER POSITION. Analogy fail. And so we continue..
I wrestled with the machine creating a person ex nihilio but in the end I figured justice is not dependent on past condition. If you give (not lend) a shivering homeless man a jacket and then come back the next day and try and take it back is he justified in resisting? Even if by taking it back you are simply returning him to the state he was in before you gave him the jacket in the first place? I think he is.
To answer your inane question / lifeboat scenario - you evict them in the most gentlest means possible. In this case, they have a positive obligation - because they literally pushed someone overboard (engaged in a criminal act, kidnapping them). They're not at all justified in drowning them.
To give a more ACCURATE analogy: picture a cruise liner or your home - when an invited guest, for whatever reason, becomes uninvited and asked to leave, if they refuse - they then become a trespasser. Removing them in the gentlest manner is the evictionist position. On a boat, be it stowaway, or uninvited guest, that means waiting to the next port. Throwing them overboard right then and there would be the Pro-Choice position. Forcing the property owner to take the stowaway the entire trip (9 months), is the Pro-Life position. The eminently reasonable and common sense position is to remove them at the next port of call. COMMON SENSE FTW!
Your cruise analogy is fine, but it is not more accurate. First, a cruise ship passenger can voluntarily leave and survive. He can either jump overboard or get off at the next port of call (usually the next day). A zygote/embryo/fetus does not have that luxury. Neither does someone 10,000 leagues under the see in a biodome.
Second, if you would like your analogy to be more accurate the owner of the ship would also be the captain, and would be the person, along with a male accomplice, who forced the guest on board. (The guest didn't object but it was not his choice.) The captain would have also have invited the guest for the full length of the trip (unless eviction was required to save the life of the captain.)
Also, the next port of call is not a night of cruising away, nor simply the equivalent age of potential viability for a fetus since potentiality implies that there is still a significant risk of death. At the very least evictionism requires a very high probability of survival and the mother and father would share liability for the medical costs required in order to ensure survival.