twister111 said:
darth_ender said:
First I'll admit that I don't fully understand your scenarios, as I find your phrasing confusing.Here:
Scenario #1: Happy couple, drunk driving. Hit stranger. Stranger comatose after accident. Diagnosis finds virus. Cure heart transplant and blood donation(constant 9 months) from woman involved with drunk driving.
Scenario #2: Happy couple, genetic tests. Stranger part of genetic tests. Stranger falls ill and comatose. Good news thanks to testing their blood at the same time they find the cure as described in scenario #1.
Your initial scenario: Happy couple, drunk driving. Hit stranger. Stranger comatose after accident. Solution throw money at the doctors and they can make it better. Stranger would've been just fine had accident not occurred.
Your violinist alteration: Happy couple, drunk driving. Violinist hit. Violinist comatose after accident. Somehow you(ender) become one of the individuals involved in the drunk driving. Your blood is needed* to keep the voilinist alive. You agree to the situation.
*(To keep things clear I'm assuming that " If I am not only the only person who has the proper blood type to keep that violinist alive, and I am the reason he is in his predicament, then I am indeed obliged to devote my resources to his survival." the emphasized portion was a typo/error and you meant to convey that your blood actually was the only blood that could save the violinist.)
Thanks for the summaries and for catching my poor phrasing. I'd meant originally to say, If I am not only the only....but I am also the reason," but clearly forgot how I was originally writing my sentence by the time I got to that point. I edited it, but as "If I am the only...and I am the reason," as it's probably less likely to get confused that way by future readers. Thanks for pointing that out :)
darth_ender said:
But I also find your analogy over the top. Donating your heart and blood? Come on! Loaning your body for a finite time is far different than giving up organs indefinitely. My analogy is definitely closer to the real thing. And as consuming as pregnancy is (as I lie next to my pregnant wife, typing this, and not revealing the difficulties she has had lately), generally the difficulties are not nearly as bad as you convey in your analogy.
Well I was thinking of a way that the stranger would somehow need the woman specifically to survive as a fetus does. I also thought about how a fetus basically occupies an organ. So in a way simply donating blood isn't enough, nor is some temporary line through a person's kidney's sufficient. It'd have to be something more considering the uterus does expand and c-section is a possibility too. A lung may have been better up to this point but you'd have to include the possibility of her death too. So I went with the heart.
I see. It seems still over the top. Maybe to improve it, the organ loaned would not be so critical as the heart (which unlike the uterus [which is designed exclusively for pregnancy, btw, and therefore is fulfilling its design, while a heart transplant does not], is absolutely essential for human life to continue). Perhaps a kidney would be best. A person can live without it, but the potential for death from the surgery or future loss of the other kidney probably better matches the risk. And in a finite period of time, the person would get the kidney back.
I know, it seems like splitting hairs, but while we're on the topic of refining analogies, let's get them right ;)
darth_ender said:
Money issues were not my intent either, though I can see how one might interpret it that way. My intent was to simply draw in the fact that it is draining on the couple, but the drain does not justify the euthanasia. See my post with the statistics to see my view on the inconvenience of pregnancy, that it is not always about money, but that it is nearly always about convenience of some sort.
Well my main beef with your scenario is that it seemed to undermine the physical drain of pregnancy. Now that you've admitted that wasn't your intent, it's alright.
Now we could go on debating "what makes a person" but I don't really want to do that. Just gets nowhere and it conveniently never allows for the possibility of considering the sperm a person(or potential person as you see a fetus) too or to be treated the same as pro-lifers want a combined sperm and egg.
I can see the argument to be made for an embryo not being a child (though I don't agree), but I don't see the sperm comparison as valid. Left to its own devices, a sperm will never develop, never survive independently, never make it past a single cell, is not even genetically human as it is lacking half its chromosomes. Once fused with an ovum, suddenly it multiplies, has the potential to grow into a 100 year-old man or woman, as long as health or the influence of others don't hinder it. It requires life-saving reliance on another human for a time, but it is still genetically a unique human, growing, ultimately with the likelihood of survival on its own.
Remember that even post-birth children still require the physical, emotional, and monetary resources of their caregivers for survival. My children take a toll on my health and billfold. But I don't think I'd get away with aborting them at this point it their lives. As unique individuals of my creation, I am now responsible for their survival, regardless of the fact that I am less healthy than I would be if I didn't have them.