Quote:
Originally posted by bilmore
It's that whole compromise thing. He's hung up (I think) on the idea that, if one accepts the "it's a human" principle, you can still bargain its life against a woman's right to autonomy.
I don't think the two could ever be compatible. Even in the rape circumstance, I think a logical consistency mandates no exception.
If you can buy the idea that humanity starts sometime after conception and nearer birth, you can make this bargain. But, if not, it's a pretty merciless moral position.
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I understand that's what you think, but that's not what he said. Without regard to the interests of the unborn fetus, he suggested that when a woman has sex -- setting aside rape and incest -- he discounts the burdens she experiences in connection with a resulting pregnancy. He's not talking about how to weigh the fetus's interests against the woman's interests -- he never reaches that question because he's pretty clear that the woman's interests don't count. He wants to know whether the fetus suffers pain, but he doesn't care whether the woman suffers pain. And so on.
I agree with you that it's hard to figure out how to reconcile the competing interests of the fetus and the woman. Club makes it easy, by excluding the latter from the calculation at all. Except in cases of rape and incest. That gets a separate equation in which the woman's interests count. (This is "intuitive," says club, and obviously doesn't reflect that the fetus's interests are different.)
