Stephen Wan's Perception of Our Modern Age: An Era with More Than Adequate Means to Avoid Pregnancy under any Circumstances Whatsoever
(1) Nowadays, convenient access to obtain medications, preventive means and devices, contraceptives, condoms, before any act of sex intercourses, and even post-rape medications and drug formulations to avoid pregnancy immediately after the criminal case is reported, all imply that unwanted pregnancy actually are substantially reduced in civilized societies!
(2) (a)Therefore it seems that unwanted pregnancy becomes a problem, surprisingly indeed, and instead, to normal couples. There may be change in family's financial situations, change of mind simply because of change in the couple's relationship (no more love, say), or the unwanted pregnancy may be a problem outcome of casual sex intercourses between very young and immature yonths at puberty who are ignorant or who are afraid of reporting their problems to their parents early enough.
(b) Problems can be solved, never should reach a dead end, but death of the silent foetus will be a dead end. Should adults' problems be excuses for aborting foetuses to get rid of "lives in the wombs of mothers' inner bodies" so as to "solve the problems in the external irresponsible adults' world"?? We must not forget that all adults suffer in this world with never ending misfortune and problems of this and that everyday!
(c) Adults need love and have sex intercourses when they feel depressed with problems. When they have babies in wombs after sex, they are depressed again with the foetuses in the wombs as problems. They do not blame themselves for abusing freedom but instead they further abuse their freedom by demanding abortion to kill lives caused by their prior sex acts in relief. How can they justify love between adults should bring forth death to a third living entity, the foetus, their invitee to this world, after their making love?
The Judith Thomas’s Burglar Analogy
ReplyDelete“If the room is stuffy, and I therefore open a window to air it, and a burglar climbs in, it would be absurd to say, “Ah, now he can stay, she’s given him a right to the use of her house—for she is partially responsible for his presence there, having voluntarily done what enabled him to get in, in full knowledge that there are such things as burglars, and that burglars burgle.” It would be still more absurd to say this if I had had bars installed outside my windows, precisely to prevent burglars from getting in, and a burglar got in only because of a defect in the bars.”
“Again, suppose it were like this: people-seeds drift about in the air like pollen, and if you open your windows, one may drift in and take root in your carpets or upholstery. You don’t want children, so you fix up your windows with fine mesh screens, the very best you can buy. As can happen, however, and on very, very rare occasions does happen, one of the screens is defective; and a seed drifts in and takes root. Does the person-plant who now develops have a right to the use of your house? Surely not—despite the fact that you voluntarily open your windows, you knowingly kept carpets and upholstered furniture, and you knew that screens were sometimes defective. Someone may argue that you are responsible for its rooting, that it does have a right to your house, because after all you could have lived out your life with bare floors and furniture, or with sealed windows and doors. But this won’t do—for by the same token anyone can avoid a pregnancy due to rape by having a hysterectomy, or anyway by never leaving home without a army.”
The Burglar analogy pointing out the parents should not have responsibility for their own children to those “violinists”, “burglars”, or “person-plants”. Does the parents haven’t any responsibility or duty to their children even they have already taken precaution to avoid pregnancy? Since the World haven’t prefect contraception methods, or even those men and women think that coitus interruptus (體外排精) be avoiding pregnancy. It does not mean that they do not have any responsible for the foreseen results of actions. Abortion seems not a reason for relieving their responsibility.
Reply from SWAN=Stephen Wan:-
Delete(1) Thomson always takes a foetus as if it were an alien to the pregnant mother. An alien (monster, trespasser, external stranger, burglar, irritating pollen, etc.) WITHOUT any connection with the pregnant woman and the woman's sex partner (husband or spouse, or even temporary boyfriend).
(2) Thomson NEVER mentions or touches on subjects like genetic and heriditary connection between the foetus and the pregnant woman and her spouse (father of the foetus), blood tie connection, meaning of love and sex acts in life bewteen sex partners and their implications. She simply ignores that the foetus does have a mother and a father! The foetus does not come up into existence out of explosion of a rock (as commonly joked in traditional Chinese families)!
(3) On the one hand Thomson never takes the foetus (without self-consciousness) as a person, on the other she takes it like a burglar (with self-consciousness) as a person. She is self-contradictory!
(4)As Louis P. Pojman discussed in his book, Life and Death, people should be aware that their engaging in sex acts always imply their awareness of unavoidable risk of resulting in pregnancy no matter how much cautious measures they might have taken, JUST THE SAME as gamblers engaging in risky gambling games knowing well before playing the gambling games that they must bear the responsibility of honouring payment in losing the games and cannot say "no" to their loss of the bets!
Killing a fetus of course is a denial of the sex partners' implied responsibility and definitely a denial of meaning of life!
(5)Rape cases immediately reported by the victims will be followed by emergent "knocking-out" of any embedded zygote in the uterous. Thomson's exaggerated joke of girls going out with armies for protection if no abortion is allowed is itself a nasty joke without any meaningfulness!
Cars are vehicles that you normally should have control over. Imagine that car is becoming fully automatic control by artifactual intelligence technique or computer. You are the owner and driver of this car, and it hit a truck. I think that you still have some kinds of responsibility for this accident. Based on this thought experiment, I think that Judith Thomson’s Burglar Analogy is not strong enough to convincing me to accept abortion.
ReplyDeleteReply from SWAN = Stephen Wan:
Delete(1) The fact that you are NOT convinced means Thomson cannot be a successful defence lawyer against non-acceptance of abortion. We are both in line on her opposition side.
(2) Furthermore, even if Thomson might win her cases with some kind of abortions for some pregnant women, it NEVER should imply that the whole world should follow such cases and permanently let go of their valued norms and standards in regarding a life soon after fertilization of a zygote.
In general, people make love but they do not mean to create a baby.
ReplyDeleteFew people make love just in order to "為國家育英才，為祖先留後代"
There are other activities may risk others' life, like pilot of vehicles as Patrick suggested. As we had learn from previous lesson, there is different between fetus and a life, so i think abortion may be regarded as last resort before "killing" of a life
Reply from SWAN = Stephen Wan
DeleteThanks, Anthony. Let me clarify my view:
(1) Before this world can separate pregnancy as an outcome of sex intercourse (with contraceptives and condoms, etc.), people are more serious about sex. They talk about love first and then they make love with sex intercourse.
(2) Nowadays, many are not so serious about sex anymore. Casual sex acts, one night stand, extra marital affairs, sex with prostitutes, etc. never mean serious responsible love anymore. People need not talk about love first before they make love.
They think they already can separate love and sex, otherwise they are not IN enough, otherwise they become OUT-la! Therefore when they are involved in sex acts, in sex intercourse, they should be regarded as "playing sex" rather than "making love".
Without the true intention of "making love", only the true intention of enjoying sex as an entertainment by playing sex, then of course they never assume they should bear the duty with the responsibility of looking after the foetus growth as a baby.
To them pregnancy is a shame, a defeat, a loss of face due to negligence or bad luck!
With such "modern" casual life style and attitude, they virtually are asking the community to tolerate their "primitive freedom like Adam-Eve in Eden", and they are asking the medical professions to get rid of their foetuses (if any) same as the garden caretakers to pick up and clear away the used condoms left on sitting benches every early morning in Victoria Park! Isn't it disgusting? Isn't it unreasonable and ridiculous?
關於胚胎不算是生命一說，如果胚胎跟生命的確是不一樣的東西，請申明胚胎是什麼，而在堅持胚胎不是生命的同時，請詳述一下為什麼數月之後非生命體又會奇蹟地演變成生命呢？有什麼理由或邏輯可以解釋這現象？否則胚胎不是生日也只屬片面的看法。
ReplyDeleteTrue, that's why I cannot understand why some pro-abortionists can take a foetus as similar to, if not totally equal to, just a thing, and can be cleared away freely from the womb.
ReplyDelete