Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. Today, are continuing our discussion on abortion by taking a look at the argument for, from bodily autonomy, otherwise known as, famously known as the violinist argument. This is an argument that is levied against, the anti abortion camp. The argument is meant to show how abortion should be justified even though fetus is recognized as a human being. Why can we still kill it?

Well, that's what the violinist argument tries to answer. So let's dig in. So it's called the violinist argument because the analogy or the story goes like this. So imagine that there is a famous violinist and he is hooked up to you in the middle of the night while you're asleep for life support because they had to rush him in, he's in some sort of accident and he needs to be connected to another person for life support. And so they hook this famous violinist up to you and you wake up and you realize that he's hooked up.

And they say, You're going to have to keep him hooked up for nine months. And if you want to hook him, he will die. Now the people who come up with this argument will say, We all recognize that while it is a great good if you decide to keep that person hooked up to you for nine months and keep them alive, that you are under no obligation to do so because it's your body, your choice, and we can't just force people to use their bodies to support somebody else. We can't do it with organ harvesting, we can't do it with anything even though everybody's got two kidneys. Most people have two kidneys.

We can't just start harvesting kidneys from people and using people's bodies to keep other people alive. So while supporting the violinist would be altruistic, it is not legal. You don't legally have to do that, and morally, you don't have to do that. We recognize that unhooking the violinist would be morally neutral. So we'll go with that assumption because I think most people would agree with that, that that would be, you would be justified to have that person unhooked from you.

I think most people would agree. So we'll just, we'll assume that's true. This is a very powerful argument because it does at least three things. First of all, it makes the individual whose life is on the line here a person. Like, clearly they are a human person.

And it means that our general arguments against mainstream, the mainstream argument for abortion doesn't really hold because this brings in something new, the idea of bodily autonomy. It also makes the value of the individual very high, clearly high because, you know, if they're a famous violinist, they're a very important person. And then third, it's it latches onto our intuition and the the modern laws, which tell us that forcibly hooking up somebody and requiring them to stay hooked up isn't required to save another's life by the use of their body. I had to think about this one for a number of years because this this just bothered me. I really it was such a good argument and I I didn't really know how to respond well to it.

After after a number of years of thinking, and reading other people and and kind of hashing everything out, I think I've come to a number of conclusions that will help to sift through this and show why the violinist argument or the argument from bodily autonomy just doesn't hold up. You can I don't remember if I talked about this here or not, but you can find a good article by Greg Kochel on this? While it's interesting, I feel like it has maybe a few too many presuppositions that one would have from a Christian world view and I think there are some other routes that you can go which would bolster the case a little bit more. So I'll link that article here but I'll also expound on some of the same things as well as some different things. The first problem with the argument from bodily autonomy is that it fails to distinguish between responsibility and altruism or obligation and altruism.

So if your actions cause something, then dealing with that situation becomes responsibility, it's not altruism. I was discussing this before with someone and they said, tried to give me an analogy, they said that refusing an abortion was like telling someone that if they got in a car to drive, then whatever happened as a result was their responsibility and if they got in an accident and got hurt, we weren't going to give them first aid because you got in an accident, that's your fault. And that's how they viewed somebody who had an abortion or was in the position of having an abortion, saying, Well, you had sex, that was your fault, you knew what could happen, so we're not going to help you out by letting you have an abortion. You're going to have to deal with the consequences all on your own. But that's a really bad analogy for a couple reasons, but I think a more accurate analogy would be if you take on the responsibility to drive, then hit someone else and refuse to call 911, you hinder others from aiding the victim and you even kill the victim yourself, you kind of see, well, they might live but I don't want to have to deal with court fees and all this other stuff.

It's just better off if they die and don't have to worry about that. And you just slit their throat and finish them off, that's more like what abortion is because in abortion, while there is something, while the mother does sustain 'injuries', her body does have to deal with what pregnancy makes happen to her body. Yeah, but ultimately what we're saying in abortion is that because of the mother and father's actions, they are bringing a third party into this situation who who they are responsible for, for bringing into that situation and so by killing them, to resolve the problem, that's like if you get in a car accident and then you you don't want to be responsible for the person you hit, so you slit their throat and hide the body and the evidence and stuff. Like that that's that's more like what this is. You know, this isn't telling the mother that if you get in an accident, quote, an accident which is really, you know, if you get pregnant that we're not going to help you, it's saying that when you bring a third party into the equation, you're responsible for them and you can't just dispose of them in order to get yourself out of the situation.

So, we can all intuitively agree that we have bodily autonomy, whether somebody gets pregnant by choice or by accident, that brings another life into the equation. So abortion is not like choosing to unhook the violinist from you who was hooked up to you by by no choice or accident that that you got involved in yourself. There's you made no choices that led to that, you know, that violinist being hooked up to you. So abortion is instead of that altruistic act of leaving the violinist hooked up to you, it is refusing to take responsibility for a life that you brought into the equation. So let's change the violinist argument to make it a little bit more accurate of what goes on in abortion.

So, let's say that you're out partying and drinking, knowing what the effects of alcohol could be and knowing that as you drank more and more, those effects were coming on. You had a lot to drink and ended up hitting this famous violinist. And the only way that they could save the violinist was to hook them up to you and he needs to be hooked up to you for nine months to live. You know, we all might still agree that you have the prerogative to refuse using your body to treat the violinist, right? If you said, hey look, I know I hit the guy, I'm responsible for him but I am not having him hooked up to me for nine months, right?

Okay, that's your prerogative, you can still choose to use your body that way but we would then also acknowledge that when that violinist died because of your refusal to take on responsibility for your actions to that extent, that his blood would then be on your hands and the justice system would have an obligation to do something about your irresponsible actions which brought another life into the equation and then snuffed it out. And that's even not harsh enough because an abortion would be more like you killing the violinist outright. But nevertheless, in this situation, right, whereas if you hooked him up to you, there would still be okay, you'd have the inconvenience of him being hooked up to you. You'd have, you know, there'd probably be physical results of of him sucking some of the the blood and stuff out of you. Whatever whatever that all entailed, there would be certain consequences and you still might be in trouble with the the law for driving drunk and and his medical expenses and stuff.

But your jail time would probably be significantly less if that violinist lived than if he died. Right? Because now you're getting into manslaughter, third degree murder, whatever happens from drunk driving. Your consequences would be significantly increased and the legal system would increase the consequences for snuffing out a life. And that seems to me to be a more accurate portrayal of what's going on.

The violinist argument and the argument from bodily autonomy just fails to differentiate between altruism and responsibility or obligation. Now, it is important to note that this analogy does break down in situations of rape because in in a situation of rape, the individual does not get themselves into a situation that brings on the responsibility. Somebody else did that to them. I mean, in a rape, it is sort of like somebody else is going through the process to hook the violinist or the baby up to you without any fault of your own. So, the analogy would break down but rape situations are very small percentages of cases for abortion.

So, if you wanted to discuss rape situations in other ways, you could have that separate discussion. Just wanted to make that known here. Alright, second problem with the violinist argument. The intuition isn't really that intuitive. Okay, we recognize that we don't legally have full bodily autonomy, and in fact, most people think that we shouldn't.

This, this friend that I was talking to, who brought up the the analogy of the car accident, also made the statement that, corpses have more rights than than mothers. And if you're going to say that a mother can't have an abortion, then what you're saying is that a corpse has more rights than a mother has because a corpse can keep all of its organs. Like when I die, I can say, No, I don't want to donate my organs to anybody even though I don't need them, I'm going keep them all to myself and nobody's going get them. Whereas a mother who is pregnant, if we're going to say that abortion is not legal, then we're saying you must use your organs for the benefit of somebody else. We've already talked about the issue of responsibility versus altruism, but we'll also bring up another aspect here that comes into play and that is, it's intuitive that our bodies aren't our own, that we are responsible in different ways to use our bodies particularly.

So, the argument that a corpse has more rights than us, than mothers with babies, is true if abortion is illegal. But it's also true for me as a man. A corpse has more rights than I do in some ways because while a corpse can choose to donate organs, I can't. Well, could my kidney, but I can't choose right now to donate my heart because if I did, then that would be killing me. You see this in a couple movies, I forget the one, I think it has Denzel Washington in it and he tries to force a heart surgeon to take out his heart to give to his daughter or something.

And then there's the one with Will Smith called Seven Pounds where I think he was responsible for the death of somebody and he wanted to make it right, but he couldn't donate his organs. So he ended up killing himself so that his organs could be taken. But the point stands that a corpse has more rights than I do in the sense that they are able to donate their heart, their liver, their lungs, and I can't. I'm not allowed to do that. Then why does a corpse have more bodily autonomy than I do in that respect?

Because to take my heart or lungs or liver would be to do me irreparable harm, And that's something that we recognize that human life is more valuable than my bodily autonomy, at least in certain regards. We also, we can't use any drugs we want, we can't run around the neighborhood naked, we can't use another person sexually without their consent, right? There are all sorts of ways that we cannot use our body. Usually, when that infringes on other people's lives or use of their body, but in the case of donating organs, even only affecting myself. But we could extend this even further.

You know, if I'm a caretaker for my aging parents or my young children, I must use my body to go to work and make a living, to cook meals, to lift them into the bathtub and bathe them, to use my body to change diapers, etc. It doesn't matter if my back's hurt, it doesn't matter if I don't want to go to work. If I just say, alright, my aging parents or my kids, you know what, I'm not going to go to work or I'm going to go to work but I'm going to use all my money on myself. I'm going to leave you sitting in your poop and pee and I'm going to just just leave you sitting there. I'm not going to make you food.

I'm not going to lift you into the bath to give you a bath because my back hurts, my knees are bad. Right? I can't choose to not use my body for them. My body goes through wear and tear for them and I have to do that because if I don't, that's neglect by the law and the law will get me. Now, I can choose not to be a caretaker but the only way that I can do that is if I then pass that responsibility off to somebody else.

If I don't want to use my money for my kids and if I don't want to take care of them as they need to be taken care of as dependents, then I need to find somebody else to care for them or give them up to foster care for adoption. Right? Those are my options. I don't have to take care of them but I can't dispose of them and I can't choose to not figure out how their needs can be taken care of. I must use my body to avoid neglect and their deaths and then murder.

I must use my body until I find somebody that can take care of them. That's a transfer of responsibility, perfectly legitimate but refusal to take responsibility is not legitimate even if I argue from bodily autonomy. And the violinist argument just fails to recognize all of these instances, fails to recognize that corpses have more rights than I do In some ways, it fails to recognize that my bodily autonomy does not supersede the rights of others. When my bodily autonomy infringes on another's bodily autonomy, then that comes into play. And also that when I'm responsible for a situation like dependent children, that I must use my body until I am able to transfer responsibility.

And the violinist argument just doesn't take in any of those considerations. The third problem I have with the violinist argument is that it fails to differentiate between active and passive killing. So in the violinist example, you are passively allowing nature and the injuries of the violinist to take their course and to kill him. Now, Christians can discuss the morality of this and whether or not keeping the violinist hooked up would be altruistic or whether we do have a moral responsibility to an individual who's hooked up to us. But as far as our general understanding of altruism goes, most would agree that we aren't obligated to save everyone we can with all means at our disposal.

Abortion, however, is not passively allowing death but actively taking life. And it not only takes life, but in almost all cases, it indisputably takes a life in an unjustified manner. So a life that is innocent and not posing a threat to the mother. Now maybe in the future, if they would figure out ways to abort where they just severed the umbilical cord so that the life sustaining nutrients were not getting to the child. That would be more like the violinist example of removing the cord that hooks you up.

Nevertheless, I I mean, you still run into the the problems one and two that we talked about because even if it wouldn't even if it would be more passive killing, you still have problems. But nevertheless, abortions are almost all done or all done as far as I can tell with active killing. Dissolving kids with chemicals or dashing their brains with vacuum cleaners and vacuum suckers, whatever they're called. Alright. Fourth and final point for this episode here is that the violinist argument produces a lot of hypocrisy and inconsistency.

One thing that I like about the violinist argument, the reason that it was so hard for me to deal with was because the violinist argument tends to dispose of the other arguments that we've already tried to refute and recognizes the humanity of the fetus. Right? So it's saying, you're right, the fetus is a human. I mean, in 2019, I don't know who in the world can argue that a fetus is not a living human being with a straight face. And that's what I appreciate about the violinist argument.

It acknowledges that. It's not trying to hide behind these crazy euphemisms and unscientific ideas. So, the fetus is a human. So the argument then from bodily autonomy is that it's irrelevant whether the fetus is human or not because it is. The issue is that when somebody infringes on a mother's right to bodily autonomy, that justifies the killing of another human.

And surely conservatives can can jump on board with that because they understand this idea of self defense and killing intruders and all that stuff, which is why we have to bring on responsibility like we did in point one. But here's where the violinist argument by itself shoots itself in the foot. They tip their hand because most violinist argument users are going to promote things like stem cell research and in vitro fertilization with the discarding of excess embryos. They're going to advocate those types of things and be all for them. And that's a big problem because if you're going to say, Fetuses and embryos are human, humans are intrinsically valuable, but we can kill humans for self defense of our bodily autonomy.

Okay, that works in situations of pregnancy with abortion, but what then of embryonic stem cell research and in vitro fertilization discarding the excess embryos? Now all of a sudden you're saying, we will kill humans even when they aren't impinging on somebody's bodily autonomy. And that right there shows me that most people who use the violinist argument or the argument from bodily autonomy, most of them do so as a cover to do this thing that they just want to do anyway. They want to be able to promote for a variety of reasons because you can only hide behind this argument for something like abortion. Actually, you can't hide behind it because I think we've kind of torn that down in our first three points.

But nevertheless, if you think that the violinist argument still works, you can only hide behind it for abortion but not for a lot of other practices that we use. Now if you want to try to combine that with a personhood argument or something else that we've discussed in previous episodes, you can try to do that but I think those things fail too. So, I hope that you can see the problems with what I think are the strongest arguments with what I think is the strongest argument for abortion. I think bodily autonomy is the strongest argument. I have worked on other prototype arguments against the violinist argument that I'll talk about in the next episode, but I wanted to distinguish what I think are very clear rebuttals against the violinist argument in this episode and then get on to a weirder, much weirder, and one that I'm not sure sticks, but is is maybe interesting in the next episode.

But that's all for now. So peace, and because I'm a pacifist, and I say it, I mean it.