How does this video shape your moral intuitions?https://t.co/sNUvDFk01h
— GabrielTimothy (@GabrielTimothyR) April 10, 2024
Yesterday, I posted a tweet simply stating a prolife position that a 12 year old girl impregnated by her father should be required to carry the pregancy to term. The point of simply stating the position was that most people would recognize the moral problem with such an absolutist view.
One person on Twitter responded by asking me to consider the life of a woman named Kathy Barnette who was conceived through rape. The implication presumably being that it would be unacceptable to say it would’ve been better if Kathy Barnette (or the conceptus that became Kathy Barnette) would’ve been aborted thereby depriving Barnette of her life. Therefore, we should be against the abortion of pregancies conceived through rape because they may likewise prevent the lives of other future Barnettes.
This is flawed reasoning.
To begin with, let’s consider three counterfactual scenarios:
- Using the morning after pill to prevent the embryo that became Barnette from implanting in the uterine wall would’ve deprived Barnette of her life.
- Using mifepristone to cause the embryo to detach and the endometrium to break down would’ve deprived Barnette of her life.
- Preventing the rape of an 11 year old in which Barnette was conceived would’ve deprived Barnette of her life.
Each of these counterfactuals entails that Barnette would have been deprived of her life. If it is wrong to wish that counterfactuals had obtained that would’ve deprived Barnette of her life, then it is wrong to wish Barnette’s mother had not been raped just as surely as it is wrong to wish the ensuing pregancy had been ended. But that can’t be right. Thus, there is nothing per se wrong with wishing the rape of an 11 year old hadn’t occurred even if that wish entails that Barnette would have been deprived of her life. And there is likewise nothing wrong per se with wishing the pregancy of rape had been stopped in the earliest stages even if that entails that Barnette would have been deprived of her life.
This is not an insignificant point because it means we can deny the appeal to the life of persons like Barnette as a red herring in the discussion over whether children who are raped should have access to abortifacients in the early stages of pregnancy.
The prolife absolutist insists that “all life is sacred” such that bringing about the death of an embryo in the first weeks of pregnancy is morally equivalent to killing a fetus in the final trimester. This is not a plausible position as I argue in my discussion with Trent Horn and my follow up video.
To note the simple thought experiment, if a fertility clinic is on fire and there are 100 fertilized frozen embryos in room 1 and a single crying newborn infant in room 2, and you only had time to go to one room before the building is engulfed in flames, what would you do? Would you save the 100 embryos or the one infant?
In my experience, people overwhelmingly respond that they would save the one crying infant. And that reveals strong intuitions of ontological development in utero. Thus, we can argue that preventing an embryo from implanting or forcing it to detach from the uterine wall leading to its death is a morally defensible response to the rape of an 11 year old girl. And that fact doesn’t change even if failure to prevent such pregnancies results in the birth of babies who grow up to be people with lives of inestimable value.
