A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Public Policy) by David Boonin

Author:David Boonin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-08-19T22:26:00+00:00

4.4.2. The Significance of the Distinction

It is perhaps not immediately apparent how to go about answering this question. One wants to consider cases in which someone now stands in need of your assistance in order to survive and in which you have done some action such that, had you not done it, this dependent person would not now exist, and given that you did do it, this person exists and needs your assistance in order to survive. And it may seem that there really are no such cases other than those in which the act is simply the act of conceiving the person. If that is so, then we cannot usefully illuminate the case of voluntary intercourse by appealing to other cases, and may have to conclude that what we have here is simply an anomalous case that cannot be resolved one way or the other by appealing to those more general beliefs about responsibility that critics and defenders of abortion alike generally share. But this pessimism is premature. For there is another kind of action such that had you not done the action the person would not now exist: not the act of creating his life, but the act of extending it. Suitably constructed, such cases offer a means of testing the relative significance of the two different senses of responsibility that are at issue here. And when they are consulted, the claim needed to sustain the responsibility objection, the claim that responsibility in sense (1) alone is sufficient to generate an obligation to provide the needed assistance, is undermined.

To see this, consider first the following variation on Thomson's story:27

Imperfect Drug I: You are the violinist's doctor. Seven years ago, you discovered that the violinist had contracted a rare disease that was on the verge of killing him. The only way to save his life that was available to you was to give him a drug that cures the disease but has one unfortunate side effect: Five to ten years after ingestion, it often causes the kidney ailment described in Thomson's story. Knowing that you alone would have the appropriate blood type to save the violinist were his kidneys to fail, you prescribed the drug and cured the disease. The violinist has now been struck by the kidney ailment. If you do not allow him the use of your kidneys for nine months, he will die.

In Imperfect Drug I, you are responsible in sense (1) for the fact that the violinist now stands in need of your assistance. You are responsible, that is, for his existence. You did a voluntary action such that had you not done it, the violinist would not now exist. If you had not given him the drug, he would not now exist. But you are not responsible in sense (z) for the fact that the violinist now stands in need of your assistance. You are not, that is, responsible for his neediness, given that he exists. It is not the case that you did

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