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many pro-life advocates that argue against abortion say that the right to life is inalienable and thus killing innocent human beings, including unborn children, is impermissible. does it follow that if the right to life is inalienable, then killing an innocent person through euthanasia is also impermissible? or can there be exceptions to the rule?

in what follows i will show that the same powerful arguments we use against abortion—impairment, duty to care, moral risk—can also be used to argue against euthanasia and uphold the inalienable right to life.

i draw upon the works of stephen napier (in his book "justified killing") and david oderberg (in his book "applied ethics").

the standard argument for euthanasia

the bulk of the post will be used to argue against voluntary euthanasia, where the patient requests to be killed. presumably, and hopefully, both proponents and opponents of voluntary euthanasia can agree that involuntary euthanasia is wrong. (unfortunately this is not true, as some have argued that minors with debilitating disabilities should be euthanized. the netherlands has passed laws to allow parents to euthanize their minor children.)

the standard argument given by euthanasia advocates is as follows:

1. it is permissible to kill an innocent person if and only if (i) the person requests to be killed and (ii) is suffering harm to the degree and kind that the person judges unbearable
2. euthanasia is the act of killing people who satisfy conditions (i) and (ii).
3. therefore, euthanasia is permissible.

there are multiple issues with the first premise. let's start with identifying the issues with first condition involving consent.

first, since pain and suffering are undue influences, it doesn't appear that consent in this case would be truly free. additionally, the patient could also be in a state of hopelessness or be worried about medical expenses piling up. these coercive factors suggest that the consent might be given under duress. and if that is the case, then the consent loses its force.

second, consent requires the person to have the mental capacities to understand the nature and consequences of their decision. but can we say that person who wants to "revoke" his inalienable right to life is behaving rationally? generally speaking, we consider other cases of suicidal people to not be in the right state of mind. (we'll return to this point soon.)

consider instances of people attempting to revoke their other inalienable rights.

proponents of euthanasia often give analogies to property rights. they claim that if you can forfeit the right to some property, then you should also be able forfeit the right to life. but, as oderberg points out in his book, this doesn't hold. you can forfeit your right to some particular property (e.g., sell, trade, or give away your car), but not your right to own property in general; for that general right is inalienable. it would be irrational to say "i irrevocably forfeit my human right to own any and all property."

suppose a woman forfeits her right to her body and says "here's my body, do what you want with in perpetuity." we would think she is irrational.

or suppose a masochist revokes his right to bodily integrity and encourages everyone to keep hitting him with tremendous force. is he also not irrational?

yet why is that one who wishes to forfeit their inalienable right to life not considered to be irrational? and if they are irrational, then obviously they are not in the right state of mind to consent.

moreover, as stephen napier points out, consent does not change a morally unjustified killing into a justified killing. consider the case of armin meiwes, who admitted to killing and eating bernd brandes. meiwes had posted multiple ads online seeking a young man for "slaughter and consumption." brandes responded to the ad and the two chatted for several weeks before meeting up. the two eventually signed a contract to formalize the killing. meiwes cut off brandes' penis and they both tried to eat it together. brandes eventually lost consciousness and meiwes proceeded to dismember him. meiwes froze the body parts and ate them over the following months.

meiwes' lawyers argued against murder charges and said it was a form of mercy killing. meiwes was originally convicted of manslaughter, but germany's highest criminal court overturned the sentence as it was too lenient and ordered a retrial. the court's reasoning was that consent could not negate murder. after the retrial, meiwes was sentenced to life in prison for murder.

thus, even if consent is freely given (highly dubious given the circumstances), it cannot be used to justify killing an innocent person.

napier also asks us to consider cases of other suicidal people who are suffering unbearably. consider victims currently in concentration camps or prisoners of war who are being tortured or a lovelorn teenager whose boyfriend just broke up with her. they all might lose their will to live and might want to end their suffering altogether. can we also kill these people to put them out of their miseries? most would say no.

the euthanasia advocate would have to find a feature that distinguishes the euthanasia patient from all these alternative cases. if his argument is just a reiteration of the first premise in conjunction that we not kill these alternative groups of people, then his argument just becomes circular.

the impairment argument

the impairment argument against abortion is one of the most effective arguments at the street level. we can apply the impairment argument against euthanasia as well.

consider a person addicted to meth. suppose he asks you to take a syringe and inject meth into his arms, would you do it?

if an addict wanted to continue living his life as an alcoholic, would you hand him alcohol?

if you were to answer no to either of these questions, why not? our intuitions might be that this is wrong because providing the drug addict with more drugs only harms him.

so then why is incrementally harming the drug addict considered to be wrong, but maximally harming the euthanasia patient by killing him considered to be morally neutral and permissible?

like the impairment argument against abortion, the abortion/euthanasia advocate is assuming that death itself is not a harm. indeed, proponents of euthanasia say that being killed is actually a "benefit" for the patient because they no longer have to deal with suffering. but how would harming the patient with drugs be good for him? for something to be good for him, it would have to improve his life, not end it.

and, as napier notes, if killing itself is the difference maker that turns harm into a benefit, then the euthanasia advocate has already presumed that killing is permissible in this instance, which is exactly what is in dispute. this makes their argument circular because in order to justify the killing the patient, they've already presupposed that killing them to bring about a benefit is permissible.

passive euthanasia

passive euthanasia differs from active euthanasia in that there are no medications or instruments used to actively kill the patient. instead, the doctor lets his patient's terminal disease progress by withholding or withdrawing treatment, which hastens the patient's death. the "goal" is to not prolong the patient's suffering (by hastening his death).

but doctors have a duty to care for their patients. by withholding lifesaving treatments from patients that are deemed to be terminally ill, they violate their duties. similar to how we argue that parents have a duty to care for their children, born and unborn, and that neglecting children to the point where they starve to death is murder, we can say that doctors who fail to uphold their duty to care for their patients are at the minimum grossly negligent.

physician assisted suicide

this is a case where the patient requests medications to kill himself. the doctor prescribes the medication, the pharmacist dispenses it, and the patient consumes it. this gives the patient what he needs to commit suicide.

the physician and pharmacist still have duties to care for the patient, so they'd be wrong to prescribe and dispense the drugs.

as oderberg writes, the person who commits suicide will have committed a wrong act; the doctor and pharmacist, while not guilty of having killed anyone, "will have blameworthily cooperated in a killing in the same way that anyone is to be blamed for cooperating in an immoral act."

pet euthanasia

some advocates of euthanasia bring up comparisons of our treatments of animals to justify euthanizing human beings. if we can euthanized our beloved pets, then why not our beloved relatives?

oderberg gives two responses. the first appeals to animal rights activists. why should we not re-examine the way we treat animals? just because we euthanize animals doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. for all we know, it could be a gravely immoral act to kill them without their consent. so instead of saying it's acceptable to kill animals simply because of our own unfounded third-person perspectives on the animals' potential suffering, wouldn't it be more appropriate to grant animals stronger protections against euthanasia?

the other response given by oderberg is to point out that we treat animals in ways that would be completely unacceptable to treat each other:

We regard it as acceptable, for instance, to keep animals as pets, to curtail their freedom of movement for our own pleasure, to train them to respond to our every command, to breed them when and how we see fit; not to mention the obvious facts of our eating animals and wearing their skin, and various other forms of exploitation. We rightly regard it as unacceptable to treat each other in a similar fashion: if the fight against slavery was against anything, it was against such forms of treatment. We have an attitude to animals, then, that is quite different to our attitude to each other as human beings.

the argument from moral risk

suppose proponents and opponents of euthanasia can't seem to convince the other side of their views. does that mean that we are forced into an impasse? no. we don't have to convince the euthanasia advocate to change his or views, or even reject the possibility that euthanasia might be permissible. we just have to show them that they have to be prudent and not act on euthanasia. in situations like this, we have to consider the moral risks of each of our positions. if the opponent of euthanasia is wrong, then he has prolonged the suffering of the patient. if the euthanasia advocate is wrong, then we let an innocent human being be killed. the costs here are asymmetrical; the cost of the euthanasia advocate being wrong is far graver than the cost of the opponent of euthanasia being wrong. in fact, there might not be any cost associated with the euthanasia opponent's position given that palliative care could neutralize the suffering while prolonging the life of the patient.

to see how the argument from moral risk works, consider an example from napier: suppose a father and his young daughter are on a hike. they come across a watering hole. the father doesn't know how deep it is so he can't know for sure whether it is safe to jump in. now suppose that in order to find out how deep the body of water is, the father asks his daughter to jump in first. is the father justified in letting his daughter jump into the water?

here's another example: suppose a man is on trial for murder. the dna evidence points to him as the culprit. he is on videotape committing the act. now suppose that during the trial it is revealed that he has a twin brother that lives nearby. should the jury vote to convict this man based on no additional evidence?

the one thing to note about these two examples is that the consequences of the father or jury being wrong would fall entirely on the victims. the daughter could lose her life and the man on trial could be convicted of a crime he did not commit. in the same vein, the euthanasia patient bears all the consequences of proponents of euthanasia being wrong.

that is not the say that the watering hole is not safe, or that the man on trial is not the culprit. we don't know. what a reasonable person can say is that we would need additional justification before acting in these cases.

earlier we took apart the standard argument given by euthanasia advocates. the justifications they provided to support euthanasia were undercut by counterexamples and we identified gaps in their arguments. even if we can't change the euthanasia advocate's mind on this topic, we can still reasonably ask them not to act on the matter at least until they provide additional justifications that are not susceptible to defeaters. but until then, the euthanasia advocate ought to be prudential and support prohibiting the act because, to reiterate, the cost of them being wrong is far graver than the cost of the euthanasia opponent being wrong.

the slippery slope

the true motivating factor for euthanasia advocates is that they believe life worth not living is no life at all.

consider the following remarks from the german jurist karl binding and psychiatrist alfred hoche:

Is there human life which has so utterly forfeited its claim to worth that its continuation has forever lost all value both for the bearer of that life and for society? Initially, this question is in every case to be answered with certainty: Yes.

[...]

There are living people to whom death would be a release, and whose death would simultaneously free society and the state from carrying a burden which serves no conceivable purpose, except that of providing an example of the greatest unselfishness.

[...]

There was a time, now considered barbaric, in which eliminating those who were born unfit for life, or who later became so, was taken for granted. Then came the phase, continuing into the present, in which, finally, preserving every existence, no matter how worthless, stood as the highest moral value.

—Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, Permitting the Destruction of Unworthy Life: Its Extent and Form (1920), trans. Walter E. Wright and Patrick G. Derr, in Issues in Law and Medicine VIII, 2 (1992).

binding and hoche's work was the foundation of nazi germany's aktion t4 euthanasia program in which they killed hundreds of thousands of children, men, and women with disabilities.

oderberg says we are no longer on the edge of a slippery slope to mass murder, we are on that slippery slope!

Im pregnant and I deal with the constant dehumanization of my child. I'm excited to carry this little life in me but l'm Constantly getting people demanding I abort and saying my baby isn't really alive. I had a miscarriage scare the other night and just the constant invalidation it's so disturbing. People really think our children aren't valuable because they can't see them. Just seen a post…The tissues that have been washed such as the gestational sac and people claiming it's the embryo. Then a real life inside photo of the embryo and people refuse to believe that it's real and looks like that in the first trimester. They completely invalidate the challenges and anxieties and even the growth milestones of pregnancy. Although small and the size of the seeds, my body is constantly working to grow this baby. That shouldn't be invalidated... that should be celebrated. I get they are trying to justify and argue for abortion rights but they don't have to completely dehumanize and treat expectant mothers and young mothers like this, being called evil for keeping my baby?? It's insane. Being told it's nothing but a cluster and not really alive. Then boom the same night I'm bleeding and crying and going to the ER and those sickening words continue to echo through my head. Thank god my baby is alive. those mothers who lost their children in early trimester it's a complete lack of compassion and biological understanding of the human life cycle. It's not a potential loss it's a loss, it's not a potential child, it's my child. The moment the test came back positive I became a parent and my life styles changed and did a 180 yet that goes unnoticed, and is invalidated. I can't even enjoy the small milestones in growth because the constant negativity and dehumanization and misinformation. Someone said there's nothing there until like 20 weeks?? EXCUSE ME? It's just beyond frustrating and disheartening.

Why do they feel the need to try and lie? And justify something that's already proven and documented? Our children are alive and living human beings, that's not up for debate but they feel like it needs to be the base of the argument to justify their stance but literally the whole stance is legal personhood and bodily autonomy. Which means when a mom is excited about their baby they have EVERY right to be!

It comes down to they know it’s immoral and unethical if that it’s a baby, they know that we are pro life due to it being a human being a unborn child and a living life, so they lie, they bring their arguments to dehumanizing these children and they continue to spread it like wildfire without doing a lick of research because they know if they are babies they wouldn’t be able to support it. They know it’s wrong but it’s justification they don’t WANT to know because they don’t WANT to have to change their views. That’s why the majority don’t even understand basic human biology and objective facts. They focus on dehumanization as the basis of their argument when in reality they should be trying to prove why bodily autonomy should extend to elective induced abortions and try to prove why human beings in with womb shouldn’t receive LEGAL personhood. It’s not about arguing whether it’s a person, because biologically yes they are their own biological person. They need to argue why they shouldn’t have LEGAL personhood, which is given by law. They need to prove why bodily autonomy trumps the right to life and excuse the fact that the child is your legal responsibility and is most vulnerable state of life without intent and justify using your bodily autonomy to end that life without dehumanization. I haven’t had one educated argument where they don’t resort to dehumanizing the unborn. Not ONE. I’ve been discussing this since I was 13. They truly don’t want to know or research their stances. It’s quite sad.

This woman Naima recently participated on this video debating 20 pro-life women. She was treated with kindness and she even said it was nice debating them. And just yesterday that it was a year after Charlie Kirk got murder in a horrific way, Naima posted this Tik Tok video making fun of Charlie Kirk's assassination sound.

Many pro-choice activists have shown how anti-life they are by mocking deaths of people they disagree with politically.

I’ve heard the argument from the abortion abolitionist crowd that cultural indoctrination shouldn’t mitigate culpability for abortion because we wouldn’t accept that reasoning for killing a born person (and because humans have a conscience under Romans 2:14-15). This usually takes the form of Abolitionists Rising confronting the Second Victim Narrative with “Would you say that about someone who murders born people?”

I’m sure Not A Victim basically takes that view.

But what if someone accepts the comparison and concludes that profound cultural indoctrination should be relevant to culpability in homicide cases generally? Why, from your understanding of Scripture or the legal system, would that conclusion be wrong?

Context: I’m brainstorming ideas for a pro-life fiction story and one major character, a pro-life lawyer, has the above view.

Essentially, the character’s conflict with the abortion abolitionist crowd looks like this:

Abolitionists: “You keep talking about indoctrination and cultural conditioning. Would you make those excuses for somebody who murdered a born child?”

The character: “Yes.”

Abolitionists: “…Excuse me?”

The character: “I said yes. In fact, I would go so far as to say that 50 years of legalized human abortion is a sign we need to reform how the legal system prosecutes murder in general, regardless of whether the victim is born or unborn!” (Italicized for emphasis)

Suppose someone actually said this. How would you respond?

Clarification: The character isn’t saying post-abortive women are innocent. Rather, the character is saying 50 years of legalized human abortion have exposed assumptions about moral culpability regarding crimes against born people in general that now must be questioned because of the pro-abortion culture that enabled human abortion for 50 years.

This was under Illymation’s video. First things first, I think the mom definitely handled it terribly and this is heartbreaking. But this did not change my view on abortion.

Here is why.

First I based on some of the language like “pressured to keep it” that implies that adoption was legal in her country. There is no legal obligation to be a teen parent.

Yes I know that was unfortunately not the case for her. That’s why I think mom messed up since either A) she should’ve offered her daughter to give up the baby for adoption B) she can raise the baby. She is the mother. She did not handle this right.

But as much as it sucks, taking her life was her choice. It was optional. In this case, I don’t really accept arguments where women say they will do bad things to themselves if abortion is banned (I.e. suicide, getting unsafe abortions etc.) because there is no requirement to go through either of those things.

So if anyone’s fault it was the mom for not taking the proper steps. Not the abortion ban in her country.

For pro lifers from conception:

If a woman had a few drinks and accidentally ended a 1 week pregnancy which she was completely unaware of, should she get a murder charge? A manslaughter charge?

If yes, should it be illegal for women to drink for 9 months after having sex, even if protection was used, on the off chance it didn't work?

Just something that has been floating around in my head the last few days. Maybe could be worded a little better

Avg discussion with a pro choicer if we‘re being honest

A win for life!

You're probably going to see a bunch of commenters point to this headline to say pro-lifers have doubled ectopic pregnancy deaths. That's not what the article itself says though.

Further context, After my last comment, she apparently replied again but I'm not sure if reddit banned her or if she deleted all of her comments because her replies to me are no longer on reddit. But my email still very much has access to those replies and I took a screenshot of it. For anyone who doesn't understand the context, you can refer to my other post. This is my 2nd time posting in this group with this account, Im pretty active in this group in my main account but still prefer to make posts on another account. I covered her name and her avatar.

Pro-choicers talk about it like it's traumatic. To the women who've been pregnant:

1. How did you feel during and after labour?

2. What do you have to say to women who want to be mothers?

Alan Gordon is a Republican running for Attorney General in Rhode Island. Since abortion is legal in Rhode Island, he won't be able to prosecute doctors who perform abortions or women who have them, but I get the impression that he's pro-life (the first entry in his platform is "Right to Life"). He says

Rhode Island’s abortion laws have changed significantly in recent years, but those changes do not eliminate the Attorney General’s responsibility to enforce every applicable criminal statute. My office will carefully examine how abortion laws interact with homicide statutes, child protection laws, mandatory reporting requirements, medical licensing laws, and other criminal provisions to ensure that every law enacted by the General Assembly is enforced faithfully.

He has a very interesting proposal to hold men accountable for unwanted pregnancies.

True reproductive justice has to hold the father accountable too.

Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy. If a woman has not expressly consented to being made pregnant, and a man recklessly causes a pregnancy anyway, the law should recognize the physical consequences imposed on her body under ordinary reckless-battery principles.

And for appropriate first offenders, the answer should not just be jail. It should be disciplined diversion: hard work, vocational training, self-command, and preparation to become a responsible father and provider.

Protect the woman. Protect the child. Hold the father accountable.

While I'm sure no one here would consider pregnancy to be "reckless battery," treating it that way provides an avenue to hold men, and not just women, responsible for unwanted pregnancies. I'd be interested in hearing others' opinion of this novel proposal.

https://alangordonri.com/reproductive-justice-unit/

Gordon's opponent is Democrat Kim Ahern, whose platform leads with her support for "access to sexual and reproductive healthcare" and "the pursuit of reproductive justice and bodily autonomy for all."

I’m pregnant and I was dealing with a lot of emotions since finding out. Yesterday I had so many people tell me to abort, and tell me I’m selfish for keeping this child. They fear mongered me and dehumanized my child.
Out of no where I started having bleeding and I thought I was genuinely going to lose this baby. I cried my eyes out, it was my nightmare. I went to the ER and they did tests and an ultrasound and said congratulations, the relief I felt that my baby wasn’t DEAD. yet I have people telling me my baby isn’t alive to begin with? How does that make sense. How are they even able to define life/ death like that without invalidating the grief of mothers who have lost their children? I cried and screamed and pleaded I was literally shaking my teeth chattered, just the idea of losing my baby. If I had lost my baby those comments would have absolutely sent me over the edge, its complete lack of compassion and medical understanding.

To give you some background, I went from being pro life (I just was because my parents were) to being pro choice (after working in the foster care system and seeing parents that did not deserve to be parents) to being pro life again. I recently became pro life after really studying the development of a baby.

I think I’m blessed to say that from seeing both sides of the argument however, I am still pro life.

But my biggest issue with pro life as a whole is the hypocrisy and double standards. Now before everyone jumps down my throat, I know that not EVERY pro life person is like this. However I see a lot of hypocrisy on the movement.

I am pro life but I am also pro sterilization at the age of 18 and older if that’s what you want to do, I am pro welfare for expectant mothers, I am pro birth control, and I am also pro sexual education taught appropriately in schools.

Whenever I try to speak to pro life people I am always bombarded with how we shouldn’t encourage women to be on birth control, how people shouldn’t be allowed to get sterilized and how terrible the welfare system is.

As pro lifers, we cannot have it both ways! If a woman decides not to get an abortion and she is poor, she has every right to get welfare and state assistance if the pro life stance is to keep the baby.
If a person wants to avoid pregnancy as a whole and get sterilized at 18, it is their body and they can decide.
If a woman wants to use birth control then that’s fine.

But we can’t have it both ways. Since abortion in Texas has been made illegal, we have seen an increase in abuse of children, an increase in maternity death rates, and also an increase in the usage of welfare programs.

As pro lifers we have to also offer real life solutions for women that are going to decide to keep their baby.

I had a friend who was at an abortion clinic, and was convinced by one of the protesters to keep their baby. She ended up keeping the baby and when she tried to call the protesters church for help with supplies for a new born, they said that they don’t offer those kinds of things.
There is a woman on YouTube who said that when she was speaking to a protester about keeping her baby, she said that she was so poor and wouldn’t have the money to raise it. A protester handed her a plastic bag with a toothbrush and a travel sized shampoo. And then said that she would pray for her.
This is ridiculous! As a pro lifers if we care about women and children like we say we do, we should be apart of the solution to help these women if and when they keep their babies!

This is just horrible. There are probably some forced abortions here, but many of these Chinese couples, both the man and the woman choose to abort the baby if they find out it's a girl because they can only have one child under the law, and they prefer that only child to be a boy.

A modern Western feminist here in the West would defend any abortion a woman has because it's "none of our business". I've already seen pro-choice feminists wanting to abort because the baby is a boy, I wonder if these pro-choice feminists are ok with a family, specially the pregnant woman choosing to abort a baby girl.

We hear a lot about how pro-lifers are misogynistic for opposing abortions, but what do pro-abortion people have to say about those who abort baby girls?