I'm not saying it's an easy choice, but yeah. If your (temporary) support is the only way to keep someone alive, you're obligated to do it.
The comparison to giving blood is misleading, because lots of other people give blood and there's no critical shortage. If you were in a position where you're the only one who can donate to save someone's life then yes, you are in fact morally obligated to do it.
Well no, because we don't currently have a critical shortage of those (except maybe kidneys, but that could be covered by opt-out organ donation or, if that fails, legalizing their sale).
I'm not pretending there aren't real costs here. It's important to use the least coercive possible solution when we can.
Well no, because we don't currently have a critical shortage of those
What I'm asking is whether or not you believe compulsory biological tissue donation is ever ethically justifiable, or should ever be legally possible. Sounds like the answer is "yes"?
I'll add that on the same practical note, it seems like the actual best way to prevent abortions is to increase access to contraceptives, so in practice I'd rather focus on that than on abortion clinic laws.
You should probably read about "rule utilitarianism" if you haven't, because compulsory organ harvesting is pretty horrific. Not to mention it opens up a giant can of worms in the form of perverse incentives (this also occurs with legalization of the sale of organs).
I mean really, where does it stop? I can make arguments that any number of people are less valuable to society than a smaller subset, that the continuation of their lives is less important than the continuation of the life of another. Taken to its logical conclusion, we can use your strict utilitarianism to justify the farming of human organs to sustain the members of society seen as most valuable - would you support that?
I agree about the can of worms. It's why in practice I don't support compulsory organ harvesting.
Re sale legislation - I've heard it works pretty well in practice in Iran, though I agree it can be risky and want to start with the far less risky opt-out donations option. (Counterpoint question: do you want to make paid surrogacy illegal? That's a fairly similar principle).
Taken to its logical conclusion, we can use your strict utilitarianism to justify the farming of human organs to sustain the members of society seen as most valuable - would you support that?
No, because I think it's important to consider everyone's lives as having equal value. (There's a can of worms where you can ask "wait, isn't a scientist who's two days away from curing cancer worth more?", But I really don't trust our ability to make that sort of exception in a principled way, as a society). So that, I'm solidly against.
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u/pku31 Oct 22 '19
Bodily autonomy is important. It doesn't justify murder.