(no subject)
"You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you-we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you." Judith Jarvis Thomson
So are you morally obligated to stay plugged into the violinist? It really is a tricky question. Personally, if we take this scenario literally, I believe most of us would feel compelled to stay plugged into the violinist so he would live. But what if you were told that you had no choice. Despite the fact that you might have other moral obligations to your job and family, the powers that be have decided to forfeit your rights. How would you feel?
I find abortion debates extremely interesting. Ok so yes, a lot of unwanted pregnancies are caused by people having unprotected sex. And unlike the person in the scenario who was kidnapped, these people are dealing with the consequences of their mistake. But we're all human, right? We make mistakes. The scenario, however, I think can address women who are raped. Sometimes birth control doesn't work and sometimes people don't have the knowledge or access to birth control. We watched a film in class about teen pregnancy which featured a 14 year old girl who was pregnant. At her school in Little Rock, Arkansas, they were taught abstinence only. She was never given any information about birth control. She claimed that she had heard about the pill but believed that she had to be 18 to get it. She also believed that a woman could only get pregnant during her period. Yes, we all gasped when she said this but her friends and classmates were interviewed as well and many of them had this same belief. The school administrator commented that he believed it was the parent's duty to educate their kids about sex and pregnancy. But what if the parents' don't? Then where are these kids, full of natural hormones, supposed to learn about sex? And whose fault is it really when they get pregnant?
oof this got a little long but it has been on my mind all day.
So are you morally obligated to stay plugged into the violinist? It really is a tricky question. Personally, if we take this scenario literally, I believe most of us would feel compelled to stay plugged into the violinist so he would live. But what if you were told that you had no choice. Despite the fact that you might have other moral obligations to your job and family, the powers that be have decided to forfeit your rights. How would you feel?
I find abortion debates extremely interesting. Ok so yes, a lot of unwanted pregnancies are caused by people having unprotected sex. And unlike the person in the scenario who was kidnapped, these people are dealing with the consequences of their mistake. But we're all human, right? We make mistakes. The scenario, however, I think can address women who are raped. Sometimes birth control doesn't work and sometimes people don't have the knowledge or access to birth control. We watched a film in class about teen pregnancy which featured a 14 year old girl who was pregnant. At her school in Little Rock, Arkansas, they were taught abstinence only. She was never given any information about birth control. She claimed that she had heard about the pill but believed that she had to be 18 to get it. She also believed that a woman could only get pregnant during her period. Yes, we all gasped when she said this but her friends and classmates were interviewed as well and many of them had this same belief. The school administrator commented that he believed it was the parent's duty to educate their kids about sex and pregnancy. But what if the parents' don't? Then where are these kids, full of natural hormones, supposed to learn about sex? And whose fault is it really when they get pregnant?
oof this got a little long but it has been on my mind all day.