Presumably then you are referring to Thompson’s “dependent violinist” analogy, which, coincidentally focuses on a shared kidney. Your response, like Thompson’s analogy, completely ignores the problem of causality.
In pregnancy, one or both parents are the direct volitional cause of the pregnancy.
But in the case of your kidney dependency, you appear to be describing a completely passive situation, in which the state tries to harvest your kidney for someone they think should have it. The two scenarios could not be more different.
Consider this revision to your analogy. You pick a fight with somebody minding their own business, and you give them a pair of kidney punches that literally destroys both their kidneys. Then you let them die. Is that homicide? Yes, a human being was killed. Did you do it by an act of volition? Clearly so. Was it justified? Not at all. Therefore, it qualifies legally as murder.
For the above reasons and more, the Thompson kidney analogy has been widely discredited among Christian and other conservative moral analysts. It treats the dependent person as an invading aggressor, when the reality is, that for most pregnancies, the mother’s own action in having sex is what has put the child in the position of living, only so that they may die.
What about the case of rape? There are analogies in the law for that scenario too. If I am walking by a pool and see a man drowning, and I know this is shocking, but true, the law does not hold me accountable if I just keep walking and let the man drown. That’s because the man’s death would have occurred whether I walked by or not. There is no active causal relationship to link me to that man’s death.
If however, I am already in the position of harboring and protecting someone, someone who is completely dependent on me to live, and I take an affirmative action which I am certain will result in the death of that person, I have the elements of murder once again. There has been a homicide, I voluntarily did what I knew would cause that death, and the killing was not justified. That’s murder.
So I go back to my earlier question. At what point in the dependency spectrum does the dependent person lose their right to defend their own life, or to have others act on their behalf in that defense? Because if you are going to defend a dependency theory of justifiable homicide, I don’t see how you can do that with any persuasive effect if you never bother to define the justification.
If you are prepared to use guns and cages to force someone to allow their unborn child to live, then how far of a leap is it to use guns and cages to force someone to give up their kidney to allow another person to live?
Well, this is a parade of horribles that is badly disconnected from the current practice of criminal law. We already use guns and cages to defend innocent human lives. Yes, even the lives of those who are totally dependent on their parents.
But your leap to kidney-harvesting is laughable. As I pointed out above, the law already distinguishes between cases where there is passive inaction between unrelated parties, versus those cases where an obligation of care exists and yet an affirmative action is taken to harm an innocent person. In the eyes of the law, causation and volition make all the difference. And these are old, old distinctions, going back to the roots of the common law. You may rely on them to be there for some time to come. Your organ-harvesting analogy fails.
We need to turn the heart of the mother to her child, not threaten her with armed police and a soulless court system. We need to put an end to the lies and deceptions like "clump of cells."
On this point we are closer to agreement. I agree we need to move the heart of the mother to a place where she respects and understands the new human life within her. No law can be effective without engaging the consciences of the people under it.
However, it remains an open question on how best to inform the conscience of the culture. Part of that process is certainly private, churches and other forums where moral learning occurs.
But the law is a teacher too. Most people know not to commit murder. Yet we have a law, so that those who do commit murder can be punished, and those who are tempted to it may learn from the example of others that it is wrong, and thus have an excuse not to do it themselves.
Abortion is just one of the symptoms of a much larger, much more insidious disease of the soul - not only of the individual, but of society and culture as well. You can't heal a soul, or heal a culture, by establishing a police state that enforces monthly pregnancy tests.
True, abortion is a symptom of a deeper malady. But unlike most other such symptoms, it is causing the death of our fellow humans at a breathtaking pace, and should receive special attention. It is an ongoing emergency and we need to stop it.
However, the question of how best to stop it is a proper question. The law gives responsible caregivers a benefit of the doubt. No one I know who wants to stop abortion is recommending abandoning that presumption of innocence. I’m not saying they aren’t out there. I just don’t know any.
Here, the law can take two forms. It can be prudential, in that it seeks to intervene before a crime can be committed, and it can be judicial, acting to punish those who have already violated the law. Murder laws are generally of the judicial kind; they punish after the fact. I see no reason why that would be different in the case of abortion.
Another dimension to this is where to put the emphasis in enforcement. All law enforcement is selective. Some don’t want to hear this, but it is how it works. It simply isn’t possible, for example, to track down and prosecute every jay-walker, or those who cross the street against the lights, etc. State’s attorneys offices focus on what they have the resources to handle.
Therefore, in some bright future where all abortion was illegal, prosecutors would have no choice but to focus on the supply side of the equation. If you barricade the killing fields, and criminalize the doctor who takes an innocent life for money, you shut down almost all abortion.
What about so-called coat-hanger abortions? Like murder in general, some evil deeds you will never be able to stop until after the fact. We have laws against murder, and murder still happens. That doesn’t mean we take the laws against murder off the books, and it doesn't mean we intrude on the parent's right to care for their own children. It only means we try harder.
Fantastic post.