Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Hi, everybody. Welcome along to another episode of the Dispatchers podcast. My name is Brendan Malone. It is great to be back with you again. And today we're going to be discussing and dissecting a brand new paper that has just been published in which the authors argue that it should be compulsory to conduct forced abortions on underage girls who find themselves pregnant. So women under the age of 16 who are pregnant should be subjected. It should be compulsory for them to undergo a forced abortion, irregardless of whether they want that or not.
[00:00:37] And the paper argues that to do otherwise would be immoral and would be a form of injustice to them. Now, we are going to, in this episode, dissect and I want to respond, not to the entire paper. It's over 30 pages in length and we don't need to go through the whole thing, but. But I want to just highlight in and focus on the key arguments that they make and dissect and explain why they are vacuous, why they are illogical. And obviously, I think we can all accept the fact that this is a truly reprehensible, a gravely evil proposition. A couple of things that I think are worth noting before we get into the paper, though. Number one is that I'm gonna take this as read. And I say that because today it's not unusual to find people who will argue or what are controversial, quote, unquote, novel positions, as they call it in this paper in an attempt to try and sort of demarcate their career, put themselves on the map, present themselves as being clever. You know, I'm arguing a position that no one's really thought of or no one's really wanted to argue before. And it's a way of attracting attention. Of course, you also have situations where people will produce fraudulent papers and submit them to various journals. That has happened recently. They'll often do this for trolling purposes or perhaps to try and expose the folly, the flaws in a philosophy or an ideology that they disagree with. But I'm going to take this one as read and assume that this is actually not one of those cases where people are being fraudulent. I say that for a couple of reasons. Number one, it has been published by a leading journal, Ethics, and I'm assuming that they have done appropriate due diligence.
[00:02:16] Secondly, the two candidates who have published this, they are PhD candidates, they do appear to be real people.
[00:02:23] And the way that the paper is argued does seem to be. I don't think it's unreasonable to treat this as if it is legitimate. And I think also the reality is that even if this does subsequently turn out to be something other than what it is being presented as, the reality is that we are now in such a state of graduation, grave ideological confusion, and we have embraced ideological evil for many decades now, that it is only a matter of time, if this is not the real deal, before someone is actually arguing, if not already in the quiet corners of the world, but arguing publicly soon, this very type of reasoning. And it really does expose the sort of the natural ends of where you take these kind of ideologies and how disastrous that they can be. And I think also as we go through it, you'll see that there are implications not just for this particular argument that is being made here, but also more broadly for the pro abortion choice position and the flaws in that particular ideology.
[00:03:23] Now, in regard to the paper itself, one of the first things that really stuck out to me, and this is very common today, but it is important to note in this case is that it is a paper that is riddled with ideological language.
[00:03:36] And ideological language is two things. Number one, it's a dead giveaway of, you know, a whole lot of prior ideologies about human anthropology and about human morality that are not sound.
[00:03:48] But also the ideological language in this case is a way of actually smuggling in various arguments and propositions without actually having to present and properly defend those positions. So, so I'll give you a very clear example of this. If instead of talking about abortion, you constantly refer to abortion care, or you use words like care or healthcare, et cetera, to describe what is actually an abortion that you are talking about in the paper, then already you have smuggled in a whole lot of a priori stuff into this moral argument, but you have not actually proven that that stuff is correct. So is morally sound at all. If you refer to abortion as care, care obviously is a loaded phrase. Language is world building. Language speaks to reality. And so when you talk about care in any context, you are talking about something that is obviously going to aid human flourishing, that is not harmful, that is not evil, that is for the benefit of those, wherever it is utilised, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, obviously abortion is not that, but if you apply this ideological language to your moral paper like they've done here, you are already queering the pitch. You are presenting moral propositions that you have not actually defended and you have not proven to be true. And so I think that's important to note in all of this.
[00:05:18] Secondly, there is another big elephant in the room here, and that is the fact that they don't make a single mention of. Of the issue of conscience rights, the freedom of conscience on the part of medical practitioners.
[00:05:34] So you're talking here about requiring the state actually mandating compulsory abortions on children who are under the age of 16, and yet you haven't addressed what is clearly going to be a huge aspect to all of this, the individual conscience rights, the rights to freedom of conscience on the part of those who practice medicine and who will be invariably expected to participate in these compulsory, forced abortions. To me, that is a major oversight. And I am not surprised by this, because it really does speak to a troubling aspect of the modern medical context whereby medical ethics have.
[00:06:16] There's a whole lot of cloudiness around all of this now. And one area where there is a great fog in particular and an active attempt to actually erode and get rid of things is the area of the right to freedom of conscience on the part of medical practitioners. Effectively, there is a growing movement to try and compel medical practitioners or treat medical practitioners as if they are little more than dispensaries of the state when it comes to medicine, surgeries, et cetera, et cetera. So with all of that in mind, what we're gonna do now is we're gonna jump into the paper, and as I said, we're not gonna read through the entire paper, but what we're gonna do is read just key arguments that are made. We don't need to read the whole thing. I want to focus in on some key aspects of the paper, and I want to dissect and explore what is wrong with what they are claiming here, because there's some very serious deficiencies that completely destroy this argument. Very quickly, let's examine this. This paper is called justice for Girls on the Provision of Abortion as Adequate Care. And that's an example of the ideological language straight away in the title. And it was published in the April edition of Ethics, which is the journal of the University of Chicago, and it is a journal. Let me start with the abstract and give you a basic overview of what they are arguing here. And then we're going to dive into this a bit more deeply. When the US Supreme Court rejected the constitutional right to abortion care. See the ideological language there again, Several US States enacted bans. This legal change exposed critical moral questions about pregnancy in childhood. What do adults owe to an impregnated girl?
[00:07:55] This article shows that both opponents of abortion and defenders of women's rights make a mistake by overlooking that a girl is a child.
[00:08:06] Her caregivers should view her impregnation as a malady and take steps to terminate it. So they're arguing, therefore compulsory forced abortions treat it as a sickness and it should be required that you treat that sickness, quote unquote. In other words, it should be required that you conduct a forced abortion. This article presents a novel analysis of a previously unnamed injustice, anti girlism to make sense of this mistreatment that girls endure in reproductive care. So straight away you see all the ideological language and just so we're clear, anti girlism is not a thing. It's a, it's a brand new concept that they have created for this paper and they go on to explain it. We don't need to go into it. It's.
[00:08:48] It's yet another category of victim class that they are utilising here. Really shoehorning into this paper actually to try and justify forced abortions on children. Let's jump into some of the things that we find in the paper though. And as I said, this is not the whole paper. I have shrunk this down, I've truncated it and we're just gonna focus on some key things they say. They start by highlighting a couple of cases of minors who were denied abortion after the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling. In another case that made international news, a Florida Judge ruled in August 2022 that a 16 year old girl was insufficiently mature to consent to an abortion even with her guardian's blessing, with the implication being that she was nonetheless sufficiently mature to carry the pregnancy to term and potentially raise a baby. A further perverse implication of that ruling is that if a 16 year old is too young to have an abortion, then a 10 year old is most certainly too young to have one. And I hope you can see straight away the issue that's at stake here and the contradiction and all of this. Let me read this again.
[00:09:52] The implication being that she was nonetheless sufficiently mature to carry the pregnancy to term and potentially raise a baby. So this goes both ways. So effectively, if you're going to claim that a child, as they are obviously indicating here, is not sufficiently mature to carry a pregnancy to term, then it is not sustainable to say that a 16 year old is sufficiently mature enough to actually be subjected to an abortion either.
[00:10:21] And I don't. This is like. You'll see this as a recurring theme. There is this contradictory way of thinking about this issue and basically it leads to these woefully deficient outcomes that they're trying to argue all through this paper. This paper is riddled with this same sort of contradiction. Moving on, though, they go on to say the reasoning that underpins the general prohibition on. And this is one of the key points of their argument, they basically argue around organ donation and how they think a prohibition on child organ donation, which is actually a good and legitimate thing, would also then go on to justify forced abortions on children. It doesn't. It really doesn't. But we'll look at this. The reasoning that underpins the general prohibition on child organ donation, including that children should be, A, protected from exploitation and B, restricted in the burdens that can be imposed with or permitted to carry.
[00:11:13] So, you know, the burdens they have to carry as children, applies to child pregnancy. There are three elements to this claim. First, every impregnated child, again that dehumanising language, regardless of stage of pregnancy, has a right to an abortion. This is just blithely stated. There is no such thing as the right to abortion. They don't even defend it. This is what's happening now. See, you start with a certain level of ideological corruption, and you normalize that level of ideological corruption in the public square and public discourse and in academic discourse, and then it just keeps building on itself. It's. It's like a toxic mold that just keeps growing. And so you get to a point where people just say things blithely like, yeah, a child has a right to an abortion, as if somehow that's true because they've just been indoctrinated into this. But now, no one has ever actually proved that or shown that that is the case, because it's obviously not the case, but that's what's going on here.
[00:12:09] Second, a child's best interests are served by the provision of an abortion. I mean, at best, that is highly disputable and debatable. That's at best, I think, at worst, it is just flat out false. Prioritising her wellbeing necessitates that physicians and family members view her impregnation as a malady to be treated and take steps to terminate it. Third, in most cases, medical professionals would be failing a child if they withheld abortion, even if they did so because the child was averse to it.
[00:12:45] And this entire line of reasoning here is dependent on a.
[00:12:52] Like, it's perpetrated on an absolute fraud.
[00:12:56] And the fraud is that you treat or you ignore the reality that there is another human being, an innocent human being, growing in the womb of that young child who was pregnant. And so you're ignoring one of the two children who are involved in the scenario and their human well being and their human right to life. And you'll see this becomes more prescient as we go.
[00:13:24] Indeed, the analogy between organ donation and pregnancy is powerful precisely because in live organ donation cases, the full moral status of the needy party, so the person who needs the organ donation is not in doubt. So in other words, there's no question that they have a moral status. And yet their moral status is insufficient to license caregivers to either permit or compel a child to serve as a donor. And that's true because as they've already outlined, children can be exploited. They may not be able to give proper informed consent to something as serious as donating an organ. These protections exist for good moral reasons. If the analogy holds, then any moral status of the fetus would also be insufficient to license caregivers to permit or compel a child to carry a pregnancy to term.
[00:14:15] So this is not a comparable scenario. In the case of organ donation, if you prevent a child from donating an organ, nobody is being killed.
[00:14:25] So what happens is the child simply cannot donate the organs. And if that other person does die because they don't get an organ donation in time, they were not killed by any of the parties involved in that decision.
[00:14:38] They die as a result of the illness that they suffer from. No one has killed them. But that's not what's happening with an abortion. With an abortion, there is a deliberate killing taking place. An abortionist goes into a womb and deliberately ends the life of the needy party. So they are not morally equivalent at all. They are not on the same, they're not even in the same ballpark. They're completely different things. If you wanted to make this analogy more like abortion, which they're trying to do here, then what you'd have is a situation in which someone approaches a minor, someone under 16, and asks for an organ donation because they are a needy party and the parents say no, and then they turn around or maybe the doctors do and they kill the person who is the needy party. Now, obviously that's very different, and there's a very different moral equation going on. And so you see, this is actually what's going on with abortion. Because abortion is not simply a matter of withholding consent to the needy party or withholding an organ to the needy party. It's actually an act of killing of the needy party. And that's a very different moral situation.
[00:15:48] Even if a pregnant adult could be deemed to have a special responsibility to preserve a fetus, this could never be so for a Child, because a child has a right to childhood. Now I know straight away you can see the absurd contradiction here.
[00:16:04] Yes, a child, I think under general context does have a right to a childhood. Although I think it is important to add the caveat that this is not and never has been absolute. So if for some emergency reason you had to actually do something that would deprive a child of their normal childhood innocence, like for example, they were very sick and they had to undergo a very serious and invasive medical procedure and chemotherapy and all the other stuff along with it, there's no doubt that that has a profound implication of on robbing a child of their childhood. But you do this for the higher good of the well being of the child. So you couldn't turn around and say, well no, my right to childhood is absolute, you can't do this to me. Or you know, my parents can't take me out of a war zone and lead me away for many years and rob me my childhood or take me away from a natural disaster and leave home and, and, and you know, have to immigrate to another country, et cetera. You know, I've been deprived of my childhood. It's never absolute, but it is a general truth that I think that we should do everything in our power to nurture and protect childhood and childhood innocence. And there's so many things that encroach on that and destroy that today.
[00:17:08] However, that is also true for unborn children. See the only way you can do this, the arguments they're making, is you ignore the truth of the humanness of the unborn child.
[00:17:24] And that's what's going on here. The whole thing's a shell game built on a grand lie.
[00:17:29] The lie is that you pretend or you claim that the unborn child is not actually a human person.
[00:17:36] The moment you actually accept the truth that it is a human being and obviously it's innocent, then you have to accept that it is entitled to the right to life and it is also entitled to the same different degrees of flourishing, like for example, the, the right to have a childhood and never be deliberately deprived of that childhood.
[00:17:56] Another possible difference between organ donation and pregnancy concerns doctors duties. Specifically where the doctors have a stronger duty not to harm a child, that is a duty not to take her organs than to not fail to aid her. That is a duty to provide abortion.
[00:18:14] Even if the distinction between negative duties and positive duties were fully sustainable.
[00:18:20] And by the way, this is just a very blithe way of actually treating what is, I think, an important part of all of this the question of negative versus positive duties. But anyway, we'll leave that aside.
[00:18:31] Even if they were fully sustainable and doctors negative duties were generally stronger, doctors would nonetheless have positive duties to aid the child in their care. It would be absurd for a physician to deny a child care for her diabetes or her cancer and justify this on the basis that he is allowing the natural course of things to progress.
[00:18:50] Instead, by denying her needed insulin or chemotherapy, he has obviously cared inadequately for her. He does not merely fail to treat her, he actively neglects her. The same can be said about child impregnation. The physician's choice not to provide an abortion to a child is an active decision. And we cannot pretend that allowing a pregnancy to continue is the default option when it poses such substantial risk to a child's health and well being.
[00:19:17] This is just. I'm sorry, this is illogical because it's riddled with error. There's lies in here, obvious lies. The first grave error is that you are comparing pregnancy with disease and that is clearly not a sustainable comparison at all. Comparing pregnancy to cancer or to diabetes, even a pregnancy in a child, they are not the same thing at all. Secondly, it is clear that that disease, although you would say disease, exists in nature, and in one sense you could argue that it is natural to our human state to experience diseases.
[00:19:54] The idea that being diseased and following a disease to its natural destructive trajectory, its natural end, allowing that to happen, is somehow natural to the human person, is not sound.
[00:20:06] What you are arguing for here is that and you are contrasting an act which deliberately destroys the human flourishing and, and ends the life, the most important good of all, the good of an innocent human life. And you are comparing that thing with the failure to treat a disease. In that case, the disease is actually the thing that's comparable to the abortion. The disease itself is doing the harm. So just like you wouldn't leave a disease or subject the child to unnecessarily to illness, neither should you subject a child to. To abortion, because in doing so you're acting exactly like that cancer. Like that disease, you are targeting the unborn child and you are killing them.
[00:20:50] Secondly, as I've said here as well, aside from just comparing pregnancy and treating it as if it is somehow on. On a par with a disease and being diseased, when clearly it's not. Obviously pregnancy is a natural process and allowing it to. To unfold is also a very natural thing for the human person.
[00:21:09] It is absolutely absurd to say that allowing a pregnancy to continue is the default option when it poses such substantial risk to a child's health and wellbeing that assumes straight away that abortion is a zero risk thing. And it's also, this is important we go back to where we started from with ideological language.
[00:21:30] This is why the smuggling in of ideological language is corrupting this whole thing.
[00:21:36] Because basically, and they do this here, they are claiming abortion is a type of care, when it's not that, and that corrupts the whole thing. And you see the absolute absurdity of the proposition that they are making here. They go on to say, a critic might object that given the harms an impregnated girl has already endured.
[00:21:56] So this isn't a situation, by the way, where they're assuming that the child is the victim of a forced sexual assault and that's why they are pregnant.
[00:22:04] A critic might object that given the harms an impregnated girl has already endured, her caregivers should not take further actions against her wishes, such as providing abortion. That she opposes. That objection does not succeed. While we acknowledge that discomfort over compelled treatment is justified, it's not treatment. See what's going on here? It's abortion. It's a whole other thing. While discomfort, and it's not discomfort either, we are talking about not just potential physical harms, but also serious and lasting lifelong psychological harm that could be inflicted upon this child. So this is not. You see what they're doing here? This is where language is being used to construct a falsehood, an alternate reality. You downplay the reality of what's actually going on and you present falsehoods about what's actually going on. A child who needs treatment because she was mistreated should still receive that treatment.
[00:23:00] Consider a Jehovah's Witness's child who has been seriously assaulted by someone and now requires a blood transfusion. The way in which that child came to need the life saving transfusion, either through mistreatment or through so called natural causes, is not a reason to deny care. The same conclusion holds for child pregnancy. No, it does not. Because a necessary blood transfusion, one that is needed to save a life and is a life saving medical therapy, it is legitimate medical care.
[00:23:32] It is about trying to enhance the wellbeing of a person, aid their flourishing, save the person, cure them, give them relief, et cetera, et cetera, that's what authentic medicine is. Abortion is not that.
[00:23:45] Abortion is the deliberate taking of a human life.
[00:23:50] And so the way you get away with this nonsense is by treating abortion in an absolutely dishonest way and using this falsehood and comparing Abortion to things that, like, it's not even. I mean, apples and oranges is not even really. It feels like an understatement to describe what's going on here, the level of dishonesty. And I left a little note for myself there about another scenario. Imagine a different scenario where you can see the madness of what's going on here a bit more clearly, I think.
[00:24:16] Imagine if you had two siblings and there's. They're both children and one of the siblings has serious mental anguish as a result of the other siblings, like just being alive. It doesn't have to be anything nefarious that has happened here at all between the two of them. It's just some serious psychological trauma associated with having another brother or sister. And it is extreme. It's been diagnosed, it's legitimate, it's ongoing, it's serious, it's doing great harm to that child. Let's imagine like the. A very intense and awful scenario. And then a psychologist proposes that the way to actually end this, and they guarantee they could end this, would be if you killed the other sibling, the other innocent party who has done nothing wrong.
[00:25:07] Would we think it would be acceptable to say, well, the state should require then the compulsory killing of siblings in order to alleviate what is a. Potential. Potential suffering, or in this case an actual suffering cause we're talking about potential risks with pregnancy, as opposed to this case I've just used, where there's actual harm happening. Would it be acceptable for us to kill the other sibling to alleviate the symptoms? No, no, that would not be acceptable at all. The same moral principle is true when you think about this scenario and abortion. Let's carry on. A further related concern is that when abortion treatment is given to an unwilling child to. She might resent the provision of the abortion both in the moment and afterward, and she might resent it more than other kinds of care that a child might be unwilling to receive. And this resentment might compromise her future wellbeing.
[00:26:01] And by the way, this is really important and it is very interesting here. Again, you're seeing this sort of downplaying of what's actually going on here because there's something grave about abortion because of the fact that it involves the destruction, the killing of an innocent, unbelievable unborn child, her own child, even though it's awful that she, as a child is in the situation, her own child would be killed.
[00:26:25] And to sort of put that on a par with, oh, well, maybe we had to. Let's, for example, imagine something that's a bit more extreme, like we had to amputate a child's foot to save them. Yes, that would cause distress, and maybe they might even have a sense of resentment about that. But to say that that's on a par with the destruction of an innocent human life, to me, that just is not sustainable. First, note that as she matures, a girl might just as easily regret or resent being permitted, encouraged, or forced to continue a pregnancy and then take on the role of a mother or give up a baby for adoption as she might regret or resent having an abortion. So, in other words, what they're actually acknowledging here is there is a fundamental flaw in their argument. They're trying to assume that, effectively, in this case anyway, they're talking specifically about resentment, that really the resentment against abortion would be far worse. They realize they've got a problem here, and we'll get to how they try to resolve it in a moment, because the way they try and resolve it is absolutely shocking when you consider the logical ends of where this would lead. But basically, what they're acknowledging here is we've got a problem. And the problem they've got here is they are assuming that effectively, you would. You could have pregnancy regret, you could have adoption regrets, but abortion regrets are not really a thing. So what they've. They've been forced to. At least they're acknowledging that this is actually a real thing. And, and that's a problem for their argument because obviously then it undermines their claim that it would be in the best interests of the child to do this. But here's how they go on to try and solve this.
[00:27:58] So it is unclear that withholding abortion care is the option that most reduces resentment or regret. So they're acknowledging that's the problem. And then they say this. Second, since a person who receives an abortion in childhood might regret or resent it later, it is for the best that the decision to terminate the unborn child, to end their life, be made by others on her behalf. It is better if she resents her former caregivers than herself.
[00:28:28] This is truly shocking. What they. This is how they're trying to get themselves out of this clear problem.
[00:28:35] It's one of many, as you've already heard. There are other major problems they're not even acknowledging, but at least I suppose we should be grateful for this small acknowledgement here.
[00:28:44] And the way they're trying to get out of it is saying, well, that's why compulsory forced abortion is better, because it will be the state, effectively, that is compelling her to have a forced abortion and therefore she won't have to carry the regret. I mean, that's not really how this works anyway. If you know anything about what it is to be human and how these things affect people and how the psychology of trauma affects people, people consistently will apply to themselves all sorts of layers of guilt, even if that guilt is not their direct fault. So this is a total disconnection from the human experience, firstly.
[00:29:21] But secondly, what they're trying to argue here is, hey, look, the way to get out of this problem is just by saying, well, if we forcibly conduct an abortion on this child, then she doesn't have to have the resentment against her parents. It's better that you know, oh, sorry, she doesn't have to carry the resentment. It's not something she has to carry. It's against her parents or her caregivers, it's others on her behalf.
[00:29:43] This here, what's so astounding about this is if you take this to its logical conclusion, this, what they're arguing for is a justification for all abortions to be state compelled abortions, for forced abortion to be the normal state practice in a country.
[00:30:04] Think about this. Why is it only better for a child not to have to carry that regret? Wouldn't it be better for adult women as well not to have to carry that regret? So therefore, shouldn't it be required by the state that all abortions are forced abortions? And the state might have a list of criteria. And they say, well, if you've had so many kids, or if you're not economically viable enough, or if you're of a certain age or a certain socioeconomic situation, or you live in a certain area where there's greater risk, whatever the criteria might be, the state would create a list and then it would decide on the behalf of every pregnant woman whether or not she should carry on. Because as this argument is trying to claim here, it would be better for the woman if she didn't actually have to carry the regret. She could then say, ah, it wasn't my decision.
[00:30:54] This is truly absurd and it's, it's just astounding that someone is even making this kind of proposition at times. When I was reading this paper, I honestly felt, and I don't mean this in a belittling, derogatory kind of way, but I felt like this paper itself had been written by someone who just wasn't mature enough or just wasn't really grappling properly with reality and morality at all in the arguments they were making. Because some of these propositions just seem childish in the way that you know that they are, or what's being proposed in the way that they'd be outworked. They go on to say here, a critic might object, that this line of argument also supports continuing the pregnancy. So you see what, that this is the pickle they've got themselves into here. There's this clear absurdity in all of this, because the same line of reasoning they're right, could be applied to continuing the pregnancy. Well, she doesn't have to carry the regret for it.
[00:31:47] Since later in life a child might regret or resent continuing her pregnancy. It is better for her that her doctors and caregivers make the decision for her to continue that pregnancy so that she will feel resentment towards them in future and not toward herself or her baby. Again, that's not how reality actually works, as anyone who is remotely human knows. However, this objection fails because continuing pregnancy is far riskier, far more harmful.
[00:32:14] Again, this is just that they've strayed into territory and they never back this up. They never support this claim here at all, then terminating it.
[00:32:24] And so straight away, as I said, you've got a situation where they've shown this same line of argumentation would apply against them. And then they just basically, as the paper unwinds, one of the things it felt like to me in the final pages of this paper was that it was becoming less and less coherent and. And basically they were just chucking stuff at the wall because the whole thing was starting to unravel and they didn't really know because they didn't have. They didn't have truth on their side and so they didn't know how to construct the argument properly. And so the whole thing starts collapsing and it feels like towards the end, it's just, they're just chucking stuff out there and hoping that it will stick, like saying, well, pregnancy is far risky and far more harmful. Again, in order to make these kinds of claims, you're going to have to assume things about pregnancy versus abortion. But also you're going to have to assume that psychological harm is somehow not as significant as, you know, physical harms that could be experienced for doctors and caregivers to argue that they attended to a girl's best interest by allowing or compelling her to continue a pregnancy that she later regrets. This is a kind of contradiction here too, by the way, because why would they be compelling someone to continue a pregnancy that they later regret?
[00:33:41] Like, it seems to me that if they don't regret it in the moment, you wouldn't need to compel them. So you see how this kind of little bit of contradiction here in this. They would have to do so. So, so in other words, to just allow a pregnancy to happen and to say we're not going to abort, do a forced abortion on a child.
[00:33:57] They now claim that in order to support that position, they would have to do so from within a controversial religious worldview, one that is at odds with the values that should govern medical decision making. To which I say, hold on a minute.
[00:34:16] So first of all, what do you mean a controversial religious worldview? What's controversial in the slightest about saying that you should not perform forced abortions on people upon anyone? There's nothing religious or controversial about that at all, I don't think. Secondly, the arguments in favour of actually protecting the rights of the unborn child, who is also a innocent party in all of this, and their wellbeing and their interests must be considered and they've just, you know, rode roughshod over the top of them, completely ignored them. That is not a, that is not an argument from religious dogma. That is an argument that is made based on natural law principles that just are consistent all over the place. As you've already heard me arguing here. The reality is that you are dealing with an innocent human being that is developing in the womb. And therefore, as an innocent human being, they have the same rights as other innocent human beings, like an older 16 year old or an older 60 year old. They are a human being, so their humanity entitles them to certain rights and protections.
[00:35:23] And that's not a religious proposition, that's just reality and natural law, that proposition. So it is completely false to claim a you need a religious framework or worldview. And secondly, that this would be considered a controversial religious framework. Seriously, the idea that someone saying actually I don't think that you should carry out forced abortions or that it is actually probably better for the child to carry the pregnancy to term, that is not a controversial religious idea, even if it was a religious based on a religious worldview. You do not need a controversial religious worldview. So you can see the absurdity of what's going on here. This has been the history, sadly, of the pro abortion choice argument for far too long. They've been able to get away with this kind of nonsensical sloganeering that's just not grounded in reality. And one of the key ways they've done this is try and make this falsely a debate about, you know, people imposing religion upon others. You know, the old slogan, keep your rosaries off my ovaries A lot of this is just sloganeering, but it's not grounded in reality. And then it's even more absurd when you say that, that, you know, this religious worldview would be at odds with the values that should govern medical decision making. Well, what do you mean when you talk about the values that should govern medical decision making?
[00:36:37] Are you not aware of the fact that in the west we practice a form of Hippocratic medicine that is obviously grounded in Hippocrates oath, the Hippocratic oath, and also was amplified and flourished to an even greater degree because of Christian anthropology and morality. What Christianity bought to the practice of medicine like, it's just embedded and ingrained into the practice of medicine. And it's so essential, the fact that we act with non malfeasance, I will do no harm. I mean, everyone wants that from their doctors. The fact that they will act with beneficence for the benefit of the patient. These are all fundamental things we expect from a medical professionals. These are not neutral values. They didn't just sort of suddenly plop out of the air from nowhere. These are grounded in. For example, initially we start with something like the Hippocratic tradition, the Oath of Hippocrates. That is a religious oath. It literally starts, I swear by Apollos the healer, the Greek God Apollos. And then obviously Christianity really amplifies these and because of its anthropology about the human person made in the image of God. And therefore that has a bearing on how medical treatment should be conducted and how we should care. And the fact that we should care, the hospital system comes from what the knights who actually formed an entire order to give aid, to give hospital care to people during the Crusades.
[00:38:00] I just. Yeah, this is sort of, I mean, what do you say? It's sloganeering. It's not grounded in reality. It's not particularly intelligent stuff. It's. It's not true. And then they go on to make what I think is a truly egregious statement of hypocrisy. And it doesn't end there. They finish with, I think one that's just as egregious when they say this. Finally, it is worth stressing that while caregivers should not defer to a child's preferences in these cases, in other words, that they should absolutely carry out a compulsory forced abortion upon her, they should treat her with compassion and respect appropriate to her age.
[00:38:38] There's nothing compassionate or respectful about killing an unborn child.
[00:38:44] There is no respect or compassion shown to that unborn child. And there is nothing compassionate or Respectful about forcibly killing the child of another human being.
[00:38:57] Nothing about this is compassionate. And this is the madness of this. Woe to you that call evil good and good evil. And this paper is one of the clearest examples I've seen of this in a while.
[00:39:06] They then end their conclusion and I think again, to me, this is just a bit. I read this final statement and I just. My eyes just about fell out when they say this. Caregivers have a moral duty to provide impregnated children with abortion.
[00:39:22] There is no justification for sacrificing the interests of a vulnerable protected person for the interests of. Of another or potential other. And this is the lie that underpins all of the madness and the evil in this paper.
[00:39:42] Caregivers have a moral duty to conduct forced abortions upon children.
[00:39:50] What a truly evil proposition. But it gets worse. There is no justification for sacrificing the interests of vulnerable, protected people, persons for the interests of another or potential other.
[00:40:05] Okay, and you see what's going on here, how this whole thing is constructed by referring to the unborn child, a living innocent human being, as a potential other.
[00:40:17] That allows you to then claim that they are not a vulnerable class of person.
[00:40:23] They are actually, they are the most vulnerable party in all of this.
[00:40:26] And therefore you don't have to claim that they're protected. And therefore you can then go on to say truly reprehensible things like there is no justification for not ending their life and forcing an abortion upon the young girl who is pregnant in the situation. This is truly reprehensible. And the way that you get to this grave level of evil now being publicly argued for, and this is not the only example, there are people who have been arguing openly for some number of years now that infanticide should be considered a morally acceptable practice as well. And the way you get to that same conclusion, or the same way as how you get to that other conclusion around infanticide is the same way you get to this conclusion here about forced abortions on children. You first indoctrinate and ingrain and embed in your culture the gravely evil lie that deliberately ending the lives of unborn children is actually not just a good, but it's a right. And it's all also something now that you should celebrate and that it should be permissible at any time for any reason. All of the various extreme manifestations of that first initial evil, that it's okay to kill an innocent human being. That's where it all began. And, and this is the logical conclusions that people start drawing from this is where this ends up. You embed that evil and it corrupts your culture and it corrupts your ability to reason about moral truth until you find yourself making these truly diabolical and obscene arguments that we see being made in this paper. Thanks for tuning in. Don't forget, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And I'll see you next time on the Dispatchers. Hi there. If you're enjoying our content, then why not consider becoming a paid supporter of our work? You can do that at either Substack or Patreon, and the link for both are in the show notes for this episode. If you do become a supporter, then you'll get access to exclusive content, early release content, and also you'll be helping to fund all of the offline work that we do as well all of the youth camps and the events that we speak at and all that other stuff that happens that you don't see online.
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