Also, follow-up from previous ask about abortion.
Robert McFall was dying of a rare disease and needed a bone marrow transplant. His cousin, David Shimp, was the only compatible match but refused to donate. The court refused to force Shimp to donate. The judge wrote that forcing someone to give up their bodily resources for another member of society (even to save a life) would be "revolting" to the concept of individual rights. This set a legal precedent that moral obligations (the "good" or "kind" thing to do) are separate from legal duties.
Also, in legal theory, many distinguish between a) negative rights (autonomy), or the right to be left alone and free from interference and b) positive rights (right to life), or the right to be provided with something to survive. Most Western legal systems, including the one that decided McFall v. Shimp, prioritize negative rights. They argue that while you have a right to life, you don't have a positive right to someone else's physical resources to sustain it.
And McFall v. Shimp might apply here if we were requiring a person to give up part of their body to save someone’s life but we’re not.
What we’re dealing with is a situation where a healthy person who will continue to live without your interference is being actively and intentionally killed.
Shimp can refuse to donate but he can’t decide to then stab McFall.
The right to life is not the right not to die, but it is the right to live the life of a human being until you die from natural causes or forfeit that right based on your own personal choices. And living the life of a human being requires growing in the womb for nine months.
Here’s another important distinction that those who apply this case to abortion tend to not consider.
Pregnancy doesn’t happen by chance. If a woman is pregnant that means she made the choice to engage in the one act in the world that creates life. She created that baby and put them there. She “forced” that baby into existence and into a situation where her body needs to nurture life for nine months. If she doesn’t want to do that she needs to decide that beforehand and not choose to put herself in a situation where that’s likely to happen. Consent to sex is consent to pregnancy because they go hand in hand and pregnancy is the biological purpose of sex. You cannot decide after the fact and the baby is created that you don’t consent and can therefore kill a person.
Additionally, let’s say Shimp had decided to donate bone marrow. Then, after the transplant and after McFall had already received it, can Shimp later decide he revokes his consent and get it back? No. Because the transplant has already happened. Likewise, once the baby exists you can’t take away consent, especially if doing so requires you to commit an act of violence on another person.
Another thing to consider, what if Shimp had put McFall in the position where he was dying and needed a transplant to survive? Would he be required to donate? No but he would rightfully be charged with murder when McFall died.
In the end, using McFall v Shimp to advocate for abortion doesn’t work and shows a misunderstanding of what abortion is. It is not a situation where donating blood or organs is the topic of controversy because in pregnancy there’s no donation occurring. And the fundamental difference is being ignored. This is not a question of organ donation. This is a question of whether you can actively and intentionally kill your child if you don’t want to provide the necessary duty of care.
The key difference is we’re not talking about not saving the life of a dying person. We’re talking actively murdering a person by removing them from the environment they need to survive with their death being the goal.
The baby is still fully reliant on the mother’s body for several months after birth. So I assume you’d say it’s ok to kill a three month old as well in the name of bodily autonomy?
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