"But I didn't mean to ..."
Let us suppose I have a fancy revolver with twenty chambers. Suppose that we put one bullet in the revolver, in one of the chambers. Suppose also that I and my pal enjoy the frisson of terror and risk that rushes up our spines when we spin the chambers and hold the revolver to the other fellow's head and pull the trigger. Of course, I do not want to kill my friend, and he does not want to kill me. But we are both willing to incur the risk of death to have that spasm of glee and fright.The rest is here.
Now, it won't do to compare our actions to those of, say, a bridge-painter, who knows when he climbs up his ladder that there is a measurable chance that he will fall to his death (it is, I'm told, one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and therefore fabulously well remunerated). That is because the purpose of a ladder is that it be climbed, not that it be fallen from, whereas the very purpose of a gun is to shoot a bullet.Suppose that my friend and I play this game of American Roulette once a year, on one of our birthdays. Now suppose that my friend's number comes up, and I shoot him through the head. By law, and by the moral philosophy that undergirds the law, I do not get to plead that I did not intend his death. Perhaps I did not want him to die, but I certainly did intend the chance that he would die: I intentionally used a weapon against him, a weapon whose purpose it is to kill, and I used it in a way that would ensure his death, if the right chamber came up. It would be up to judge and jury to assess the correct punishment in my case, but as a matter of fact I am a murderer.
Except in the case of rape, there are no "unintended pregnancies," none.
....pregnancies are the result of intention. The problem is that the children are not wanted, and that is a very different thing. For the question we should immediately ask is not, "How do we dispose of this child we do not want?" but "What is wrong with us that we do not want this child?"







<< Home