Warning: Possible Flamewar Question

[sraun]

Can someone explain to me the philosophical, ethical or moral difference between denying someone birth control and denying someone a handgun?

Comments

[joelrosenberg.livejournal.com]

Birth control can only be used to protect the individual from certain negative events -- an unwanted pregnancy caused by force, carelessness, and/or bad luck. The handgun can be used both to prevent some of the same events (pregnancy due to rape, say), but can be used both to prevent other negative events, and, for that matter, to cause ones of significance, something at the very least is less true of the birth control devices. (I guess one could injure somebody with, say, a box full of condoms, or feed somebody enough birth control pills to cause serious damage, but . . .)

Basically, the laws and customs that provide for people to be able to use birth control and/or possess handguns are largely about permitting people choices about controlling part of their own lives. Some people feel that they can make better choices for others as to what they must or should do to lower their chances of being involved in a pregnancy (weasel-wording deliberate; while men don't get pregnant, they often do have involvement in pregnancies and the results thereof, even if they were not willing participants in the sexual activity that led to the pregnancy) or a violent assault; others don't.

So, fundamentally: there's not much of a difference.

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

Well, the short form is that birth control allows a person to control her own body, while a handgun allows a person to control another person.

By denying birth control, a government denies people control over themselves. By denying handguns, a government denies people control over other people, which most philosophers consider the legitimate province of government. "The freedom of your fist ends at my face," to paraphrase one of the American founders. Whether or not handguns are necessary for legitimate control of other people--protecting oneself from criminals--is another issue.

[jiffysquid.livejournal.com]

Well, the short form is that birth control allows a person to control her own body, while a handgun allows a person to control another person.

I think that is part of the debate itself, as there are some that would argue that birth control is allowing a person to control the life of [the potential being]. Its most obvious in the abortion debate with things like "its not a choice, its a child", but there are people who hold the same attitude about birth control interfering in divine will and so forth.

So some of the difference may also lie in who someone takes the control 'away from' by choosing to use birth control or choosing to own a gun.

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

Should we forbid people to be willfully abstinent, then? Because that too prevents "potential people" from coming into being, possibly thwarting "divine will." Speaking as someone abstinent by choice for rather many years, I decline to be raped to allow God a chance to make me pregnant. If it's that important to Him, He can repeat a 2000 year old miracle.

[azurelunatic]

It's a lot easier to kill a grown person with a handgun than with birth control.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Actually, once you get the condom completely over their head, the victim expires fairly quickly.

[joelrosenberg.livejournal.com]

Or fill up the lungs with contraceptive gel. Still, I think, there's a difference. And, while I tend to be critical of the anti-self-defense left, they are -- by and large, with some exceptions -- pro-abortion-choice, and it seems to me that it's pretty darned generous of them. If they're going to deny a woman the best means to prevent herself from being raped, they at least would permit her an abortion, so that in addition to the other sequelae of the rape, she isn't also burdened with an unwanted pregnancy.

How old a someone?

[p-o-u-n-c-e-r.livejournal.com]

We deny supposedly incompetent minors all sorts of things. Cigaretters, control of an automobile, access to porn, booze ... yes, the right to buy (if not the right to possess) firearms, and in some jurisdictions the right to buy (though not necessarily the right to have prescribed with parental consent) various bio-active pharmaceuticals, including birth control drugs. There are differences between jurisdictions about the question of at what age a minor becomes a competent adult for which purposes ... And some consequently odd circumstances arise, where a young person IS permitted to drive a car but not shoot a gun, or is permitted to buy an abortion without parental notification but is not permitted to buy a cigarrette. But the law is often odd.

Among adults, in the US, the only difference is that the right to a handgun is better enshrined in the black-letter constitutional law of the constitution's 2nd amendment, than the right to privacy regarding sexual activity and reproductive decisions, derived from among the unenumerated rights secured by the 9th.

Oh, but if you are impoverished and can't afford to exercise your constitutional right to an abortion -- like the 6th amendement right to have an attorney -- then the government will pay for one for you. But if you can't afford to buy a sword or firearms, you're out of luck. Tough noogies when the Klan's Night Riders come along, but there it is...

[gramina.livejournal.com]

One is designed to affect your own body; the other is designed to affect someone else's.

Therefore, the ethical reasoning in allowing either to anyone must be different. (Note: the conclusions may or may not be the same; it's the path that's different.)

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Well, that's an interesting exercise, but I'll be a bit surprised if you get anything useful.

I can't begin to address it without an explication of "denying." Who does the denying? Are the circumstances under which one is denied or allowed the objects the same? (For example, right now some but not all methods of birth control require one to have a certain form of legal "permission": a prescription from a licensed doctor; would there be an analogous situation for handguns?) Is the denial universal (i.e., all forms of birth control and all handguns? to everyone? under all circumstances?)?

Re: PFQ

[(Anonymous)]

Part of this depends on what you mean by "birth control". The Pill, spermicidal foams, condoms, etc., prevent fertilization. IUDs, arguably, abort a pregnancy by preventing implantation of the zygote.

However, it appears to me that the core of the question relates to the uses of BC and guns as self-defense. BC defends one against the possibility of having a child; a gun defends against the possibility of economic or physical harm from a criminal.

Birth control, then, is narrowly focussed, and has no significant potential for misuse. A gun has a wider scope (no pun intended), and can be misused for criminal purposes.

I don't know about philosophical differences, but ethically and morally there is no difference; in each case, denial inhibits the ability of a person to defend himself.

Mark Hagerman (Ann Totusek's hubbie)