Author: Michael LaBossiere

Artists often claim to have a special relationship that gives them rights over their art even after it has been sold. One example involved artist David Phillips and Fidelity. Fidelity hired Phillips to create a sculpture park and then the company wanted to make changes to it.  With neither side willing to compromise, Phillips sued Fidelity alleging the changes would mutilate his work. A famous example occurred in 1958 when the owner of the mobile Pittsburgh donated it to Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County. Alexander Calder, the creator of the mobile, unsuccessfully opposed the plan to repaint the black and white mobile green and gold.  In 1969 sculptor Takis (Panayotis Vassilakis) tried to remove his work from New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. He claimed he had the right to determine how his art was exhibited—even after it had been sold.  A more recent example involves watches.

 Dann Thorleifsson and Arne Leivsgard, founders of the Kanske watch brand, purchased painter Tal R’s Paris Chic and claimed they wanted to cut it into pieces for watch faces. The painting was selected because it is considered a masterpiece and thus might justify the price they intended to charge for the watch. The two have purchased paintings by other famous Danish artists for the same purpose. Tal R condemned the project and won an injunction in court.  While the court battle sorted out the legal issue, the philosophically problem is determining what rights an artist retains over their work once they have sold it.

One approach is to consider selling a work of art like selling other goods. Suppose Sally hires Jane to paint the interior of her house. After the work is done, Sally decides she has changed her mind about one room and plans to have it repainted.  Suppose Jane demands the room be left unchanged because she painted the room. Imagine that Sally learns Jane intends to buy a new laptop with what Sally paid her. Sally does not like this and demands that Jane give the money to charity.  While Sally’s demand is absurd, it seems no more absurd than Jane’s. Either both have a right to control their former property or neither has that right.

It seems reasonable to see this as a change of ownership and hence a change of control: Sally now owns Jane’s painting and Jane now owns Sally’s money. Neither has a right to tell the other what she can do with her property.

If the analogy holds, an artist who wishes to retain the right to control their work must place such restrictions in the agreement. To insist on new conditions after the sale would be unfair, as the above analogy shows.

It might be objected that the artist has a special relationship with their art that places it beyond the realm of mere commerce. This relationship gives an artist the right to control their work even after selling it. A seemingly reasonable reply is that when the artist sells their work, they have made it a commercial commodity. They cannot consistently accept payment and insist that art is special. They cannot have their cake and sell it too.

It might be claimed that a work of art has an inherent right not to be altered and even if it is sold, it retains this right. But a work of art does not intuitively seem to be an entity that can have rights. While it is reasonable to suppose that people and animals have rights, it seems odd to assert that a non-sentient thing has rights, even if it is a great work of art. After all, rights against harm are usually based on an ability to suffer and while art might cause suffering, art cannot suffer. Thus, the burden of proof rests on those who claim that a work of art has such a right. So, some other approach is needed.

A practical approach is to focus on the contract between the artist and the buyer. This could be a legal document or informal agreement that specifies how the work can be used. Following Socrates this contract would hold as long as it was not the result of force or fraud.

But contracts cannot and should not be expected to cover every possible situation. As such there is the question of which rights should be assumed to be possessed by the artist and buyer, even if they are not specified in the contract. This involves sorting out the moral default of what can be done with a work of art after it has been sold. This is, of course, focused on unique works rather than mass produced copies. For example, buying a copy of a Harry Potter book from Amazon is different from buying an original painting. In the case of the book, you own a copy but not the work itself.

A right to resell is clearly a basic right, unless otherwise specified in an explicit contract. After all, what can be rightly sold can be rightly sold again unless there is a relevant difference between the sales.  The right to destroy a work also seems to be a right one acquires upon purchasing something. There can be moral limits here, as in the case of buying a pet or in the means of destruction. While Tal R would prefer that the painting not be destroyed, he initially agreed that the owners had the right to do this. The point of dispute was that the owners wanted to use the painting to create watches that would be sold as art and Tal R opposed this.

Taking Tal R’s painting and using it to create new art without his consent would not be work by Tal R, but a forced collaboration. It could even be argued that it would no longer be a work by Tal R, since Tal R would not be participating in the creation. While watches could be made that include cut up pieces of Tal R’s painting, they should not be considered works by the artist. They have no responsibility for the work if it is created without their consent for.

As such, the owners of the painting can sell the unmodified original as a work by Tal R, but to use the painting to create new works to sell as works involving Tal R would be wrong and inaccurate. The same would hold of other works. For example, if an author sells their book to a company and the company then decides to split up the chapters and combine them with the works of other authors to create numerous books to sell as works by that author, then this would be both inaccurate and wrong.

The owners of the painting could have taken the view that the watches are not a derived work while cashing in on the artist’s status. In defense of this approach, one could draw an analogy to cutting up any valuable item, such as a jersey worn by a famous athlete and selling the pieces as collectable objects. In this case, a watch would not be a collaboration, but an expensive container for a fragment of the work and this would have an impact on the artist’s rights. In such a case, it would not be a forced collaboration, but a division of the work for resale and this would be harder to argue against.

 

For years, Republicans have warned voters Democrats will take their guns. The Democrats have never done this. But back in 2019 Beto O’Rourke spoke the words long prophesized by Republicans: “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.” This, obviously enough, never came to pass. But as gun violence is an ongoing problem, the issue of taking away guns remains. While there is the legal question, that is best left to the lawyers. My focus will be on the ethics of the matter. While “assault weapon” and “assault rifle” are not well defined, I’ll rely on the imprecise intuitive understanding of these terms. Fine distinctions of definition can matter but should not impact the broader moral issue.

As this is a matter of ethics on a national scale, it is reasonable to take a utilitarian approach: would taking away assault weapons create more good than bad? On the positive side, proponents of taking away guns note they are the favored weapon for mass shootings. Their high-capacity magazines make them ideal for rapidly killing people, which is what they were designed to do. As such, if assault weapons were taken away, mass shootings would probably have fewer casualties as potential killers would need to rely on other firearms. While one could work out rate-of-fire calculations for all weapons to determine the likely impact of an absence of assault weapons, it makes sense that the body count would be lower. This is the strongest moral argument in favor of taking guns: it would reduce the number of people killed. But not as much as people might think. While assault weapons get special attention, handguns are used the most in killings. So, while an assault weapon ban could reduce the number of deaths, it would not impact the leading types of gun deaths.

While it might seem cold, it must be said that we (collectively) tolerate deaths that could be prevented by banning dangerous things. One obvious example is banning private vehicles in favor of public transportation.  That would save thousands of lives. Banning swimming pools would also save lives, mostly those of children. But we do not ban these things because when we weigh the deaths against other factors, the other factors win. We thus tolerate thousands of deaths for economic reasons, convenience and enjoyment. As such, the same consideration should be given to assault weapons.

On the positive side, assault weapons do have economic value since they are manufactured and sold. People enjoy owning, modifying and using them. They do have some use as hunting and defense weapons. On the face of it, saying these positive aspects outweigh human lives seems heartless. But as noted above, this same reasoning is applied to many other dangerous things. If, for example, you drive a car, then you find the risk of killing or injuring people acceptable.

So, moral consistency requires people who support taking away guns to apply the same principle to all dangerous things, which would morally require us to ban cars and many other things. Some people will see this as reasonable as there are those who would prefer a world free of automobiles.

The negatives of taking away guns must also be considered. There are people in the “cold dead fingers” camp who say they will fight to the death for their guns. As such, efforts to take guns would result in some deaths and these must be included in the moral calculation. On the pragmatic side, there is also the cost to take weapons. Even if the state steals them without financial compensation, it will still be expensive to take guns. If the state compensates the owners, there could be a significant financial cost, and this would also need to be factored into the calculation.

My adopted state of Florida, like many other states, is trying to address the problem of school shootings. Since the state legislature is not inclined to address the gun part of shootings, the focus has been on security: armed guards in schools, hardened facilities, cameras, monitoring social media, and software designed to collect and collate data on students. Having recently reread Harry Harrison’s sci-fi novel Deathworld, I was struck by the similarities between the story and Florida’s approach to school shootings. In the novel, a human colony is struggling to survive a world of ever-increasing hostility. The colonists respond to the threat by hardening the colony structures and arming the colonists, even the children.

The main character of the novel is an outsider who can see the situation from a different perspective.  He does not simply accept constant danger as a fact of life, nor does he assume that the only response should be improving the colony’s defenses. Instead, he considers the cause of the violence and asks the critical question: why is the colony under attack? When he asks the question, he is met with incredible hostility and even violence. For the colonists, to consider why it is happening and to consider other options are seen as unthinkable awful.

This is like how Florida and other states are approaching school shootings: the focus is on shoring up the defenses of schools and countering the threat of guns in schools by putting armed guards in schools.

While many Republicans are willing to blame video games, the internet and mental illness for mass shootings, efforts to determine the actual causes are met with denial and hostility. For example, the Dickey amendment has effectively prevented the use of federal funds to research gun violence.

It could be contended that the Republicans are offering explanations, although they have (like the colonists) focused entirely on armed defense. While it is certainly true that they are putting forth explanations, these explanations have no real merit, as has been argued in previous essays.

Democrats tend to focus on guns as a cause, which leads some pro-gun people to chant the mantra that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” On the one hand, this is true: guns are tools that lack moral agency, they do not kill (aside from accidents) unless they are used by a person to kill.  Guns are not like cursed magical swords that can kill on their own or force their wielders to commit murder and most gun owners never engage in gun violence. People can obviously also kill by means other than guns. Knifes, bombs and vehicles are popular tools of murder around the world.

On the other hand, to “say guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and use that to justify doing nothing about guns is like to saying, “drugs don’t get people high, people get people high.” If this logic works for guns, then it would apply to drugs and to anything people can use in a dangerous way, such as poison, radioactive material, and anthrax.  As such if this mantra warrants doing nothing about guns, then it warrants doing nothing about anything people use to harm themselves or others. This approach is an option and some drugs have, in fact, been decriminalized and even legalized, so perhaps the same should apply to guns as well. But this analogy does have value as almost everyone has easy access to drugs, but most people do not use heroin.

While it is true that if there were no drugs, there would be no drug problem there is the obvious fact that there is more to the drug problem than the existence of drugs. As such, simply getting rid of drugs would not solve the problems that lead people to use drugs. In the novel, the hero learns that the planetary life is trying to kill the colonists because the colonists are killers. Ironically, the more they try to solve the problem with guns and security, the worse the problem becomes. So perhaps getting rid of guns would solve the problem of gun violence.

Eliminating all guns would (obviously) eliminate gun violence but would not address why people engage in that violence and people can, as they have done, turn to other means to engage in violence. An obvious reply is that eliminating guns would significantly reduce violence, even if it would obviously not eliminate all of it. This is what happens in the novel. When the colonists change their approach, everything is not perfect, but the colony is much safer.

One the face of it, it is reasonable to think a mass shooter must have “something wrong” with them. Well-adjusted, moral people do not engage in mass murder. But are mass shooters mentally ill? The nature of mental illness is a medical matter, not a matter for common sense pop psychology or philosophers to resolve. But critical thinking can be applied to the claim that mass shootings are caused by mental illness.

Using the strict medical definition, mentally ill people do not make up the majority of mass shooters and about 3% of violent criminals are mentally ill. Research consistently shows that the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence rather than perpetrators. Violence on the part of the mentally ill tends to be self-directed rather than directed at others.

Self-injury is a matter of concern, but mass shootings and gun violence are not primarily a mental health issue. While the mentally ill commit some gun violence, focusing on mental illness as the primary means to reduce gun violence would be an error, except to address cases of self-harm.

It could be objected that the definition of mental illness used above is too narrow and that engaging in a mass shooting is evidence of mental illness because a sane person would not do such a thing. While this has some appeal, expanding the scope of mental illness to automatically include those who engage in mass shootings would be problematic.

One obvious concern is that soldiers and police could thus be classified as mentally ill simply by being involved in shootings on par with a mass shooting. It could be countered that soldiers and the police (usually) use violence legally and rationally while mass shooters and people engaging in other gun violence do not. While it is true that mass shootings and gun violence are illegal, mass shooters do often act from grievances and ideology, just as soldiers and police are sent to kill over grievances and in accord with an ideology. As such, killing people for these reasons does not make someone mentally ill, unless we want to classify combat veterans and some police officers as automatically mentally ill. As far as the legal aspect is concerned, breaking the law hardly seems to show someone is mentally ill, otherwise all criminals would be insane and thus would always succeed in the insanity defense.

A second concern is that assuming mass shooters are mentally ill would eliminate the role of evil. If people do mass shooting things because of mental illness, then they are not evil in a morally meaningful sense. While this could be true, such an approach to evil would need to be applied consistently and not just to mass shootings. So, for example, when terrorists crash planes into buildings or blow up a wedding, they are suffering from mental illness and are not evil. One could attempt to work out accounts of ethics and mental illness that put the blame for gun violence on mental illness while putting the blame for terrorism on evil, but this would be challenging. After all, if a white supremacist kills people because he is mentally ill, then the same would apply to a member of ISIS. Interesting enough, while Republicans and the NRA rush to blame mass shootings on mental illness, they do not do the same for terrorism or other crime and it is interesting to compare the rhetoric used by the same pundit or politicians to describe these situations. This is not to say that a case cannot be made for eliminating the concept of evil in favor of the concept of mental illness, but this must be done in a principled manner and applied consistently.

Considering the above discussion, the mental illness explanation for mass shootings (and gun violence) is not adequate. While seriously addressing mental illness would be laudable, it would not eliminate mass shootings and would have an insignificant impact on most violence (other than self-inflicted violence). This is not to say that mental illness should not be addressed, it absolutely should. But claiming mental illness explains gun violence is an error and a distraction from addressing the causes of gun violence.

My name is Dr. Michael LaBossiere, and I am reaching out to you on behalf of the CyberPolicy Institute at Florida A&M University (FAMU). Our team of professors, who are fellows with the Institute, have developed a short survey aimed at gathering insights from professionals like yourself in the IT and healthcare sectors regarding healthcare cybersecurity.

The purpose of The Florida A&M University Cyber Policy Institute (Cyπ) is to conduct interdisciplinary research that documents technology’s impact on society and provides leaders with reliable information to make sound policy decisions. Cyπ will help produce faculty and students who will be future experts in many areas of cyber policy. https://www.famu.edu/academics/cypi/index.php

Your expertise and experience are invaluable to us, and we believe that your participation will significantly contribute to our research paper. The survey is designed to be brief and should take no more than ten minutes to complete. Your responses will help us better understand the current security landscape and challenges faced by professionals in your field, ultimately guiding our efforts to develop effective policies and solutions for our paper. We would be happy to share our results with you.

To participate in the survey, please click on the following link: https://qualtricsxmfgpkrztvv.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8J8gn6SAmkwRO5w

We greatly appreciate your time and input. Should you have any questions or require further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at michael.labossiere@famu.edu

Thank you for your consideration and support.

Best regards,

Dr. Yohn Jairo Parra Bautista, yohn.parrabautista@famu.edu

Dr. Michael C. LaBossiere, michael.labossiere@famu.edu

Dr. Carlos Theran, carlos.theran@famu.edu

 

Politicians recognize the political value of mass shootings, with Republicans trying their best to prevent Democrats using these events to pass gun control laws. When a mass shooting occurs, two standard Republican tactics are to assert that it is not time to talk about gun control and to accuse Democrats of trying to score political points. I will consider each of these in turn.

The assertion that after a mass shooting is not the right time to talk about gun control does have some merit. Emotional decisions made in haste are usually worse than those resulting from cool and deliberate consideration. A good example of this is the flood of laws passed in response to 9/11. That said, there is a negative side to waiting as motivation and political will can fade until nothing is ever done. When people debated acting against slavery in the United States, there was a similar dispute between those who proposed gradualism and those who demanded action. Those in favor of immediate action often used an analogy to rescuing people from a fire: gradually removing them from a burning house would be a terrible idea. Likewise for addressing slavery and, perhaps, gun violence.

One response to Republicans who use this tactic is to point out that they do not hold to it consistently. While they say this after every mass shooting, they do not take the same approach in other situations of intense emotion and calls for hasty action. As such, they are obviously using the “not the time” rhetorical device rather than following a principle of when action should take place. The goal of this rhetorical device is not to call for calm deliberation but to delay action or prevent action. To be fair, Democrats who use this rhetorical tactic against Republicans in other areas are equally guilty. Now to the second tactic.

When the Democrats try to act in response to a mass shooting, Republican politicians often accuse them of trying to score political points and of playing politics. Ironically, in making this accusation they are trying to score political points by accusing the other side of trying to score political points.

On the one hand, this charge has merit. If a Democrat is just cynically using a mass shooting politically and does not care otherwise, then they would be justly accused of playing politics. But the motivation of a politician is just relevant to a moral assessment of the person and is  irrelevant to whether the their claims are true and whether their proposals are good.

Attacking someone for playing politics and rejecting their claims would be a type of ad hominem which could be called the “accusation of playing politics fallacy.” The form is as follows:

 

Premise 1: Politician A accuses politician B of trying to score political points by playing politics about subject S.

Premise 2: Politician B makes claim C about subject S.

Conclusion: Claim C is false.

 

This is obviously bad logic. Even if one politician is trying to score political points, this does not prove that their claim is not true. While assessing their motives is relevant to assessing their ethics, their motives have no bearing on their claim being true or false.

The “accusation of playing politics” can also be a rhetorical device—it is a type of red herring in which one tries to switch the discussion from one issue to another. In the case of mass shootings, the goal is to switch the issue from whether there should be more gun control to whether Democrats are playing politics. The end game is, of course, to keep attention away from the original issue.

This is not to deny that Democrats and Republicans are playing politics. Democrats do try to use mass shootings to get more gun laws passed, Republicans try to prevent this with the two methods described above. Some pro-gun people also try to score political points off mass shootings by appealing to fear that the Democrats will try to do something about mass shootings. But what is important, at least to people who would prefer fewer mass shootings, is addressing the problem of mass shootings and gun violence. This does require doing politics and the time to do so, as always, is now

When a mass shooting occurs, Republican politicians blame mental illness or video games. Placing the blame on video games makes use of an argument that dates back at least to Plato. In the Republic, Plato argues that exposure to art can have a corrupting effect, making people more likely to engage in bad behavior. While Plato focused mainly on the corrupting influence of tragedy (which could cause people to fall victim to inappropriate sadness) he also discussed the corrupting influence of fictional violence. As he saw it, exposure to fictional violence could incline people to real violence. Plato’s solution to the threat was to ban such art from his ideal city.

This argument has some appeal. People are influenced by experiences and repeated exposure to fictional violence could affect how a person feels and thinks. Exposure to non-fiction, such as hateful speech, writings and tweets could influence a person in negative ways. The critical question is whether the influence of video games can be a causal factor in violence, especially a mass shooting.

Determining whether video games are a causal factor in mass shootings involves assessing causation in a population. The challenge is showing whether there would be more mass shootings in a population if everyone played video games than if no one did. If there is a statistically significant difference, then video games can would have a causal influence on violent behavior. So, let us consider this matter.

If video games were a statistically significant causal factor for mass shootings, then we would expect to see the number of mass shootings varying with the number of video game players in a country. While the United States is a leader in both video game revenues and mass shootings, other countries also have large populations of gamers, yet do not have a corresponding level of mass shootings. As such, video games would not seem to be a significant causal factor in mass shootings.

This does not prove that video games are not a factor at all. Perhaps video games combined with other factors do cause mass shootings. So, we need to look at the differences between the United States and other countries to see what factors combine with video games to cause mass shootings. Now, If video games play a causal role in mass shootings, the question is the extent to which they have this effect.

About 67% of Americans play video games of one form or another. But the concern is not with video games but with violent video games like Call of Duty and Fortnite. While most Americans do not play these games, millions of Americans do. The overwhelming majority of people who play violent video games never become mass shooters. As such, if violent video games do have causal influence, it must be extremely limited, otherwise mass shootings would be more common.

Some politicians have tried to make use of the method of difference to argue that video games are causing mass shootings. This method involves comparing cases in which an effect has occurred to similar cases in which the effect did not occur and finding a plausible difference that could be the cause. This method is a good one but must be used with care to avoid falling into error. The gist of the argument made by these politicians is to conclude that violent video games cause mass shootings because mass shootings increased when violent video games were created. Because of the difference between before and after, video games are taken to be a causal factor.

While it is true that the number of mass shootings correlates with the number of violent video games available (both have increased over the years), correlation is not causation. After all, the number of tech startups has also increased, yet it would be absurd to conclude that they are causing mass shootings. To simply assert that since mass shootings increased as more violent video games appeared would be to commit the cum hoc fallacy, that because two things correlate, there must be a causal connection. This does not entail that violent video games do not play a role, but more is needed than mere correlation. As argued above, there seems to be no significant causal connection between violent video games and mass shootings; they merely happen to correlate as do many other things.

While blaming video games has political value, it does nothing to address the problem of mass shooting since there seems to be no meaningful causal connection between real violence and video games.

Image by Binarysequence

Back in 2019, the Smithsonian did a retrospective in honor of the 40th birthday of the Walkman. While an impressive innovation, the Walkman is a single function device: it only plays cassette tapes. Yet it triggered cries of technological doom that are being echoed today.

While unable to record, the Walkman was used to play mixtapes, and the music industry saw this as a threat. While many awful mixtapes were mixed, the industry somehow survived. With each new technological innovation, the cry of doom echoed across the world again and again. And yet the day the music died has not arrived. As such, we should heed the lesson of the Walkman: dire predictions of doom should be made more cautiously. That said, technology can be a terrible swift sword and the challenge is to sort out what it is likely to slay and what it will spare

The Walkman was also symbolically to insult the youth.  Der Spiegel called it “A technology for a generation with nothing left to say.” But the Walkman generation had a lot to say, and the prophecy of silence did not come true. With the invention of the smart phone and tablet, this same story played out again. And it will happen again with the next innovation.

 Regardless of technology, the youth of today are always claimed to be the worst generation. They are also supposed to lack the virtues that their elders supposedly possessed in their youth. When I was a kid, we didn’t rot our brains wit smart phones. We did it with TV and the Walkman. But if every generation of youth were as terrible as claimed, the elders would also lack virtue since today’s elders are yesterday’s youth. Before claiming that the youth of today are terrible, think back on what your elders said of you.

The Walkman was supposed to “rot” the brains of the youth, just like TV only by using audio. Alan Bloom, the philosopher of doom and gloom, wrote in The Closing of the American Mind about  youth defiled by the walkman, “a pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms.” He predicted that “As long as they have the Walkman on, they cannot hear what the great tradition has to say.” Having grown up during the height of the Walkman era, I can assure readers that the Walkman did not have this effect. In addition to people listening to the classics on tapes, many people read the classic while listening to their Walkman, just as people did with their Victrola, Gramophone, or stereo. The Walkman of today is the smart phone, and the worry is that the youth will be swiping rather than throbbing. But the truth is that the youth do read the classics on screens (and on paper) and that the dire predictions will no more come true now than they have in the past. AI is also being presented as a brain rotting technology, although it is something accessed through existing technology, including phones.

Looking back at the Walkman, there is a law governing the emergence of new entertainment technology and the societal response. It is created, dire predictions are made, it becomes a symbol used when bemoaning how bad the youth are today, and then another generation is born, and new technology emerges. The process repeats itself. The Walkman users were judged to be the “throbbing youth”, now they are the judges. The smartphone kids are growing up to judge their kids, making dire predictions about whatever they think is rotting the brains of the youth.

It is worth considering that technology will be developed that will fulfil these prophecies of doom, that really does degrade, corrupt and isolate the youth. But until then, the cycle will continue.

In the previous essay I drew an analogy between the ethics of abortion and the ethics of migration. In this essay, I will develop the analogy more and do so with a focus on the logic of the analogy. Because everyone loves logic.

Strictly presented, an analogical argument will have three premises and a conclusion. The first two premises (attempt to) establish the analogy by showing that the things in question are similar in certain respects.  The third premise establishes the additional fact known about one thing and the conclusion asserts that because the two things are alike in other respects, they are alike in this additional respect. Here is the form of the argument:

 

Premise 1: X has properties P, Q, and R.

Premise 2: Y has properties P, Q, and R.

Premise 3: X has property Z as well.

Conclusion: Y has property Z

 

X and Y are variables that stand for whatever is being compared, such as rats and humans or Hitler and that politician you hate. P, Q, R, and Z are also variables, but they stand for properties or qualities, such as having a heart. The use of P, Q, and R is just for the sake of the illustration as the things being compared might have more properties in common.

It is easy to make a moral argument using an argument from analogy. To argue that Y is morally wrong, find an X that is already accepted as being wrong and show how Y is like X. To argue that Y is morally good, find an X that is already accepted as morally good and show how Y is like X. To be a bit more formal, here is how the argument would look:

 

Premise 1: X has properties P, Q, and R.

                    Premise 2: Y has properties P, Q, and R.

                    Premise 3: X is morally good (or morally wrong).

                    Conclusion: Y is morally good (or morally wrong).

 

The strength of an analogical argument depends on three factors. To the degree that an analogical argument meets these standards it is a strong argument. If it fails to meet these standards, then it is weak. If it is weak enough, then it would be fallacious. There is no exact point at which an analogical argument becomes fallacious, however the standards do provide an objective basis for making this assessment.

First, the more properties X and Y have in common, the better the argument. This standard is based on the commonsense notion that the more two things are alike in other ways, the more likely it is that they will be alike in some other way. It should be noted that even if the two things are very much alike in many respects, there is still the possibility that they are not alike regarding Z.

Second, the more relevant the shared properties are to property Z, the stronger the argument. A specific property, for example P, is relevant to property Z if the presence or absence of P affects the likelihood that Z will be present.

Third, it must be determined whether X and Y have relevant dissimilarities as well as similarities. The more dissimilarities and the more relevant they are, the weaker the argument.

In the case of drawing a moral analogy between the ethics of abortion and migration, the challenges are to determine the properties that make them alike and to establish the relevant moral status of abortion.

Since my goal is to show that those who already think abortion is morally wrong should also think expelling migrant children is wrong, I can assume (for the sake of the argument) that abortion is wrong. The next step is showing that abortion and expelling migrant children are alike enough to create a strong analogy.

Opponents of abortion tend to argue that human life has intrinsic worth and often speak in terms of a life being precious and a sacred gift from God. Since they tend to believe that a child exists at or soon after conception, it follows that the wrongness of abortion stems from the harm done to that precious life and sacred gift. While some opponents of abortion do allow exceptions for incest and rape, some do not and  reject abortion even if the pregnancy occurs against the mother’s will. Obviously enough, all opponents of abortion agree that in most cases the mother should be compelled to bear the child, even if they do not want to and even when doing so would cause them some harm. One way to see this is that the child has a right to remain where it is, even when it got there without the consent of the owner of the womb (the mother) and when she does not want it to remain.  What, then, are the similarities between abortion and expelling child migrants?

While this makes for a very problematic analogy, one could note that a child who is brought into the United States illegally would be like a child implanted in a woman (or girl) by rape. That is, their presence is the result of an illegal act and is against the will of the host. While expelling a fetus would certainly (given current technology) result in death, expelling a migrant child generally results in harm and can result, indirectly, in death. As such, if abortion is wrong for the above reasons, then expelling migrant children would be wrong, even if they were brought into the United States illegally.

There are a few obvious ways to counter this reasoning. One is to focus on the distinction between expelling a fetus and expelling a migrant child. As noted above, the fetus will certainly die during an abortion, but expelling a migrant child back into danger does cause certain death. This requires taking the moral position that only certain death matters. Interestingly, if artificial wombs became available, then abortion opponents who take the only death matters view would have to accept that a woman would have every right to expel a fetus into an artificial  womb, if death was not certain. That is, if the odds of the fetus would be comparable to the odds of a child being expelled back into a dangerous region.

A second difference is that migrant children are already born, so they are not unborn children. Those who are anti-abortion are often unconcerned about what happens to born children and mothers (anti-abortion states tend to have the highest infant mortality rates), so it would be “consistent” for them to not be concerned about the fate of migrant children. This requires accepting the moral view that what matters is preventing abortion and that once birth occurs, moral concern ends. While not an impossible view, it does seem rather difficult to defend in a consistent manner. As such, those who oppose abortion in all cases would need to accept that expelling migrant children into danger would be morally wrong and they should oppose this with the same vehemence with which they oppose abortion. But what about anti-abortion folks who allow abortion in the case of rape and incest?

Those who oppose abortion but make exceptions for cases of rape and incest would seem to be able to consistently advocate expelling migrant children, even when doing so would put them in danger. This is because they hold to what seems to be a consistent principle: if a child is present against the will of the property owner and as the result of a crime, then the child can be expelled even if this results in death whether this is an abortion or expelling a child who is an illegal migrant. But if the child is present due to consensual activity, then it would be wrong to expel the child.

While sexual consent can be a thorny issue, migration consent is even more problematic. After all, there is the question about what counts as consensual migration. On the face of it, one could simply go with the legal view: those who cross the border illegally are here without consent and can be expelled. But there is the fact that American business and others actively invite migrants to cross the border and want them here, thus seeming to grant a form of consent. Also, people can (or could) legally cross the border to seek asylum, thus there is legal consent for such people, which includes migrant children. So, the matter is less clear cut. But even if we stick with strict legality, then asylum seekers are still here with consent and hence expelling their children is morally like abortion: children are being harmed by being expelled. As such, those who hold an anti-abortion position are obligated to also oppose expelling migrant children if they arrived seeking asylum.

It is worth noting that if the analogy holds, it will also seem to hold in reverse. That is, a person who is opposed to expelling migrant children because of the harm it would do to them would seem to also need to oppose abortion. Pro-choice pro-migrant folks do have a way to get out of this. They can argue that while migrant children are clearly people and hence have that moral status, a developing fetus does not have that moral status and hence the choice of the woman trumps the rights (if any) of the fetus. This is a consistent position since the pro-choice pro-migrant person holds that people have rights, but that the fetus is not a person. In contrast, the anti-abortion anti-migrant person is in something of a bind; they need to argue that unborn fetuses have a greater moral status than already born migrant children.  But they are usually comfortable with claiming that an unborn fetus has the same or more rights than the mother, so this is probably not a problem for them.

As J.S. Mill pointed out in his writing on liberty, people usually do not follow consistent principles. Instead, they act based on likes and dislikes, which often arise from misinformation and disinformation. Comparing the view of many Republicans on abortion to their view of on immigration illustrates this clearly.

To use a concrete example, Alabama passed a very restrictive anti-abortion law that even forbids abortion in the case of rape. Proponents of the law, such as Alabama governor Kay Ivey, claimed the motivation behind the law is to protect life. As the governor said, “to the bill’s many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.”

On the face of it, the principle is that because each life is precious and a sacred gift, if a man impregnates a woman (or girl), then she is obligated to host the zygote until birth. The expenses and risks of doing so fall on the woman (or girl). The United States government does little to assist pregnant women. Looked at in the abstract, the principle is that if a child manages to get inside a certain area, then there is an obligation on the part of the owner of that area to care for that child until the child can safely exit the area. If removing the child would kill or harm the child, then the child cannot be removed, perhaps regardless of how the child got there.

This principle would seem to also apply to migrant children who enter the United States, even if they are brought here illegally and against the will of the United States. Once they get within the United States, if expelling them would lead to harm, then the United States is obligated to care for them until they can safely exit the United States. After all, if the principle permits compelling women to bear a child from rape, then it surely permits compelling the United States to care for migrant children who are here illegally. At least until the children can safely leave the country.

It could be objected that abortion always kills a child while expelling a migrant child from the United States will probably not kill them. Hence the analogy fails. One reply is to argue that if every life is precious and a sacred gift, then even harming a precious, sacred gift would be wrong. That is, the principle isn’t “killing them would be wrong, but anything else is okay” but that each precious life must be treated as a sacred gift and one does not throw a sacred gift out.

 But making the strongest analogy requires considering only cases in which expulsion would result in death. There are migrant children (and adults) who are likely to be killed if they are sent back. It could be countered that, unlike abortion, they do have a chance of surviving. If so, the principle would have to be “each life is precious and a sacred gift, but this only entails that children should not be exposed to certain death. Likely death or great harm is morally okay.” While this is certainly a principle that one could hold, it is not commendable.

 As such, there would seem to be two options for anti-abortion folks who also want to be anti-migrant. The first is to consistently apply their avowed principle and accept immigrants when their expulsion would be likely to result in their harm. Or, if they want to be extremely strict, their deaths. The second option would be to abandon or modify their principle so that it applies only to abortion but not to migrants. The challenge is doing so in a manner that is not ad hoc or begs the question. For example, just saying that the principle only applies to the bodies of women but not to the United States would be ad hoc, as would saying that only zygotes deserve to be protected. It is worth noting that those who are pro-choice and pro-migrant would also need to consider the possible conflict between their principles as well.

One might also suspect that some anti-abortion folks are not motivated by a desire to protect “sacred, precious life” but have other, less laudable, motivations. Such people could easily reconcile being anti-abortion with being anti-migrant, perhaps by holding the principle that the state’s power should be used to harm people they dislike.