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Abortion & Ben Shapiro

🕑 Added 2019-06-24 16:34:17 +0000 UTC

Comments

Of Winter

There's a lot of layers here. I want to read an essay on it.

This is the video that got me to sub though I should have done it a long time ago. Happy to help you keep making brilliant art.

ok, you got me. I subbed.

Beeblebroxologist

REALLY showing your acting chops there.

Mike

Has Shapiro replied to this beautiful video yet?

Excellent job once again, Olly. I'm proud to support your content even if it's only a little bit. The world needs more of your brand of dissecting and reflecting on ideas.

Amon

Hey Olly, I just joined your Patreon because I revile Youtube’s comments section and couldn’t stand to post this there. Enjoy my spite money! Anyhoo, Solid video, but there is a one point I would have liked to see you address in more detail: that of presumed consent. I.e. “well, they already expressed their bodily autonomy by deciding to have sex, so it follows that they also chose the potential consequences.“ It’s a rhetorical trick I often hear from anti-abortion advocates, and it is conspicuously not accounted for by the violinist analogy because Tom Gently was kidnapped. Thompson’s original essay does cover this point, using a different metaphor and beginning on Pg. 57 with, “But it might be argued…” she continues saying, “If she voluntarily called it into existence, how can she now kill it, even in self-defense? The first thing to be said about this is that it is something new.” That last bit, I think, betrays how long ago the violinist analogy was conceived and how much better the anti-abortion movement has gotten at crafting specious arguments since the Seventies. I definitely get why you selected such an apropos dramatization—Shapiro being violinist is an allusion no self-respecting writer could pass up, and you do touch very briefly on the issue at 15:45 and 21:50. Still, I think it’s crucial when making the autonomy argument to establish that bodily consent IS NOT transitive. It is given on a case by case basis and may be rescinded at any time, for any reason. To graft it onto the existing analogy, a man who agrees to donate a kidney to the ailing violinist can still change his mind right up to the last second. But, maybe I’m picking at nits and bullshit presumed consent arguments are only common to my personal experience. At the very least, writing this will silence the straw man in my head that keeps nattering, “but Gently never agreed to any part of this, so obviously it’s different from abortion because…” Once again, great video. You do good work.