How can the pro-death outlook's deprivation of choice, help sway pro-lifers'?

Question

Source: Benatar, David. Better Never to Have Been (2008 1 edn). p. 162 Middle.

  The pro-death view should be of interest even to those who do not accept it. One of its valuable features is that it offers a unique challenge to those pro-lifers who reject a legal right to abortion.⁴⁰ Whereas a legal pro-choice position does not require a pro-lifer to have an abortion—it allows a choice—a legal pro-life position does prevent a pro-choicer from having an abortion. Those who think that the law should embody the pro-life position might want to ask themselves what they would say about a lobby group that, contrary to my arguments in Chapter 4 but in accordance with pro-lifers’ commitment to the restriction of procreative freedom, recommended that the law become pro-death. A legal pro-death policy would require even pro-lifers to have abortions. Faced with this idea, legal pro-lifers might have a newfound interest in the value of choice.

 ⁴⁰ Lest it be thought that all pro-lifers, by definition, oppose a legal right to abortion, I should note that one can embrace the pro-life position as the correct moral position, but think that people should nonetheless have a legal right to choose. The distinction is between one’s personal moral views and what one thinks the law should say

If I'm correct, Benatar is foregrounding the deprivation of choice common to pro-life and pro-death: both outlooks forestall someone from choosing abortion and death.

But how'd this consequence (of the pro-death) sway pro-lifers? A pro-lifer would never accept some of the pro-death outlook's premises. Though a "legal pro-death policy would require even pro-lifers to have abortions," pro-lifers can reject the pro-death, while upholding their pro-lifer, outlook.

Answer 1

This argument is created by analogy to a typical one for religious freedom. In a society with multiple religions, any given person might wish to impose his or her religion on everyone, but would fiercely oppose the imposition of anyone else's religion. So a good compromise is that no one can impose their religion on anyone else. Benatar's argument is similar. However, in order to make it work, he needs to invent a "pro-death" stance that favors mandatory abortions. Then, the compromise in the middle is choice.

I would judge this as illegitimate rhetoric. It appears as though he's being gracious in exaggerating the position he prefers, rather than the one he opposes. But in practice, the effect is to make the position he prefers look like a moderate compromise with the help of an imagined position (one that wouldn't draw any significant support in the real political climate of today). It's as though we were haggling over the price of a car. I want $10,000 for it. Benatar's starting offer is $9,000. Instead of offering $9,500, he says "You could easily end up with $0. So let's meet in the middle at $5,000."

More charitably, we could say he's trying to establish a baseline: We all believe in the importance of personal choice, and in not having others dictate our actions. That, in fact, is the moral principle underlying the pro-choice movement. However, that, in itself, isn't sufficient for this argument, since there are other personal choices (suicide, for example) that we typically do not allow people to freely make. If it isn't really a moral argument, it must be a practical argument. Yet, given that mandatory abortions would presumably be rejected by nearly all people who currently consider themselves pro-choice, it doesn't hold water from that point of view either.

Answer 2

I would distill Benatar's argument this way:

1) Many pro-lifers wish the state to coerce individuals regarding the life and death of the unborn.

2) If the state may coerce life and death of the unborn, then the state may coerce death of the unborn.

3) Pro-lifers who would have the state to coerce life would object to the state's coercion of death.

4) Since pro-lifers would object to this coercion, they should object to all such coercion.

I think that Benatar's argument will be as successful as premise 2: if the state may coerce X, then it may coerce Y. But I think that a typical pro-lifer won't believe premise 2, believing instead that the state's duty to protect life comes from a higher authority than mere democracy; the state may not coerce Y if the higher authority does not permit it to do so.

Answer 3

How can the pro-death outlook's deprivation of choice, help sway pro-lifers'?

It has no power to sway pro-lifers in a liberal society:

Benatar represents pro-life enforcement as a restriction of procreative freedom however this freedom defense argument (only valid in a somewhat liberal society) is much weaker than the pro-lifers view that the unborn's right to live has to be protected.....assuming of course that the unborn is considered an individual.

Answer 4

Government that advocates death would have to be met with the force of arms

From the point of view of those that oppose abortion, even current system with abortions on demand is repugnant. Killing is killing, murder is murder, and fetus (unborn child) didn't choose to die, so there is no talk about choice. Replacing current system with something even worse would not make current system less evil. It would only strengthen position and the resolve of those that consider government that makes such laws illegitimate.

History teaches us that radicalization by one side leads to radicalization by other side, more often then not. Therefore, instead of compromise, this situation would likely escalate and force those fence-sitting on this issue to decide on which side they are. This would be similar to historical question about abolition of slavery, where at the beginning majority of population didn't consider this to be so important. But as situation escalated almost everybody had to choose between two sides in civil war.