ackersPaper #2: Jane English and the Analogy ofthe Hypnotized AttackersMario P. MartinezNovember 6,1997For our next paper I plan on discussing abortion as a social issue.
I want to do this inthe form of a critical paper This seems to be avery sticky subject and is one of the topics wehad in our class that was very interesting to mewith a lot of room for interpretation as to whenit is or is not o. k. to abort the fetus if itshould ever be done at all. The argument I plan todiscuss is Jane English’s analogy of thehypnotized attackers which was not one of ourreadings, but one I came across in some research Idid for this upcoming paper. This analogy has todo with a mad scientist who abducts people,hypnotizes them and has them attack innocentpasserbys. A major part of the analogy isrealizing that these people who are attackinginnocents are themselves innocent and would not becommitting the acts of violence that they areguilty of if they were not hypnotized and wereable to act on their own volition.
They are actingon the will of the mad scientist. He is the onlybad person in this whole scenario. The innocenthypnotized attackers are representative of thefetus and the helpless attackee is representativeof the woman or women who are victims of theunwanted pregnancy. The analogy is to determinethe measure of force that can that can be used bythe attacker to protect one’sself from theundesired attack of an undesirable pregnancydepending on what kind of damage the pregnancy maycause. I think that this analogy does a good jobin deciding how to deal with the burden ofpregnancy during more than just the moment ofattack. Her narrative can grasp or deal with alot of possible situations.
Jane English argues that if a fetus is aperson, abortion is still justifiable in manycases and if a fetus is not a person, killing itis still wrong in many cases (pg. 4). When Ifirst read this , or heard, this passage I feltthat it was fairly wishy- washy. I felt that herargument really did not have a stand, but how canyou when you are not truly pro- choice orpro-life. She seems to be saying that there mustbe a good reason to end a life and not just forthe sheer convenience of it. I completely agree.
Also, with this argument came the concept ofpersonhood. This concept seems to be what liberalsandconservatives are trying to define because it canbe stated at that exact moment when a fetusbecomes a person and therefore when abortionbecomes murder, so this would help decide how farup to term when a fetus can be aborted, if at all. Further can be added to this, such as the moralityof even killing a non- person, but we will not getinto that now. To deal with this argument JaneEnglish came up with the analogy of the hypnotizedattacker. In this analogy a mad scientist abductsinnocent people, hypnotizes them to do his evilbidding, which in this case is to spring fromconcealed places and attack other innocents (pg.
5). In this analogy it must be understood that theinnocent hypnotized attacker is the fetus. Theinnocent attackee is the mother to be. The madscientist who plants the seed of dementia into thehypnotized attacker can only be the father, butthat really has no bearing on the analogy. Now,this is just the introduction.
Now we deal withthe concept of self defense, because if you arebeing attacked by these crazed innocents then itis safe to say that you have every right to defendyourself even if the person you may have to stopby violent force is innocent and would not want tohurt or attack you ordinarily. You would even havethe right to kill this person if necessary to saveyourself from serious injury. Remember that youare not the malicious one and even the attacker isnot attacking out of malice, only the madscientist is malignant. But now we want to knowhow violent you should act to defend yourself ifthe attack would only cost you a torn shirt or ablackened eye. Obviously , the death of theattacker would not be at all necessary.
You needonly attack with the force necessary to retaliatewith the minimal force to damage equally orsomewhat above equally to the force you have
