If a man stands by and watches as a child drowns in a pool, we would probably charge him with manslaughter. If the pool was filled with sharks, we probably wouldn't.
What you are speaking of is omission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omission_%28criminal_law%29
And your example does not hold, because..
However, the law will never penalise someone for not jumping into a raging torrent of water, i.e. the law does not require the potential saver to risk drowning even though the individual might be a lifeguard paid to patrol the given beach, river or pool. No matter what the terms of employment, an employee can never be required to do more than what is reasonable in all the circumstances.
You analogy falls apart here. There is ABSOLUTELY deadly circumstances in undergoing the procedure we're discussing.
Yes, I am. And I think you're being disingenuous if you say you'd never do the same.
The point is there's a line. I don't think violating the right of bodily autonomy to save another person's life is ok, because i hold the right to live and the right to bodily autonomy to be equal.
The value judgement you're placing isn't that of one life > the other, the value judgement you're placing is that BECAUSE life A > life B, we can justify VIOLATING THE RIGHTS of life b.
Earlier you said certain people (felons) surrender certain rights upon committing a certain act. However IT DOES NOT FOLLOW that you can then VIOLATE THEIR RIGHTS. They have SURRENDERED THEM.
In our case, you're suggesting that a mother has SURRENDERED her right to bodily autonomy with regards to saving the other child's life. What follows is "An Eye for 2 Eyes, as long as the eye is used to replace one of the first 2 eyes".
Where it falls apart is that nothing is ever simple like that. What if the mother has a number of medical complications that could put her at risk of death beyond the 3/100,000. To be clear, you have to be a pretty good picture of health to donate a kidney, so in the general case you are going to increase the risk of death considerably by arbitrarily deciding to cut her open because she did it.
It's called suspension of disbelief.
Yes, and that's ok, to an extent. But you're going to extremes here, such that you actually remove reasonableness from your argument, and in-effect weaken its relevance on the situation.
Like, to be clear, if an innocent child was dying in front of me, and the only way to save that child was to put a convicted felon on death-row through a procedure that risked his life without his consent, I would let the child die.
Why? It's the same reason we don't do pharmaceutical and drug tests on death-row inmates or the prison population in general. It's inhumane and violates their inalienable human rights.
Ignore the part about "the mother is the only possible match." There are many factors which could cause a transplant board to reject a possible candidate. the only way the kid can get a kidney is if somebody donates And if no one is stepping up, that just leaves the mother.
Your passage here said "Ignore the only match part" and then you ended with "all other candidates are rejected or no one steps up".
It's the same fucking argument.