Abortion

[A2SG]

A thing either has moral value or it does not.

Some things have moral value to one person, but not to another. It depends on how the person feels about that thing. That's what makes moral value subjective.

In order for it to do so it must have the capacity for moral agency. Moral agency requires decision-making; decision making requires cognition.

True, which means it's subjective. An objective quality does not require cognition...it's a quality that can be measured or determined by empirical means, independent of cognition, feelings or interpretation.

A being that has no cognitive abilities yet will achieve them is, therefore, morally distinct from a being that never will achieve them. The first is a moral being, the second is not.

According to your moral standards. There are some who feel embryos, which do not yet have cognitive abilities, have moral value equal to (or greater, apparently) than born humans who do have cognitive abilities. The moral value of an embryo is different for them than it is for others. Because moral value is a subjective standard.

Objective standards, on the other hand, do not depend on personal feelings, interpretations or prejudices. They can be measured, empirically. Examples would be height, weight, etc.

None of the standards you've mentioned for moral value are objective in any way. They depend on personal feelings and moral views.

-- A2SG, not that there's anything wrong with subjective standards, just that you can't call them objective, cuz they ain't......

 

[Duckybill]

Is butchering the unborn wrong? It's worse than wrong. It's cowardice to the utmost!

 

[yasic]

A thing either has moral value or it does not. In order for it to do so it must have the capacity for moral agency. Moral agency requires decision-making; decision making requires cognition. A being that has no cognitive abilities yet will achieve them is, therefore, morally distinct from a being that never will achieve them. The first is a moral being, the second is not.

Well, right now you listed 3 possible definitions of being a moral being, which of them is it.

1. Something that has cognition - In this case, a fetus is clearly not a moral agent.

2. Something that will have cognition - A fetus which is going to undergo an abortion will never have cognition, as such it is not a moral agent, meaning abortion is fine as it is never performed on moral agents.

Such a definition also have the interesting unintended consequence on legal matters, where, upon killing a pregnant woman, if she was not intending to get an abortion it would be double-homicide, while if she was, it would only be single, as your person-hood begins to depend on the intentions of the mother.

If you object saying that a fetus planned for abotion still has a very small chance of life, then this takes us to definition 3:

3. Something that has a chance of gaining cognition - In this case, sperm is a moral agent, it has a chance of gaining life much like a fertilized egg, and a 14 week old fetus. Each of them is simply in the process that takes you to cognition, and by your definition all of them fit.

If you don't like the fact that defining moral agency as being anything that has a chance of cognition, perhaps you would like to redefine it?

 

[yasic]

Is butchering the unborn wrong? It's worse than wrong. It's cowardice to the utmost!

Whats wrong with destroying globs of cells?

 

[oryx]

"Before we continue, I would like to point out that the views I am expressing here are conditional devil's advocate views, and not the ones personally hold in the abortion debates."

A good way to think!

"My reason for being pro-choice up to 22 weeks is due to my belief that a fetus is not a person until that point. This has nothing to do with the right to bodily integrity or anything other than the point."

The point that human are not automatically persons?We have to come back to this premise later but at the moment there are too many questions and I’m sure we both have a lot to say.

Not true. If two innocent victims have basic human rights conflicting due to an arrangement, the right which involves the 2 people removing themselves from an arrangement triumphs over one that forces them to remain in an arrangement.

Unplanned pregnancy and especially unplanned pregnancy from rape is not due to an arrangement between the mother and her child. In the scenario above, the people ‘remove themselves.’ This is not the case in abortion, where only the parent removes themselves from the arrangement of having to provide for their child by killing the child. During abortion the child is not agreeing to ‘remove itself.’
This is not two random independent strangers who have been thrown together, the two have a relationship of biological mother and child. This means as well as the obligation not to aggress an innocent person (stranger) theres also the obligation for specifically the parent-and no one else-to not leave their children but help them. Parents have no right to break parental responsibilities, the one that forces one to care for the other is an obligation that all parents have to their biological children and cannot be broken by aggression towards in less independent one. The mindframe behind aborting a child is to completely absolve the biological parent of an responsibilites towards their child’s upkeep in the future-this can only be achieved by the child’s death if adoption is not-or refused to be chosen. I think the tone of this argument changes slightly due to rape, I hope I have provided a kind of answer for that in my next section.

If two people get operated on by a mad scientist, such that the head of one is places (against the wills of both victims) on the body of the other, the other may choose to have the first head removed, even if it spells certain death (sorry for the outlandish example, can't think of a more appropriate one for pregnancy)

Hehe that’s okay. Coming up with examples to explain conception is hard.

First of all I would like to point out that experimenting on the women is wrong and this is precisely because she does not have a subjective value. The objectifying of the women by the scientist has led to his experimenting steamrolling over the will of someone who deserves equal treatment at the same level at him. This is also the case in rape where the women is seen as an extension of the rapists body and doesn’t exists in her own right, but to his will. Raping others and attacking other’s bodily integrity is not the natural state of the human nature-humans who are function healthily. We only decide to hurt others to (wrongly) deal with the pain we have been inflicted on ourselves. In the case of killing your baby who was concieved through your rape, the completely unjust justification and objectifying that the rapist put upon the women that led to him thinking nothing of attacking her bodily integrity to deal (immorally) with his pain, is exactly the same unjust objectifying that the women put on her unbon child. Leading her to think of attacking the bodily integrity of her child to deal with things that have been done to her which are very painful and destructive. It maybe even worse because being the biological parent of the child, it is required of the parent to be resposible for the child’s welfare rather than to be responsible for an attack on the child’s bodily integrity, and its also what makes rape due to incest especially evil.
My point being that you can’t attack someone to try and solve the problem of being attacked and it not to be a wrong, though understandable, way to go about things. Think of bullying because you yourself were once yourself bullied. Because bullying is never the fault of the victim, rape is never the fault of the victim and the aggressors problems cannot be solved by objectifying and eliminating someone innocently going about their daily business. Likewise because being in the womb is not the child’s fault-placing the demand that the child solve the pain of rape (by its elimination) won’t. Likewise, because being who they are is not the fault of somone leading to their rape-placing the demand that that victim magically solve the pain of (whatever leads to people choosing to rape) by raping them, won’t. Anyway, I digress.
What I would also like to point out in the above scenario is that by removing the head, no one actually dies. The person who lose their head died before the hookup took place because no one can survive decapitation. So the women doesn’t actually have another person attatched to her, but another dead person’s head. Therefore by removing the head so that she is back to her normal one-headed self, she has not stopped a life in progress-because there would never be a time which a human head could live independantly from its original body or from hers either. Would also like to put in that in the scenario, the head being attatched to the women is due to someone else forcing upon her something unnatural and incompatible to the human life cycle and experience. In conception, it this attatchment of the two persons is because both persons are subject to the forces of biology, and as both of the are mammals with a biological parent/child relationship, that attatchment of the child to the womb is not unnatural or incompatible to either human life cycle or experience.

"It is not punishment. It is simply an actions whose unintended consequences happen to result in your death. If it were possible to remove the child without killing it, I would support such an option."

There is a completely natural way to remove the child from the mother without killing it, birth. And taking induced misscarriage over birth means that you do not support an option to move the child from the womb without killing it.
I’m sure every women having an abortion would rather not kill her child but also knows that if she does not choose adoption, the death of her child is the only thing that will absolve her from being a parent to it. A successful abortion terminates the relationship of responsibility by terminating the one who is owed. Its pointless if you could move the child without killing them.

If the child was moved before death occurred this would not terminate the responsibility or what they are owed. Once out of the womb they are people and deserve equal treatment (deserving equal treatment is a misonmer itself). They have to die in the ‘human’ stage rather than the ‘person’ stage because the abuse of humans is just, but the abuse of people are not.

The parent has not given the child up for adoption so would still not be free of parental responsibilities. So, what is the point in that operation, when the reason why the operation took place was so that there would be no parental responsibilites after it.

Abortion does merely not place your child is grave danger of death, the abortion is not successful if the child remains alive. Unlike a principle of the ‘double affect’ where hysterectomys are performed upon pregnant women to save the mother’s life and where the death of the child is completely unavoidable though unintended by-product of that operation-the abortionist just goes in to stop the pregnancy or force misscarriage and nothing else. This must be done by the death of the child. Only the dismembered corpse of the child must be the thing that is moved, because the death of the child must be done inside the mother-where the child is still called ‘property’ and just a ‘human non-person’ in order to not be either murder or neglect.

"What a bodily function is designed for has no effect on our morals or laws. We are designed with a function where our saliva, upon biting an animal (humans included), has a very high chance of forcing infection potentially leading to death. The fact that our bites are designed to kill humans in no way justifies us doing so. "

I’m confused. I wrote about the point that the pregnancy is designed to keep a new generation safe from an environment, which, due to the level of development that they are currently are, would kill them. So you are saying that just because pregnancy is designed for the child’s safety in no way justifies keeping the child safe. Yet in the above scenario about the saliva, was to make a point that just because we can physically kill humans in no way justifies us doing so.

"So unless you want to outlaw glasses because they use our ears and noses in a way contrary to how they were designed, I think it is safe to throw this particular line of argument out the window, no?"

No. If you start wearing glasses, you correct faulty vision. If you abort, you kill your child to "correct" a relationship of being responsible for your child. Being responsible for your biological child is not incorrect enough to start killing them.

 

[oryx]

"Where is that law written down? It's easy to say things like that, when it isn't your bodily integrity."

Priviledge of self defense.

"It may be natural, but it isn't always wanted, and pregnant women aren't always able to care for a child."

Debt is a natural concequence of ill spending and the responsibility of paying it isn’t wanted and yes, some people are unable to pay their debts.

You are perfectly free to get out of owing credit

a) not getting in debt
b) paying your debt if the above fails. Eventually the debt will be paid, and yes, it will be hard and unconvienient, but the creditors right to be owed money(or whatever is the nature of the debt) is stronger than your right to not be responsible for debt. There is no right to not be in debt by not paying if you have got into debt. You lost your right to be debt free when you did the thing that makes you owing this.
c) Your creditor voluntarily wiping your debt clean.

You are not allowed to get out of a situation of debt that your actions incurred by killing your creditors and ending the responsibility that way. Someone’s right to claim that you pay them what it owed is stronger than your right to aggress to get out of the hard work of paying it.

You are perfectly free to get out of parental responsibility

a) not creating a child (not having sex, using birth control)
b) adoption or raising the child until 18. Yes, it will take 18 years and effort and money and sacrifice, but the child, once created places upon its parents a stronger obligation upon its biological parents to provide a suitable environment for its health, growth and wellbeing. This is stronger than a right to not be burdened parental responsibilities towards someone (your son or daughter). Like the debt above, there is no right to not do parental responsibilities to any biological children, if you make the child. You lost the right to no parental responsibilites when you did the thing (sex) that makes a biological child and the child existing at the point when you decide to not be a parent of them.
c) The child themselves voluntarily absolving you of any parental duty.

Biological parents who think providing their child an environment appropriate for all it needs is a preference rather than a responsibility are guilty of neglect. You are not free to get out of the obligation to your child by killing your child and ending the obligation that way. This is claiming a right to agress and a right to completely pretend that you don’t owe your child a suitable environment and there isn’t these right. The child’s right to a suitable environment provided by its own parents is STRONGER than the right to agress against the child to get the out of the hard work of providing for it.

You create dependancy upon your body. Because you have caused this dependancy, you owe them care to get them out of the dependancy. They do not owe you their death to get you out of your responsibility that comes with creating that dependance.

"Abortion being right or wrong is a personal decision, and if you're not pregnant, then it's not your decision."

No, whether killing law-abiding humans is right or wrong, is a constituitional one. That why a rape being right or wrong or a burglary being right or wrong is not down to the personal opinion of rapists and thieves. Basically you are saying that if someone is in the position and motivation to aggress against another-it should be completely up to the aggressor to decide whether or not going ahead is moral or not.
My question is, if this is the right view on acts of aggression and force against another, why do you require of the government to protect you by law from the same justification that you dished out on the unborn?

Okay, someone thinks that killing people with brown eyes is okay because to them you have to have blue eyes to be protected. Someone else thinks that killing people with blue eyes is okay because to them you have to have brown eyes to be protected. That means that killing people with brown eyes is only immoral if the blue-eyed killer breaks his personal moral code and does so. Killing people with blue eyes is only wrong is the brown-eyed killer kills them. As long as killers stick to their own subjective viewpoint and only kills ones who they feel should be denied protection than the killing of blue and brown eyed people is all up to the subjective opinion of the killers and the status of the blue-eyed, brown-eyed is irrelevant.

My point being is that if subjective view is true-this way of society needs to be applied universally. Else the killers are unfairly halted from carrying out what they personally believe to be just.
My point being is that the above is sickening and discriminatory and the status of the blue-eyes, brown-eyes is more than the personal ethics of the aggressors-this needs to be applied universally. Else people die due to someone’s choice that they should.

 

[oryx]

"But something has changed: the fetus has become viable. What this means is that it is able to survive on its own, outside the womb. This is a major difference, biologically..."

No. It just means an individual human being has reached a higher stage of development than they were before. My question is if it is self-evident that all humans should have equal treatment under the law-why are only certain stages of human development appropriate to gain this protection? Since when is it fair for parents to pick and choose a certain point in their child’s development is which from that point onwards they assume parental responisbility without being guilty of neglect? Its like its fair for some parents to not be required provide for their child until their child is out of nappies because those particular parents do not wish to be tied down by the specific needs of a lesser-developed child and have to change them daily.

"it's also significant, legally: that's the point where the Supreme Court has ruled that states may legislate against abortion.

So a lot changes at that point."

Not to the human being being killed. Only to the squeamishness levels of the other human being doing the killing. Not a fixed enough point to be basing something like personhood on.

"Uh....you do realize that "trespassing" is used as an analogy here. The actual legal definition of trespassing doesn't actually apply."

Well, then, is the actual legal definition of tresspassing does not actually apply to the condition of having your own offspring in your reproductive organs, why are parents legally protected to kill said children on an argument that doesn’t actually fit them?

"What does apply is simply this: laws prohibiting abortion outright are unconstitutional, so the government cannot prohibit women from getting one, not until fetal viability."

Your own law is prohibiting access to a women’s right to abortion by killing women. A women can only have a choice to abort, if she herself was not constiutionally chosen to be killed.
If her value is inherent enough to claim something like a ‘fundamental right’ (to abort), why was her value not inherent enough to claim a right to be allowed to live. You’re pretty much saying its more constitutional that women have an inherent right to kill younger women, they do not have an inherent right to not be killed themselves.
You can’t be protecting future women’s choices by supporting abortion-because of the nature of what the choice is, it only protects the present women’s choices, not her biological daughter’s. The choice is older women to be able to kill their female(and male) descendants, thus blocking her daughter’s (and sons)access to a fundamental right to choose. Thus in order to have the choice to legally kill you have to have not been a victim of other’s legal choice to kill you. Therefore having a choice is dependant on being able to grow up until you are able to understand situations and exercise choice. Therfore having a choice, any sort of choice is dependant upon protecting life, not protecting a choice to harm a life. That’s constitutional.

Futhermore by claiming that the value of human life is subjective rather than inherent, you are blocking access to fundamental right (if abortion is one) because only if the value of human life is inherent can there be any sort of ‘rights’. If it is subjective, we can only claim to people’s personal level of squeamishness or charity rather than ‘constitutional’ or ‘unconstituional. Futhermore you are actually saying that there is a time in a women’s life when she should be a ‘non-person’. If the unborn women truly is a non-person, she cannot claim a fundamental right to anything when she grows up.

"You'll have to prove pregnancy was designed in a specific way for a specific purpose to make this argument. Perhaps by showing us the owner's manual?"

Perhaps by showing this is the case in wanted pregnancies and structurally and biologically speaking unwanted pregnancies/prenatal children are no different to wanted pregnancies/prenantal children. I could show you that this is the case because it is common with all mammals. Attitude of the parents makes no difference to what you can be pregnant with and what gestation is in mammals such as the gestating child and her pregnant mother.
You are defintely free to come up with your own medical theories about the point of pregnancy…

"Otherwise, well, you're just making assumptions here. And your assumptions may not reach the same conclusion as a woman who is actually pregnant, and facing this decision herself."

People are free to ignore medical and biological fact-but law-making is not.
People are not free to decide exactly what they are pregnant with-because pregnancy can only mean one thing in mammals-gestation of your biological child. If you have anything else in your womb except your child and abortion eliminates anything other than your own child to end a pregnancy-then you were medically and biologically never in the state of known as pregnancy, in the first place. And there was no need to get an abortion-because your fear that you were somehow going to end up giving birth to your own offspring and take care of it-is completely biologically impossible and unfounded. Pregnant women are free to make their own assumptions about what pregnancy is but unless based on what we know is medically true will be as useless and not beneficial as cancer patients, upset at what cancer is are allowed to come to the different non-medical conclusion that being with cancer actually means ‘Raynards syndrome’ or ‘slight inflamation of the liver.’

 

[A2SG]

Uh, it might be helpful to identify who you're responding to, especially since you're responding to more than one poster here. But these responses are to my post, so....

"But something has changed: the fetus has become viable. What this means is that it is able to survive on its own, outside the womb. This is a major difference, biologically..."

No. It just means an individual human being has reached a higher stage of development than they were before.

Earlier, you said nothing had changed in the third trimester, but something has changed. That's why the law is applied differently.

My question is if it is self-evident that all humans should have equal treatment under the law-why are only certain stages of human development appropriate to gain this protection?

First, the amendent refers to "persons", not humans. And second, all persons are treated equally under the law here, no person is allowed to use another person's body or its organs and processes without consent.

Since when is it fair for parents to pick and choose a certain point in their child’s development is which from that point onwards they assume parental responisbility without being guilty of neglect?

It isn't. But legally, parental responsibilities do not begin until birth.

Its like its fair for some parents to not be required provide for their child until their child is out of nappies because those particular parents do not wish to be tied down by the specific needs of a lesser-developed child and have to change them daily.

It isn't like that at all. Legally, parental obligations begin at birth, not before.

"it's also significant, legally: that's the point where the Supreme Court has ruled that states may legislate against abortion.

So a lot changes at that point."

Not to the human being being killed. Only to the squeamishness levels of the other human being doing the killing. Not a fixed enough point to be basing something like personhood on.

I'm not sure why birth isn't a "fixed enough" point for you, but legally, it is the point where a new person comes into existence, separate from its mother. Granted, some legal protection comes at fetal viability, but birth is the point where a fetus becomes an individual, so it's a significant enough point for the law to differentiate a fetus from its mother.

"Uh....you do realize that "trespassing" is used as an analogy here. The actual legal definition of trespassing doesn't actually apply."

Well, then, is the actual legal definition of tresspassing does not actually apply to the condition of having your own offspring in your reproductive organs, why are parents legally protected to kill said children on an argument that doesn’t actually fit them?

They aren't. The argument for abortion being legal is in Roe v Wade. In short, it's because the Constitution does not allow the government to ban or criminalize abortion outright.

Trespassing was used by the previous poster as an analogy, not as an exact description of the legal issues.

"What does apply is simply this: laws prohibiting abortion outright are unconstitutional, so the government cannot prohibit women from getting one, not until fetal viability."

Your own law is prohibiting access to a women’s right to abortion by killing women.

Not sure what you're talking about here. Care to explain further?

A women can only have a choice to abort, if she herself was not constiutionally chosen to be killed.

No one is "constitutionally chosen" to be killed. The Constitution doesn't choose anything.

If her value is inherent enough to claim something like a ‘fundamental right’ (to abort), why was her value not inherent enough to claim a right to be allowed to live.

You'd have to ask the woman who made the decision to have an abortion. It's her decision to make, not the government's.

You’re pretty much saying its more constitutional that women have an inherent right to kill younger women, they do not have an inherent right to not be killed themselves.

No, I'm not. There is no constitutional "inherent right" to kill anyone. The Constitution does not allow the government to override a woman's right to have an abortion, but that's as far as it goes.

You can’t be protecting future women’s choices by supporting abortion-because of the nature of what the choice is, it only protects the present women’s choices, not her biological daughter’s.

The law can only address what is, not what might be in the future.

The choice is older women to be able to kill their female(and male) descendants, thus blocking her daughter’s (and sons)access to a fundamental right to choose.

That's her choice, one the government is not empowered to interfere with. At least, not until the fetus is viable.

Thus in order to have the choice to legally kill you have to have not been a victim of other’s legal choice to kill you. Therefore having a choice is dependant on being able to grow up until you are able to understand situations and exercise choice. Therfore having a choice, any sort of choice is dependant upon protecting life, not protecting a choice to harm a life.

And all of that is dependent upon two people having sex. If they instead chose to go to bed early, it would all be moot.

That’s constitutional.

That's reality.

Futhermore by claiming that the value of human life is subjective rather than inherent, you are blocking access to fundamental right (if abortion is one) because only if the value of human life is inherent can there be any sort of ‘rights’.

Nope, that doesn't follow. Value is not an objective standard, it requires someone to determine it.

In the US, we consider our rights to be be inherent, not granted to us by the government or any other human agency. That says nothing about our value, though.

If it is subjective, we can only claim to people’s personal level of squeamishness or charity rather than ‘constitutional’ or ‘unconstituional.

No, the Constitution is an objective document that sets down rules the government must follow and outlines the rights we, the citizens, are entitled to. It says nothing about value.

Futhermore you are actually saying that there is a time in a women’

s life when she should be a ‘non-person’.

No, I'm not. The term "non-person" doesn't exist in the law. A human being is a person roughly from birth up to death.

If the unborn women truly is a non-person, she cannot claim a fundamental right to anything when she grows up.

The unborn have no legal rights except through the mother. Some degree of legal protection comes at fetal viability, but the majority of legal rights come upon birth, not before.

"You'll have to prove pregnancy was designed in a specific way for a specific purpose to make this argument. Perhaps by showing us the owner's manual?"

Perhaps by showing this is the case in wanted pregnancies and structurally and biologically speaking unwanted pregnancies/prenatal children are no different to wanted pregnancies/prenantal children. I could show you that this is the case because it is common with all mammals. Attitude of the parents makes no difference to what you can be pregnant with and what gestation is in mammals such as the gestating child and her pregnant mother.

That doesn't prove pregnancy was designed in a specific way for a specific purpose. That only shows that the value of a fetus depends on how the mother feels about it.

You are defintely free to come up with your own medical theories about the point of pregnancy…

As are you. But that only goes to prove there is no definitive point or stated purpose behind it. All we can definitively say is that mammals reproduce by having sex and getting pregnant.

"Otherwise, well, you're just making assumptions here. And your assumptions may not reach the same conclusion as a woman who is actually pregnant, and facing this decision herself."

People are free to ignore medical and biological fact-but law-making is not.

What relevant facts are ignored here?

People are not free to decide exactly what they are pregnant with-because pregnancy can only mean one thing in mammals-gestation of your biological child.

A fact no one is disputing.

If you have anything else in your womb except your child and abortion eliminates anything other than your own child to end a pregnancy-then you were medically and biologically never in the state of known as pregnancy, in the first place.

Uh, I don't believe anything other than an embryo grows in the womb.

And there was no need to get an abortion-because your fear that you were somehow going to end up giving birth to your own offspring and take care of it-is completely biologically impossible and unfounded.

Uh, what?

Pregnant women are free to make their own assumptions about what pregnancy is but unless based on what we know is medically true will be as useless and not beneficial as cancer patients, upset at what cancer is are allowed to come to the different non-medical conclusion that being with cancer actually means ‘Raynards syndrome’ or ‘slight inflamation of the liver.’

If you have a point with this bit, it's lost on me.

The end result is this: under the law, laws prohibiting abortion outright are unconstitutional. What this means is that the government cannot unilaterally declare abortion illegal. The specific guidelines about how governments may legislate regarding abortion are outlined in Roe v. Wade.

If you have a problem with that, you're free to work to change the existing laws or change the Constitution. But until then, it is what it is.

-- A2SG, you are under no legal obligation to like it, though.....

 

[oryx]

Nope, that doesn't follow. Value is not an objective standard, it requires someone to determine it.

In the US, we consider our rights to be be inherent, not granted to us by the government or any other human agency. That says nothing about our value, though.

Hi A2SG. I'm still in the process of answering your questions and in order to do that I would like some more explaination upon how we can claim to have a right to expect and be owed(legally and not) decent and equal treatment from another individual, if our own worth is dependant upon their choosing. You seem to be saying that inherent (legal) rights and our value are mutally exclusive(?), correct? Can you give a couple of real-life situations/examples outside of abortion for me to see this applied and to get my head around?

Its this word 'value' :/ Do you mean, in not so many words, that humans have to be valued by other humans to be granted human rights?

 

[Phinehas2]

The issue seems to be concerning the viability of the life/foetus at that stage.
However it is no good debating the viability to those who see all life as objectively viable at conception/gestation.

The bottom line here is that one side of the argument sees this as obvious murder and the arguments for pro-choice abortion merely subjective.

Big call!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8488335.stm
I would agree he has saved some lives, sadly he has taken one as well.

Discuss

 

[oryx]

Phineas2 I don't believe that Scott Roeder has saved lives, because, again, whether or not abortion remains legal, the acts of child-killing will continue. All he has done is made women rescedule their abortions.

Also, as I have said before whilst arguing for the unborn, Mr Tillers right to life is not dependant upon anyone (whether that be prochoice or prolife) definition of how useful a human life is. Our rights remain standing even if it is inconvinient and annoying for others to go out of their way and grant them to us. Thats the point of a right, you get decent treatment, even (especially) from people who are ill-disposed to you getting them. Mr Tiller is homo sapiens, therefore he is a person, not an 'it' to only have value if he fits in with my schedule, therefore he gets a right to a fair trial if he has done wrong. Not a bump-off, no matter how inconvnient it is for prolifers for him to remain free to do his job.

There ya go, my two cents.

 

[Phinehas2]

oryx,

Phineas2 I don't believe that Scott Roeder has saved lives, because, again, whether or not abortion remains legal, the acts of child-killing will continue. All he has done is made women rescedule their abortions.

Ok that would merely implicate the other doctors, at least the lives have been saved from his hand.

Also, as I have said before whilst arguing for the unborn, Mr Tillers right to life is not dependant upon anyone

As has been pointed out that’s you’re your view and not one everyone shares so its just your word against someone elses.

 

[lux et lex]

Scott Roeder is a terrorist and saved no lives.

 

[thesolitaryone]

The sheer fact that anyone on here (much less a Christian) would defend a murderer like Scott Roeder speaks volumes about that person's morals and values. I guess some people value potential lives more than they value actual, real, existing lives, such as the life of Scott Tiller. And how sad is that, that existing lives are given no value by some people on here? It seems like, if someone isn't a conservative, it's somehow okay to kill that person, simply because they have non-conservative values and opinions, such as the opinion that abortion is morally right. Is this really what politics in this country have turned into? A deadly game of "I'm right and you're wrong"?

 

[MacFall]

Is this really what politics in this country have turned into? A deadly game of "I'm right and you're wrong"?

Yes. And that's all politics has ever been: people grappling for the power to get away with hurting (or ultimately killing) those who disagree with them.

 

[A2SG]

Nope, that doesn't follow. Value is not an objective standard, it requires someone to determine it.

In the US, we consider our rights to be be inherent, not granted to us by the government or any other human agency. That says nothing about our value, though.

Hi A2SG. I'm still in the process of answering your questions and in order to do that I would like some more explaination upon how we can claim to have a right to expect and be owed(legally and not) decent and equal treatment from another individual, if our own worth is dependant upon their choosing. You seem to be saying that inherent (legal) rights and our value are mutally exclusive(?), correct?

Not at all. They're totally different concepts.

Your inherent rights are those that are yours just because you're a human being, alive and sentient. Your legal rights are those which the government of the country you live in protects by the laws it enacts.

Your value is how someone feels you are worth to them.

Can you give a couple of real-life situations/examples outside of abortion for me to see this applied and to get my head around?

Okay. I'm not a Brit, but a Yank, so I'll have to use US terms. I think the same concepts generally apply in the UK as well, though.

An inherent right would be the US concept of a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A legal right would be the right to free speech, protected by the first amendment. Value would be how much my wife and daughter love me and want me around.

Its this word 'value' :/ Do you mean, in not so many words, that humans have to be valued by other humans to be granted human rights?

Here in the US, we don't consider our rights to be granted to us. We consider them ours by birthright. We hold it to be self evident that we are endowed with certain inalienable right, and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Value is a subjective concept. You have value to someone else, if that person considers you valuable in some way. If someone doesn't care about you, either because they don't know you or doesn't regard you in any way, then you h ave no value to that person. If someone else values you enough to, say, marry you, then your value to that person is immeasurable.

-- A2SG, unless, of course, they just married you for your money....then your value to them can be calculated.....

 

[oryx]

ah thanks for the clarification!

 

[Ninjasaurus]

A fetus is technically alive as soon as the egg is fertilized by the sperm. (An egg and a sperm each have half of a human's necessary DNA; they are not live people on their own.) However, when this fetus gains personhood is when it can survive without being attached to an already-existing person (its mother). I think that a baby becomes a person when its umbilical cord is cut.

 

[oryx]

Hiya. Here is my long answer, long time coming.

First, the amendent refers to "persons", not humans.

Please point out any non-human persons.

And second, all persons are treated equally under the law here, no person is allowed to use another person's body or its organs and processes without consent.

Children requiring the use of their parents body to help them reach the next stage of independence and maturity is a natural phenomonon in keeping with both the women’s and child’s biology and in keeping with biological parents obligation to keep their biological child in a safe and appropriate environment. Biological children do not need their biological parents consent to be dependant upon them because the child’s dependance and use of parents body has been instigated by their parents actions which is beyond their control.
Their sexual activity has not concieved a stranger in need but their biological child-the only kind of human being who they have that kind of responsibility too.
This is not a case of trying to reverse a sickness or injury of a stranger, but biological parents having a responsibility to provide a suitable environment to add to the age, welfare, independence of their son or daughter. There is not an environment more suitable to a child that age than the womb. This is what we enforce upon biological parents anyway.
Which leads me onto my next point.

It isn't. But legally, parental responsibilities do not begin until birth. It isn't like that at all. Legally, parental obligations begin at birth, not before.

But that is what you are saying. When people say ‘A women has a right to expel an unwanted fetus from the womb.’ If you cut down the rehtoric, it means ‘a biological human parent has a right to expel it’s biological offspring in its fetal stage of development from the only place that it suitable and safe and natural for that child to mature in.’ If we are both agreeing that child neglect is wrong, and I have no doubts on your sincerity, why do you say that for a period of time it is morally neutral if parents do just that?


By making it legal for the child to not be cared for by its biological parents until a certain point in the child’s development, you are making child neglect/abuse for a certain window of time to be a choice that parents can make. In order for child abuse to be such a definete wrong to make it illegal later on, whatever the circumstances, parental responsibilities must tied up and enforced with the child existing and being in need- this is from conception, not from birth.

Why should parental obligations not legally exist before birth? Is neglecting your child and caring for your child carrying the exact moral weight?
The child is not an adult. Child neglect is never appropriate response to the child from the parents no matter what the age or level of development of the child. Also, having difficulty in understanding how parental obligations are enforced upon people towards a part of their own body which has now just come outside of the body-if this is what birth actually is. Parental obligations assume that the thing that the obligations towards is their biological child, not an organ, or amputated tissue.

You haven’t made child neglect less horrible in order for it to be more legal. You’ve just made it easier for the aggressors, not the victim. Why is this a good thing?

I'm not sure why birth isn't a "fixed enough" point for you, but legally, it is the point where a new person comes into existence, separate from its mother. Granted, some legal protection comes at fetal viability, but birth is the point where a fetus becomes an individual, so it's a significant enough point for the law to differentiate a fetus from its mother.

Whoa whoa whoa, you’re saying too opposing things are true at the same time. You say, at birth is the first point in which there is an individual, but before birth there is some legal protection. How so? You can’t grant rights towards an individual that you won’t recognise as existing in the first place. If there is something that qualifies for legal protection-and you’re not refering to the pregnant women-that something has to be a seperate individual from the pregnant women that you’re not refering too. You don’t grant legal rights towards pieces of humans but humans themselves-so here you are claiming that before birth no individual or new human being exists but here is the govern,ment claiming that here is something that needs legal protection and its other than the women. Seems to be a seperate individual before birth too.

Okay, well, I’ll just turn what you said on its head I’m not sure why conception isn’t a fixed enough point for you, but scientifically, its the point where a new homo sapiens comes into existence, separate from its mother.
Birth is not a fixed enough point for me because birth describes a process that moves what is that then matured individual from an environment that is not appropriate for its continuing development into an environment that now is. Humans who exist but the government refuses to recognise them as existing are victims of injustice

I guess its because I am having trouble understanding how something can go from something being classed as body part to an individual human just by going through a hole outside of the body. Individuality cannot be gained by pulling out what its a part of. My hair falls out, I’m still not a parent. I menustrate, I’m still not a parent. I have four teeth pulled, I don’t have four children. My mother had her kidney removed, I didn’t gain a sibling. If you are not an individual you can’t gain individuality by going through a hole. You have to be a child before you go through the hole to come out as a child. As you agreed with later on that nothing other than a child exists in a pregnant women’s womb, I’m finding it difficult to understand how a child can exist but not be a separate being from its mother. Children and mothers are separate members of the same species. My point being, is that if a fetus/zygote/embryo has a mother that fact alone is enough to differentiate them from each other because in order to have a parent-offspring relationship there needs to be two separate beings. The child can definetely grow into independence from it’s mother, and this continues after birth, but it cannot grow into being someone’s offspring from a condition of ‘being without a parent’.
This is what it looks like to me that you are arguing- Beings without a nature for rationality, independance, sentience can have those qualities bestowed upon them by going through a hole. A process which does not affect the non-rational etc nature but only the environment that the being now continues to mature in. If you feed and shelter a non-sentient being, you are not going to end up with that being that expresses independance and sentience if the right care is allowed to happen. Being fed and sheltered and being pushed through a hole adds ZERO to a capacity towards independance, if independance and sentience was not already part of the nature of that being at the very start of its maturation process (conception). Immature non-sentient non-independant creatures only mature into mature non-sentient non-independant creatures. The reason why the conceptus doesn’t show a sign of capacity to function independantly or rationally is a question of development level, not a question of not being that type of being at all.
If you want to counter that argument with the argument that you never said that this was a non-sentient being only a body part with a capacity, a potential towards sentience, then lets explore that. You would then go back over that premise with the idea that the something that you identify as a body part also has the capacity/any sort of inclination towards a state of viability (being able to live as an individual-not a body part-seperate from the body) Would it make sense for a body part to ever reach something like viability-if the body part stops functioning as a part of a whole and starts functioning as a seperate being, the body that it was a part of would fail.

You'd have to ask the woman who made the decision to have an abortion. It's her decision to make, not the government's.

No, wait a second. If the government endows a right to abort, in order for women to get access to abortion all women need to get to an age where she is capable of reproducing. In order to do that, she has to go through the zygotic, fetal, infant, toddler, child, adolescent stages of development. How can the government not interfere if the humans they are supposed to be granting access to abortion, amongst other things, are being killed before they reach an age where abortion is needed.
Granting personhood to a human is not a personal decision-it’s a constitutional one that the government recognises equally to all human individuals. Thats what you agree is just when you agree that at birth, the government should interfere with all types of harm done against that individual.

No, I'm not. There is no constitutional "inherent right" to kill anyone. The Constitution does not allow the government to override a woman's right to have an abortion, but that's as far as it goes.

So if theres not inherent right to kill anyone (constitutional) surely this compels the governmental to overide a women’s access to a procedure to have her child killed without being accused that blocking that proccedure is unconstituitional? The law is to reinforce the constitution, and, as you said, there is NO inherent right to kill, then the law is unjust to go against the ideas expressed in the constitution and offer legal protection and power to the aggressors of the killing, rather than the victims that are killed.

more coming!

 

[oryx]

The law can only address what is, not what might be in the future.

As you have said before, inherent rights are not granted to us by the government. You are saying that the government recognises that a women has inherent rights towards liberty but then when it comes to her biological daughters she ‘may have innate rights in the future.’ Inherent rights means that they cannot be seperated from the individual.

So, having a legal right to access to abortion is dependant upon your mother choosing to let you mature. If all women should have a right to choose abortion then ALL women (not just the wanted ones) should be able to get to an age where they reproduce and choose that choice. In mammals, that means going through gestation and being born and being protected after birth too.

That's her choice, one the government is not empowered to interfere with. At least, not until the fetus is viable.

You are only granting choice to women who have not been killed by abortion. How is the government not empowered to interfere with killing humans in the name of protecting choice? The permanent and complete loss of life comes with the permanent and complete loss of liberty. Killed humans get no choices and no choices to control their reproductivity-if abortion comes under that-, either. By allowing her to be killed the government is interfering with her right to grow up (and have an abortion.) and many other rights and choices with it.

The government should not prevent in any way access to abortion. I am saying if you legally kill your daughter through aborting her how will she gain a fundamental access to abortion herself? You are asking of the government to allow you to kill individual humans while saying at the same time that the government preventing ANY individual human’s access to abortion is wrong. Permissing individual humans to be killed prevents them gaining access to abortion because you cannot access abortion services if you are dead.

And all of that is dependent upon two people having sex. If they instead chose to go to bed early, it would all be moot.

Not quite sure what you are getting at here? Are you saying that because, in a way, the child owes their existence to their parents actions, they somehow owe their parents and not the other way around?

Nope, that doesn't follow. Value is not an objective standard, it requires someone to determine it.No, the Constitution is an objective document that sets down rules the government must follow and outlines the rights we, the citizens, are entitled to. It says nothing about value. In the US, we consider our rights to be inherent,

If value is subjective-how are rights inherent? People claim I have a right to this, just like this person over here, because they are appealing to the fact that they are just as valuable as each other. We don'We are all entitled towards certain treatment and to have it applied equally to all humans because our value is fixed and equal and that value comes from being human-homo sapiens-the only thing that we all have equally in equal measure.

Yes it does follow, you are saying that a human being can only get a right if another human being deems them to be of value, to them, personally. But this is not what you are claiming when you say, ‘abortion rights.’ You are not claiming access for abortion to all the women who others deem valuable, you mean all women getting access to abortion equally, not just the ones that it would be useful to you if they did, not just the ones that you like, even the ones that you don’t care for, hate even. And this is not what I am claiming when I say ‘life rights.’ I am not claiming that safe passageway to maturity to just all the humans that I think are valuable, or I like, I am claiming it for all humans, even the ones that I personally don’t care for, hate even.

You say, abortion is a right and that people cannot interfere but by saying that a human being can only get a right upon other people deciding their value, then interference is exactly what happens. People can interfere and say that my subjective value of this women is what counts and you are not valuable enough to get a right (life, abortion or otherwise)-or is this something that convieniently should only be applied to granting fetuses a right to life rather than granting a women a right to abortion? In order for ALL women to get a right to an abortion, then the women need a value that is equal and fixed amongst them so that ALL women can have one.

Lets take this scenario, a women and her abusive boyfriend conceive a daughter. The subjective value of the women decided by the abusive boyfriend has no bearing on whether or not she can have a right to an abortion. Basically if she needs an abortion, she has a right to one. But apparently the subjective value of the daughter decided by her mother has every bearing on whether or not the daughter can claim a right to live. Basically she needs to be valued by another human being before she can claim any sort of right. So when you say, human value is subjective, what you really mean is, human value is subjective when it comes to daughters but human value is an empirical fixed value when it comes to mothers.

Women don’t get rights (whether that be life or abortion) because it fits into someone’s schedule to give it to them but because as human beings they deserve a certain treatment and not others from EVERYONE, from the best friend-who places her on a high personal value, to her worst enemy-who places her on a low personal level. Human beings are not granted rights only when it fits into other humans best interest-a human being gets rights because its in their best interest, independant of anyone’s prior inclination to hurt or care or be indifferent to them.

The unborn have no legal rights except through the mother. Some degree of legal protection comes at fetal viability, but the majority of legal rights come upon birth, not before.

Right to life is not a legal right, its an inherent one, and as such, if we do not make the grade of being a human individual at the start of our existence it cannot be granted to the same being later on by the government. You also claimed awhile back that right to life was an inherent one, but in order for the above statement to be true you are granting a right to life through human agency (except through the mother.)

As are you. But that only goes to prove there is no definitive point or stated purpose behind it. All we can definitively say is that mammals reproduce by having sex and getting pregnant.

Okay I wasn’t making a statement, I was inviting you to point me towards other theories about pregnancy and the point of it. Can you point out any structures/happenings within pregnancy that shows that pregnancy is not designed for the protection of the child?

"Otherwise, well, you're just making assumptions here. And your assumptions may not reach the same conclusion as a woman who is actually pregnant, and facing this decision herself."

People are free to ignore medical and biological fact-but law-making is not.

What relevant facts are ignored here?

People are not free to decide exactly what they are pregnant with-because pregnancy can only mean one thing in mammals-gestation of your biological child.

A fact no one is disputing.

Okay, you are saying that it is fact (not assumption! That can be challenged by the assumptions of pregnant women...) that in the condition known as pregnancy it means that your own offspring is gestating-reaching a further stage in its development and maturity inside its mother’s womb. So why is a women who is pregnant allowed to decide that pregnancy is is anything other than what we both agreed was the condition of pregnancy? Thats allowing people to dispute and come to a different conclusion other than what we both agreed as ‘fact’ and not ‘opinion.’
I wonder how offspring can reach maturity if pregnancy was not designed for the welfare of the child and to provide a temporary environment that was aid a child in its growth.

Uh, I don't believe anything other than an embryo grows in the womb.

Okay so you agree with me that the embryo is the offspring of the person who’s womb it is in, but you say that people can decide that the embryo is not offspring.?

The end result is this: under the law, laws prohibiting abortion outright are unconstitutional.

The reality is, in a free society, all types of humans are people because all humans should be protected from harm from other humans by law. Creatures that are homo sapeins but who are not equal to other homo sapiens are always this way due to discriminatory legislation. Societies which make rules based on dividing humanity into two classes, the activities which take place due to that ruling have been condemned. There never was a time when a human who was a non-person was not a non-person so that other humans could perform upon it actions that would be immoral, damaging to that individual and illegal against any other human.
Trying to legislate personhood independent of humanity is the oldest trick in the book when it comes to trying to harm other human individuals and get away with it.

-----You want to make an aggressive act legal because during aggressive acts, aggressors are sometimes hurt and killed. A fact that I am not disputing.

I want to make an aggressive act legal because during aggressive acts, victims are sometimes hurt and killed.

I am asking who should the government care and provide for during acts of harm? The person who puts the harm on the other, or the reciever of the harm? Our laws protect victims, not aggressors, otherwise society would collapse.

I am not disputing that if you stick a coathanger or other sharp implements up your vagina in the effort to kill your baby, you will probably be hurt. But really, demanding that the government provide a trained proffessional to aid your killing of your baby because when you tried you got hurt is as nonsensical as demanding that the government interrupt a situation of spousal abuse, not to remove the victim and prosecute the aggressor but to provide the aggressor on a different punching technique that will able him to punch more effectively with less damage to his hand.

Its not safe. Safe for you means, more chance of the harmful act being successfully harmful to the victim and more chance of the aggressor walking out unhurt and without retributions. Isn’t that injustice? Why should the government provide this service for aggressors?
This is what you are advocating, that a child being killed by its parents shouldn’t be illegal, it should only be techniques that should be illegal are the ones that backfire on the aggressors. Please explain.

Take care, again, I don't know how long I will be but thanks for your patience-with the length in between the answer and the length og the answer itself-you really made me think about my conclusions so thank you.