Promoted to the front by Erick based on a recommendation from several readers.
The abortion issue involves vast deeps of confusion about the nature of rights, freedom and the lack thereof, choice, license, responsibilities, and obligations. In this essay I attempt to cut away all the confusion to get to the heart of things from a classical liberal approach.
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Until it gets to the First Amendment, the Constitution has nothing to say on the matter of Human Rights. This doesn’t mean they didn’t exist until then. Americans had Rights before the Bill of Rights passed. Our Rights descended from English common, statute, and chancery law, and before that from the ancient traditions of free Christian Englishmen (the 1689 Bill of Rights not least among these enumerations of rights). But those are peripheral sources of Rights for Americans. Most central to the American concept of Rights is The Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence, in which our Rights as Americans and humans were so eloquently advanced, stated that all humans are created equal and endowed by their Creator with unalienable (intrinsic, non-severable) Rights. It does not state that humans are born equal, but created so. For this reason it matters when human life is created. For the answer we turn to science.
Ask any geneticist when life begins and (assuming sexual reproduction) they’ll tell you it’s when the ovum is fertilized by the sperm. At that point the fertilized egg has the same genetic structure it will have for its entire life, and much of the course of its future life is set, unless interrupted by accident or violent attack. Life begins when the genetic structure is in place and the biological processes begin. It’s the same with a human as it is with a kangaroo or an amoeba. Life, human or otherwise, begins at the beginning. That is the instant of creation. The act of creation invoked in the Declaration is found at the beginning of life.
Rights such as the rights to life, liberty, and property permit the rights-holder to live or die, to own, control, keep, give and sell his self, the product of his own labor, and the inventions of his mind as he likes, so long as he does not infringe on the rights of others. This is Liberty. Anything else is human bondage. Each human is created with a full set of rights, beginning with the right to life. The other rights are meaningless without the right to life so it stands alone as the foundation of all the rights.
The unalienable human rights do not include the so-called right to seize the property or infringe on the rights of another. Such so-called rights are better called “license,” as in James Bond’s fictional “license to kill” or the IRS’s all-too-real “license to tax.” License so understood is not any part of a society of free humans but rather a way of allowing one person to force others into bondage, slavery, or slaughter.
The right to life is the most basic, foundational right without which other rights mean nothing. So how is it that one person’s so-called rights can allow her to take away the foundational rights of another? The answer is they can’t. There are no such rights. This would be license. But license is not endowed upon humans by their Creator. It is claimed by those who wish to oppress others while claiming victimhood for themselves. By misusing the language of rights the proponents of a so-called right to abortion have invented a license to kill for the mother while denying the child any rights at all. This is hardly an example of human beings created equal. It is a much better example of human beings created different and at war.
But surely, you say, a woman has a choice not to carry a child to term. Yes, I would respond. She has that right of choice before a child grows within her. When she has sex she earns the responsibility to deal with the consequences of her actions. Responsibility is always the inevitable result of having done something to earn it.
What about force, you may probe more deeply. Does not a woman who is raped or the victim of incest have the right to choose whether to carry a child to term? Let us consider, I respond. This is where good people may differ. Some may say that when the woman’s right to choose when to have a child is infringed on by violence, she may lawfully exercise that right upon discovering she is pregnant. They say that if she likes, she may take on the obligation to carry the child of rape or incest to term, but obligation being a voluntary choice, it is not an inevitable result like a responsibility would be.
Others see it differently. I, for one, believe giving birth to a child even of rape or incest is still an inevitable responsibility, not a voluntary obligation.
This scenario may illustrate why. I believe it will be persuasive. A woman, let us call her Mary, catches typhoid fever. She is infected through no fault of her own. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time and became the target of a hostile microbe. She does not have an active infection, but is a carrier. Typhoid Mary has the right to do as she sees fit, so long as she does not infringe on the rights of others. Non-infringement on others’ rights is the only limit to rights. But this means she can’t simply do as she wishes, because she will keep on passing on the infection to others. Others will die from Typhoid Mary, unless she is quarantined. So she has the responsibility to quarantine herself away from other people until she is cured or no longer communicable. She has earned that responsibility by becoming infected with typhoid, even though she did not choose it. By this example, we see that responsibility is the inevitable result of voluntary and also involuntary actions and changes. It is not guilt. It is not blame. It is something else entirely.
Typhoid Mary did not choose to become infected with typhoid. A rape victim who becomes pregnant did not choose to have sex. Yet both have a responsibility to change what they do and where they go so as not to kill others. This is unfortunate. But there is no such thing as a right to good fortune.
Remember, any so-called right to good fortune or be free from want is actually a disguised license to take the life or property of others. The one who exercises such license becomes an oppressor.
Well, you ask, what about circumstances where the mother will die if she gives birth? Bingo, I respond. You finally got the circumstance where the libertarian argument is squarely on the side of abortion. You see, I simplified things earlier in the argument when I stated there are no rights to take away the rights of another. I did that so I wouldn’t throw too many thoughts in the air at once. That was incorrect. There is one such circumstance and right. It is the right to self-defense. There is one circumstance in which humans have a right to hurt, immobilize, disable or kill another human, and that is when the other human is going to kill them (whether intentionally or not). A woman who aborts a child for purposes of self-defense will be subject to investigation and perhaps trial by a jury of her peers, as will the doctors or others who assisted with or performed the abortion procedure. The presumption of innocence would be pretty strong in these self-defense cases. And I can’t imagine the penalties for most women who claim self-defense and abort their children, except the most egregious examples of women who make it a habit, being very severe. Doctors might have it somewhat rougher. The result will be as just as the justice system, which is at heart a system of mutual self-defense to protect precisely the rights I’ve been going on and on about, allows it to be.
The confusion in our society about rights, license, responsibility and obligation is monumental. That’s no reason why we cannot overcome it. In any case, the libertarian or classical liberal’s case for the unborn child’s right to life, buttressed by the Declaration of Independence, is air tight. I invite all libertarians who have not already done so to join the right side of the abortion issue.
Cross-posted at Beaglescout.
My Two Cents on the Human Rights Contained in the 1st Seven Articles
dvdmsr Friday, December 12th at 10:30AM EST (link)“Until it gets to the First Amendment, the Constitution has nothing to say on the matter of Human Rights.”
This statement is not exactly true. Please see article one section nine:
“The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
“No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”
And see also article three section two:
“The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment; shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed;”
One could also argue that each of the limits placed upon the United States and/or the several States in the original articles of the Constitution are essentially Rights, but I’ll leave that hair to someone else to split.
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Thank you for pointing them out
LJ "Beaglescout" Miller Friday, December 12th at 12:10PM EST (link)The rights pertaining to trial by jury, habeas corpus, and against the imposition of ex-post-facto law are important government-granted privileges. I’m not sure they are rights with which we were all endowed by a Creator. I’ll have to think on them.
“Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.”
Let me know
dvdmsr Friday, December 12th at 2:15PM EST (link)when YOU have decided. May be the rest of the nation will rollover in agreement with what you deem a self-evident truth. That would certainly streamline the process some. Where were you in 1787, the Framers could have used some ONE so in touch with God.
All joking aside, this brings up an interesting question: constitutional vs. natural rights, and what role do those natural rights not explicitly included in our Constitution have in limiting our government’s actions, if any?
Some say women have a right to an abortion, or that a person has a right to marry, or to marry someone of the same sex, but I know no one who can point to the explicit enumeration of these rights in the Constitution.
The Ninth Amendment says that the enumeration of some rights shall not be construed to mean that others don’t exist, but this in no way suggests that abortion, marriage, gay marriage are rights.
Who then shall decide what is right and what is not in our Republic?
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I was just saying
LJ "Beaglescout" Miller Friday, December 12th at 2:32PM EST (link)I was just saying that specific legal remedies and so on are not the kind of God given rights that adhere to all humans in a raw state of nature. What is the need for trial by jury or habeas corpus for a savage in the Garden of Eden? That’s the filter by which I determine whether a right is an unalienable right, or merely a right granted by other humans.
“Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.”
Who is the savage in the Garden of Eden?
dvdmsr Friday, December 12th at 7:29PM EST (link)A man without sin, or some other creature?
What is the point of human rights in a world (Garden of Eden) without sin?
Am I wrong or did you misspeak?
In a raw state of nature is that a existence w/o government? Is that even possible? Maybe it is or was briefly until individual thugs, gangs, and mobs filled the power vaccume. I would thing that in such a naturally savage state due process of law would be sorely needed, wouldn’t you?
although if it is in the Garden of Eden that you wish to begin your intellectual exercise, then I have to admit it is an interesting question. What rights would God give a man in a world without sin?
In such a sinless world, you’d be right to write-off the need for trial by jury, and the like.
But I have to ask, in such a world why exactly would we need any rights at all?
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"Rights" cannot be granted - only restricted or taken away. . .
Steve W Tuesday, December 16th at 11:38AM EST (link)But I have to ask, in such a world why exactly would we need any rights at all?
The Declaration says that “Rights” are inalienable - that they are God given.
As I understand the situation in the Garden of Eden (well, as well as anyone else can) Adam and Eve both had
Whether or not rights are needed is not the point - they just are - they exist irrespective of what we do, or don’t do - of whether we need them, or not.
The ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas-a trial of spiritual resolve: the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideals to which we are dedicated.
- Ronald Reagan
I would say...since the Constitution was written specifically to restrict the central government
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 2:56PM EST (link)and limit it to the enumerated powers granted to it by the Constitution at a minimum the Abortion issue should be taken out of the hands of the central government…At a BARE minimum the States should be the arbiters…
But ultimately I believe the issue hinges on when a child is entitled to it’s natural rights as granted by God and guaranteed by the constitution….the ultimate question that demands an answer and is avoided by the pro abortion crowd is when does life begin and the 14th amendment apply to a child!
Once the 14th Amendment applies then the government has a compelling interest in stepping in and preventing a mother from infringing on the child.s right to kill it!
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I should have said "Killing him/her at the end!
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 2:57PM EST (link)NT
8
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"when does life begin and the 14th amendment apply to a child!"
Diogenes314 Saturday, December 13th at 3:50PM EST (link)That one’s easy.
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States,
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Not a legal question really
SteveLA Saturday, December 13th at 4:05PM EST (link)Diogenes
It’s really not a legal question, it’s a more a moral question, and perhaps would be better phrased when is there a soul present.
The problem with the revised question, there is not a singular faith based answer to that question, with everything from conception to “first blood” to other answers from many diverse faith traditions, well unless you want to codify one religious traditions point of view on the matter as a point of law. Never mind the arguments that atheists or agnostics would throw into the question, that’s a whole other kettle of fish.
Right now as far as the law goes, most laws seem based on a concept of viability, what ever the heck that means.
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Competency over ideological purity
The one I answered was.
Diogenes314 Saturday, December 13th at 4:21PM EST (link)The question he was asking in this case was when the 14th amendment applies, which would indeed be a legal question. And historicly most anti-abortion legislation has used ‘quickening’ (when a woman can feel the fetus move) as a dividing line for when abortion is considered criminal or not. Except in Exodus, where the fetus is looked at strictly as property. As far as having a sou-that is for God to know and everyone else to pontificate about meaninglessly.
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OK...now I'm at risk of proving my post to Steve irrelevant...
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 5:25PM EST (link)which I just posted moments ago…
but since you mention Exodus…From a strictly theological perspective ..I’ll say this and then I want to make a clean break from the religious discussion because I don’t think it has a place here…There are other places in the Bible where the formation and creation of life begins…and the soul is present…in fact if one takes the Bible seriously …it can be argued that a person’s life begins when time itself began:
Eph 1:4
According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:
The argument against this is that god is eternal and he knew you would exist from the beginning…which I believe is the case…but the arguement above casn be reasonably made.
Again…this discussion has been kept out of the theological realm and I wish it to remain so….with that I’ll return to the discussion non theological discussion and leav it there.
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Can't help make your point of view work without faith
SteveLA Saturday, December 13th at 5:40PM EST (link)Ace
You can’t help yourself to not make your fundamental argument against abortion and the question of when does life begin without firmly being rooted in matters of faith. That’s not a bad thing in my mind, it’s just that as a matter of faith instead of a matter of science you are going to find that people can and do have different belief systems.
Science can’t tell you for now when a “life” begins, but as you have pointed out, scripture does. If one does not think scripture carries the same weight of truth as you do, you’ve got an argument on your hands. Therein lies the crux of the problem, what the individual thinks is truth and what they want done with that truth. The rest is just noise.
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Competency over ideological purity
Science can tell me my eyes would be blue and my hair brown
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 5:56PM EST (link)I would be bald at 30 etc, what my intellectual capacity will be…it can tell us I had a heart beat at 6 weeks gestation and measurable brain waves at 8 weeks and a fully developed brain at 10 weeks. These are areas of reason and proof that have nothing to do with faith…
Faith has to do with a soul…or eternal life, or sin and punishment…and I’m intentionally avoiding those arguments here because the OP is intended to be a non religious look at one libertarian position on Abortion
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At some point in development...yes
SteveLA Saturday, December 13th at 6:17PM EST (link)Ace
Sure science can and does do that now, but the arguments in this tread that center around life begins at conception are not science based or even based on a universally accepted faith tradition. Science has not found a way to measure self awareness, consciousness or whatever you choose to call it in early stages of development of human embryo. Faith alone says that life begins at conception, an argument made many times in this thread.
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Competency over ideological purity
Science
zuiko Saturday, December 13th at 6:27PM EST (link)The scientific definition of life has nothing to do with self-awareness.
* It is human, we can tell that from the genetic makeup.
* It is alive, according to the scientific definition of life we use for all things, human or not.
* It is distinct from the host, we can also tell that by looking at the genetic makeup, and of course that technology has advanced to the point where it can be transplanted. It is only a matter of technology that a human host is required to raise the embryo to the point of viability. At some point in the future there is every reason to believe we can eventually move viability outside the womb to day 0.
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
How do you measure it?
SteveLA Saturday, December 13th at 6:37PM EST (link)zuiko
One of characteristics of science is a desire to measure things? How do you propose scientific measuring of self awareness of an embryo before a stage of development where rudimentary organ structures are formed ?
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Competency over ideological purity
I'm not sure why it needs to be measured
zuiko Saturday, December 13th at 6:50PM EST (link)What difference does self-awareness make? Something does not have to be self-aware to be either alive or human. Self-awareness is a bad place to draw the line precisely because it can’t be measured.
Viability can be measured, so it is a better place to draw the line, but it is also completely arbitrary and always changing, since it is only dependent on today’s technology.
Conception is the only place drawing a line makes any sense… and for reasons that have nothing at all to do with faith.
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
Menlo Saturday, December 13th at 8:50PM EST (link)Actually, “viability” cannot be measured. Unless the baby is born, one can’t be sure how long he or she will live.
Consciousness and self-awareness cannot only not be measured; they can’t be defined. It’s not something that is going to suddenly “turn on.”
It’s a flawed argument also because of the fact that any unconsciousness is temporary. A born person in whom it was equally temporary would not be denied a right to live. I think we can be pretty sure most pro-abortionists don’t care though.
“Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.” -Ann Coulter
Of course
zuiko Saturday, December 13th at 10:21PM EST (link)On a case by case basis it is impossible to say anything for certain, but you can certainly look at it and statistically see where 95% survivability threshold is and draw the line there. Then review it every year and move it back a bit as technology improves… until one day 25, 50, or 100 years from now that cutoff meets conception anyway. It isn’t as crazy a way to do it as hinging everything on “self-awareness” but it’s still completely arbitrary and always changing.
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
Why does it have to be measured...what if you measure it wrong...
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 10:16PM EST (link)isn’t it enough that you may be exterminating a conscious sentient being that is classified by science based on it’s genetic make up of the being as human?
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measuring self awareness? That standard would allow
Mike gamecock DeVine Saturday, December 13th at 10:34PM EST (link)the killing of many outside the womb while in comas and while asleep.
try again
There is no justification for killing the unborn that one can’t use to kill the born. Its just easier to kill the very small.
barbarism
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Hail fellow and well met GC
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 10:42PM EST (link)You say here everything that needs to be said IMHO
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Your affirmation makes my day - nt
Mike gamecock DeVine Saturday, December 13th at 10:54PM EST (link)1
Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com, Charlotte Observer and The Minority Report columns
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LOL...Always glad to see you out and about my friend
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 10:58PM EST (link)nt 1
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OK..let's move from Science to reason...again leaving faith out of it...
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 10:01PM EST (link)As I said, At conception everything I am now was determined…with the likely exception of temperment and personality…though there are strong indication that even that is determined by genes DNA and RNA…
Had My mom chose abortion after I was conceived it wouldn’t have been a nebulous blob of tissue that would have been destroyed…it would have been ME…and I would not now exist…Some would say I should have been aborted…LOL…but the fact is…it would have been me.
So…does it really matter when my soul, or consciousness or any condition you want to apply to when life begins IMHO
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Steve...most of the religionists here I'm reading are making scientific and phylosophical arguements devoid of religion...
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 5:03PM EST (link)I haven’t heard or seen a single verse recited from the Bible, the Torah or the Koran in one single post…so why throw it into the mix…I’m not saying that just about you…there are several who want to quibble with the OP who have made that arguement and I don’t see it’s application in this discussion with all due respect.
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Viability? Case law allows killing viable 8 months and
Mike gamecock DeVine Saturday, December 13th at 10:06PM EST (link)29 day olds if the mental health of a mother is disturbed by the difficulty of affording diapers from a 9 month old and affording the next BMW payment.
try again
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Define Born...is it physical or when it has a consciousness?
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 4:59PM EST (link)nt
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Born as in birth?
Diogenes314 Saturday, December 13th at 5:16PM EST (link)It’s pretty self explanitory, and there is no way of knowing when a consciousness arises.
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My point is...the word born can and has always been used as far as I know
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 5:32PM EST (link)when something comes into existence…You have a point and can legitimately argue born means a physical birth…but it can also be legitimately argued that the 14th Amendment applies when a person is brought into existence be it physically or consciously in the womb.
My point in this is that a definition of when life begins to settle this thing and since the rights we are talking about potentially involve the death of of a person at the hands of another the question of when the potential person who is being killed is a conscious person should be given the benefit of the doubt…even if it means restricting the right of his/her mother to not be pregnant!
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Not as far as the law goes.
Diogenes314 Saturday, December 13th at 7:34PM EST (link)…but it can also be legitimately argued that the 14th Amendment applies when a person is brought into existence be it physically or consciously in the womb.
In a strictly philosophical sense, maybe. As far as the intent of the authors of the 14th amendment, no.
And an attempt to use such a definition to outlaw abortion would be no better than the ‘reasoning’ behind Roe V. Wade.
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14th
Menlo Saturday, December 13th at 9:02PM EST (link)That applies to citizenship. As it stands, one cannot kill an illegal immigrant and certainly not someone legally here from another country who was not naturalized. Seems judges are quite fond of finding rights for these people though.
Perhaps we could argue for giving the unborn the same rights as illegal immigrants?
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Good point vs Roe v Wade
AceInTX Thursday, December 18th at 11:59AM EST (link)tis a conundrum. but as far as the founders are concerned…they didn’t have sonograms or 3D scans…I know…I’m bordering on making the living document arguement I hate so much when the Warrens of this world make it…but I think it legitimately applies here…
Look to prove my good faith in making my arguement I’ll point to another hole I’ve recognized and that is…if a child is conceived in say England and the mother birthed him in the US…wouldn’t it be a British citizen using my standard…
I see the Constitutional problems my approach would cause…but at some point we need to define what is a human being that can not be murdered at the hands of a mother and Doctor because as our technology advances…it’s becoming more and more obvious to more and more people that Abortion means a mother is exorcising a life or death decision concerning a separate person and imposing her will on that person who is subsequently killed
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actually
JHancock Wednesday, February 11th at 1:58AM EST (link)as far as inheritance and taxation, the child in question could likely inherit and be taxed in either country, also dual citizenship could be an option. So why are we affording fetuses the right to inherit, be included in per-stirpes wills, be taxed….when we do not recognize their existance otherwise?…….Simple-convieniance. It’s convieniant to allow them to inherit, so if parents die their wishes can be carried out. It’s convieniant to tax them……it’s also convieniant to kill them. The problem is that convieniance or societal pressures has no role in morality, only legality. So it is legal to kill a child (if it’s the parent’s will) just as it is legal to leave a college fund to the child. The problem in both cases is that the parent’s will is a deciding legal factor. In the case of inheritance, the child can decline–but has no such opportunity with abortion. So while legal and convieniantt, abortion has no actual moral or ethical theory except hedonism and utilitarian convieniance to back it up. These two philosophies have long been abandoned in other spheres of our culture as they have lead to grossly unethical and violent events (westward expansion, slavery, indentured servitude, debtors prision), yet somehow liberals fight to keep them alive in the realm of sexuality and reproduction.
Well, I'd argue that there's lots of chronological adults
Achance Saturday, December 13th at 8:27PM EST (link)who have no “consciousness.” I know I have a couple of boys who were well into their twenties before there was any sign of brain activity beyond autonomic functions.
In Vino Veritas
LOL
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 10:40PM EST (link)Well…even a turkey has a consciousness…no one says they they can think for themselves…
LOL
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The 14th Amendment is not the source
NoDoze Saturday, December 20th at 4:02PM EST (link)from which we determine the question of who has protection under the Constitution.
The Declaration of Independence says that all men are endowed by their Creator with the right to life… The question is when is one a “man”? I think we understand “man” in the general sense of human. When one becomes a human being, he/she has an inalienable right to life given by the Creator. All other statements of the Constitution become secondary to these inalienable rights. That is what “inalienable” means.
Wrong.
Diogenes314 Saturday, December 20th at 4:43PM EST (link)The Declaration is irrelevant as pertaining to Constitutional law, otherwise said ‘protections’ would have been incorporated. It was a polemic document intended as a justification of revolution, not a legal framework. And those inalienable ‘rights’ represent a philosophical belief in due process, not a legal guarantee. Quoting the DoI to oppose abortion is as invalid as doing so to oppose capital punishment, or incarceration for that matter. We’re a nation of laws, not slogans.
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Thank you for the clarification.
NoDoze Saturday, December 20th at 6:11PM EST (link)Not being educated in the law, I had assumed that the three basic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were the philosophic base of the Constitution, and as such, would help us to understand better the laws contained in the Constitution.
You're Welcome. NT
Diogenes314 Saturday, December 20th at 7:05PM EST (link)Message brought to you by Diogenes
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Well, color me intrigued
kyoufuu Friday, December 12th at 11:22AM EST (link)by your arguments. Especially the Typhoid Mary problem, which is a good response to Thompson’s violinist problem. I’ll have to mull this over.
Reccomended.
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” — James Madison
“There were two poor Russian peasants, named Boris and Ivan. The only difference between them was that Boris owned a goat and Ivan did not. One day, Ivan came upon a magic lamp. He rubbed the lamp, and a genie popped out.
‘I will grant you one wish,’ the genie said, ‘but it can be anything you want in the world.’
Ivan responded, ‘I want Boris’ goat to die.’”
Could you summarize Thompson?
LJ "Beaglescout" Miller Friday, December 12th at 12:13PM EST (link)n/t
“Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.”
Judith Jarvis Thomson...
kyoufuu Friday, December 12th at 12:52PM EST (link)wrote a paper, I think back 70s, called “A Defense of Abortion.” In it, she proposed many thought experiments, the most famous of which is the violinist problem. Basically, it says:
Say one morning you wake up, and find that the Music Lover’s Society has hooked up your circulatory system to a famous violinist who is dying of a kidney disease. The MLS is using your kidneys to extract poisons from his bloodstream. It will take nine months of this detoxification to cure the violinist, and after that time, you will be free to go. However, if you unhook yourself, the violinist will certainly die.
Thomson argues that you have every right to unhook yourself from the violinist. While the violinist has a right to life, you also have a right to your body and the free use thereof. As such, unplugging yourself does not take away his right to life, it only denies him something he has no right to: the use of your body.
She says you’d be very kind if you permitted him to use your body, but he has no claim to it. She uses this to show it is reasonable that abortion is allowable in cases of rape, and then from there goes onto other situations.
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” — James Madison
“There were two poor Russian peasants, named Boris and Ivan. The only difference between them was that Boris owned a goat and Ivan did not. One day, Ivan came upon a magic lamp. He rubbed the lamp, and a genie popped out.
‘I will grant you one wish,’ the genie said, ‘but it can be anything you want in the world.’
Ivan responded, ‘I want Boris’ goat to die.’”
What about a kidney dialysis machine?
LJ "Beaglescout" Miller Friday, December 12th at 2:28PM EST (link)Can’t you just have them get a kidney dialysis machine to replace you? That’s the problem with these scifi scenarios. They don’t correspond very well to reality. Any nefarious group of scientists who have the chops to knock me out and hook me up to a bunch of tubes to save the life of some hoity toity violinist, poisoning me to save him, have the chops to hook him up to a kidney dialysis machine and feed him some EDTA to detoxify his bloodstream.
“Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.”
Well, that's the point of a thought experiement.
kyoufuu Friday, December 12th at 3:03PM EST (link)It doesn’t NEED to be grounded in reality. Generally it’s not. It’s supposed to present some scenario, whether it can happen or not, where you are asked to make some sort of ethical decision. This is an essential part of philosophy.
Pointing out that it’s not realistic is simply a swing at a straw man.
Coincidentally, I have determined a flaw in the Typhoid Mary argument. The argument is valid on its face, but the problem is that the potential victims do not require a use of her body for their continued survival. The protection of their right to life requires a restriction on her liberty. If Typhoid Mary died, everyone else would be unaffected. Moreover, someone could reasonably argue that it is in everyone’s best interest to kill Typhoid Mary….
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” — James Madison
“There were two poor Russian peasants, named Boris and Ivan. The only difference between them was that Boris owned a goat and Ivan did not. One day, Ivan came upon a magic lamp. He rubbed the lamp, and a genie popped out.
‘I will grant you one wish,’ the genie said, ‘but it can be anything you want in the world.’
Ivan responded, ‘I want Boris’ goat to die.’”
Aren't you taking control of her body by telling her
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 3:07PM EST (link)what she can or can not do with it?
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Bad analogy
Menlo Friday, December 12th at 3:28PM EST (link)The problem is that abortion is a direct and intentional killing.
It is direct in the sense that one is not simply allowed to die. You don’t simply pull a plug. The baby’s body is targeted for mutilation and destruction. That is the definition of abortion. It is killing, not simply removing life support. “Removal” is only part of the process.
It is intentional in that women don’t seek abortions with the purpose of not having to endure pregnancy and/or childbirth. They do it because they cannot or do not want to raise the child or endure the emotional devastation they believe placing the child for adoption would bring. In essense, the very purpose is to eliminate the child from existence, not the condition of pregnancy or childbirth.
The analogy would make more sense if the disconnecting required stabbing, poisoning, dismembering, or beheading the person to death first AND if the goal was to eliminate the person’s existence. It would also have to be something the woman could not do herself without endangering her own life. So for those three reasons, the analogy fails.
“Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.” -Ann Coulter
Misleading vividness aside...
kyoufuu Friday, December 12th at 3:55PM EST (link)The point Thomson was trying to make is that when posited as a saying that the right to life outweighs the right to body, one can imagine circumstances in which the right to body outweighs the right to life.
Now, I’m not trying to argue that she is correct. It’s not up to me to decide for anyone if they think her points are valid. All I’m trying to say is that this is what Thomson says.
If you won’t accept the analogy, then what about as compared to live birth abortion? Since it possesses none of what you described above, certainly it must fare better in comparison?
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” — James Madison
“There were two poor Russian peasants, named Boris and Ivan. The only difference between them was that Boris owned a goat and Ivan did not. One day, Ivan came upon a magic lamp. He rubbed the lamp, and a genie popped out.
‘I will grant you one wish,’ the genie said, ‘but it can be anything you want in the world.’
Ivan responded, ‘I want Boris’ goat to die.’”
Oxymoron
Menlo Friday, December 12th at 4:05PM EST (link)“Live birth abortion” is an oxymoron. There is no such thing. By definition, abortion is killing the baby. An act that does not aim to kill the baby is not an abortion. Either the baby is killed, or there is childbirth or C-section.
“Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.” -Ann Coulter
LBA
kyoufuu Friday, December 12th at 4:21PM EST (link)is the act of inducing labor prior to viability, and then refusing to then refusing to provide care to the child. I understand it is an oxymoron, being a colorful abuse of language by the left, but my question still stands.
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” — James Madison
“There were two poor Russian peasants, named Boris and Ivan. The only difference between them was that Boris owned a goat and Ivan did not. One day, Ivan came upon a magic lamp. He rubbed the lamp, and a genie popped out.
‘I will grant you one wish,’ the genie said, ‘but it can be anything you want in the world.’
Ivan responded, ‘I want Boris’ goat to die.’”
That's already criminalized
Menlo Friday, December 12th at 10:20PM EST (link)That’s infanticide, and it is prosecutable as murder. Federal law prohibits treating a “pre-viable” child outside the woman any differently from a “viable” one. The two are equally protected under law.
In 2002, the Senate unanimously approved the law. All but about 15 House members did too. This is the infanticide bill Obama opposed in Illinois.
“Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.” -Ann Coulter
Legality and morality are not the same thing.
kyoufuu Monday, December 15th at 12:56PM EST (link)My response was in regards to the misleading vividness used to declare the violinist as being incompatible as an abortion analogy. I offered an alternative to ask the question if, morally speaking, that form of abortion was comparable to the violinist.
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” — James Madison
“There were two poor Russian peasants, named Boris and Ivan. The only difference between them was that Boris owned a goat and Ivan did not. One day, Ivan came upon a magic lamp. He rubbed the lamp, and a genie popped out.
‘I will grant you one wish,’ the genie said, ‘but it can be anything you want in the world.’
Ivan responded, ‘I want Boris’ goat to die.’”
The premise of this problem is
Mandy P. Friday, December 12th at 7:30PM EST (link)not the same which makes it an invalid analogy to abortion in general.
In this case, the person hooked up to the violinist had no choice in the getting there; ie, he or she made no choice as to the actions that led them to their predicament.
When a woman becomes pregnant, cases of rape being the exception, she makes a choice to act in a way that she knows could have certain consequences/results; that is, she chooses to have sex knowing full well that there is the chance of getting pregnant, contracting disease, etc.
Speaking as a woman, regardless of the precautions I take to avoid it, when I have sex I know there is always a chance that I could get pregnant. Therefore if I do end up pregnant as a result of exercising my choice to engage in sexual relations it is my own actions that got me there; my intentional behavior resulted in the creation of another person, hence carrying the child is my responsibility.
I think there’s a big difference between waking up to find yourself abducted and hooked up to another person (involuntary participation) and choosing to have sex and getting pregnant (voluntary participation).
Again, cases of rape are the exception, to which Menlo has an excellent response (below).
Mandy P.
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
-Thomas Jefferson
I mean..
Mandy P. Friday, December 12th at 7:36PM EST (link)Again, cases of rape are the exception, to which Menlo has an excellent response (below).
It’s above actually. Darn.
Mandy P.
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
-Thomas Jefferson
Against the violinist argument
Kyle-MI Saturday, December 13th at 1:37AM EST (link)That is an interesting argument. I know you don’t necessarily agree with it, but thanks for bringing it to everyone’s attention. It is definitely the first time I have heard it.
There are two major problems with this argument. First, it does not apply to the majority of abortions - those not involving rape or incest. If you agree to hook yourself up to the violinist and then renege before the time is up, most people would rightly think that you have done a bad thing. Even if pregnancy is not quite that analogous. It might be more like you have agreed to put your name in a lottery where you might be hooked up to the violinist. Either way most pregnancies occur from a voluntary act.
This means that the violinist argument only applies to rape or incest. But with rape or incest, most women don’t get abortions because the pregnancy is inconvenient. They abort because it reminds them of the acts of violation that occurred against them. In other words, they are not hooked up to a nice culturally contributive violinist. They perceive that they are hooked up to a monster.
The violinist is supposed to refer to rape
kyoufuu Saturday, December 13th at 2:34PM EST (link)As I had stated previously
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” — James Madison
“There were two poor Russian peasants, named Boris and Ivan. The only difference between them was that Boris owned a goat and Ivan did not. One day, Ivan came upon a magic lamp. He rubbed the lamp, and a genie popped out.
‘I will grant you one wish,’ the genie said, ‘but it can be anything you want in the world.’
Ivan responded, ‘I want Boris’ goat to die.’”
First of...that argument falls flat on it's face...
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 3:05PM EST (link)since you didn’t hook yourself to the voilinist in the first place!
In the case of Abortion the mother has participated in creating a human life and the question then becomes…having created a separate and autonomous Human being…does she then have the right to kill it…or…using Thompson’s analogy unhooking herself from the child by severing the life support system SHE is responsible for creating in the first place!?.
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The problem refers to rape.
kyoufuu Monday, December 15th at 1:32PM EST (link)Thomson’s point is that, if we frame the argument as being about a right to life versus a right to liberty for two unwilling and uninvolved parties (the violinist and the person hooked up), which is comparable to someone who becomes pregnant after being raped, we can say that the right to liberty effectively trumps the right to life. She used it to poke a hole in the logic that the right to life MUST ALWAYS outweigh the right to liberty.
She has a followup which does not involve rape. It involves some imagination, being a thought experiemtn. Her followup argument is as follows:
Imagine a hypothetical world in which there are spores which float around through the air. These spores, called people-seeds, will grow into human babies if they manage to implant themselves into a carpet. Say you want to be able to enjoy a nice breeze through your house. So you buy fine mesh screens that block out the people-seeds, and thus enable you to enjoy the breeze.
Say, as sometimes happens, one screen is defective and allows a spore to enter and imbed itself in your carpet.
The morally relevant question is: given the fact that you’ve taken reasonable safeguards against the people-seeds, does a defective screen mean that you are now morally responsible for the baby growing in your carpet, or is it permissible to stop it from growing into a person?
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” — James Madison
“There were two poor Russian peasants, named Boris and Ivan. The only difference between them was that Boris owned a goat and Ivan did not. One day, Ivan came upon a magic lamp. He rubbed the lamp, and a genie popped out.
‘I will grant you one wish,’ the genie said, ‘but it can be anything you want in the world.’
Ivan responded, ‘I want Boris’ goat to die.’”
I know JJ Thompson's argument...
asleep06 Friday, December 19th at 3:18PM EST (link)… but I’ve always bit the bullet and said that although the violinist does not have a right to your body’s use, you simultaneously do not have the right to deprive him of life because by disconnecting the tubes, you would be killing the violinist.
Putting it another way, the violinist is an innocent entity who does not deserve to be killed even when the alternative is personal sacrifice.
What anyone in that situation should do is wait out the 9 months knowing he is doing the morally excellent thing, and then sue the bastards who hooked the poor violinist up to you. Theirs is the real crime, and it would be wrong to punish the violinist for something they, not him, did to you.
Which brings me to the analogous point: the baby is always innocent and should not have to pay the ultimate price for his parent(s) mistakes/crimes.
Small is beautiful.
My problem, as it has always been, is enforcement.
birdmojo Friday, December 12th at 12:30PM EST (link)Let’s say that you hear a rumor that the neighbor’s daughter next door is two months along and considering an abortion.
What ought The State do about it?
In threads past, people have suggested something to the effect of “well, you can call the authorities and we have a template for action in Child Protective Services.”
My follow-up question to this answer is something to the effect of: “When CPS shows up, one of the first things they do is ask to see the child. What analogue is there in your theoretical Unborn Infant Protective Services? Asking the young lady to take a pregnancy test?”
It is at this point that I get called fundamentally unserious.
The conversation breaks down soon after that.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. –Voltaire
One suggestion is to enforce
dvdmsr Friday, December 12th at 2:32PM EST (link)through a policy of deterence supported by education, and criminal prosecution once evidence of a crime is apparent,
I think a more proactive or pre-emptive approach would be racked with problems as I believe you are suggesting.
Using the above suggestion a lot of this is avoided as I think something more than hearsay and rumors are required to obatin a conviction.
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So she's two months along and thinking about killing her baby
LJ "Beaglescout" Miller Friday, December 12th at 2:51PM EST (link)Why does it have to go to the government for solutions right away? Isn’t kicking every can down the road until the gubmint takes care of it part of the problem? Would a libertarian first look to the government for solutions?
What ought you as a neighbor do about it? Suss it out. Find out what’s going on. Only if you suspect incest or some other criminal activity do you call the cops. Talk to her or get your wife/daughter/mother to talk to her. Offer moral support or assistance finding a good adoptive parent or whatever the girl needs.
I’d think that dead pre-term children would be required to have death certificates and a cause of death. Refer all that have been dismembered, beheaded, had their brains removed, or their skin burned by caustic liquids for infanticide investigation. Interview bereaved mother, father, relatives, attending doctors and others. No harsh interrogation techniques allowed.
“Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.”
My libertarian problem...
birdmojo Friday, December 12th at 4:07PM EST (link)Is that I believe that human being have a right to privacy. “Talk to her or get your wife/daughter/mother to talk to her. Offer moral support or assistance finding a good adoptive parent or whatever the girl needs.”
This is, indeed, what would happen in a perfect world. Heck, it is even achievable in an imperfect world. But Libertarians have different opinions on what happens if she decides on Plan B.
Let’s say that you hear that she took four birth control pills at once when she found that her monthlies were late and, the next day, they started.
Would this require a death certificate?
Is it evidence of homicide? What ought The Authorities do?
My libertarian intuition is to say that it is none of The State’s business.
I’d be interested in hearing why a real libertarian would think otherwise.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. –Voltaire
Or she takes RU486
LJ "Beaglescout" Miller Friday, December 12th at 4:27PM EST (link)Even the pill denies the fertilized, living, very early-in-development child the ability to attach to the uterine wall.
Perhaps you start enforcing the rules when abortion requires medical procedures.
That said, I don’t think that right and wrong hinge on enforceability.
“Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.”
Neither do I.
birdmojo Friday, December 12th at 5:00PM EST (link)I, personally, think that the debate *OUGHT* to focus on the right/wrong portion.
It is so much stronger there. When one starts discussing “making it illegal”, it opens up questions regarding enforcement. When the only discussion is about how wrong of a choice it is, the pro-life position is, to my mind, unassailable.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. –Voltaire
Simple solution
Menlo Friday, December 12th at 3:14PM EST (link)Abortion is not a women’s issue. Women don’ t do anything themselves. The few who would try are threats to their own lives to the extent that they need psychiatric help the same as anyone else a threat to his or her own life.
So the solution there is simple. If she is going to someone, find out where she plans to go and report that person or place. If she is going to endanger her life too, admit the woman to a psychiatric institution.
“Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.” -Ann Coulter
It depends...
birdmojo Friday, December 12th at 4:15PM EST (link)I have heard “Plan B” described as inducing abortion.
One hears rumors of various herbal combinations resulting in “spontaneous” miscarriage.
“If she is going to someone, find out where she plans to go and report that person or place. If she is going to endanger her life too, admit the woman to a psychiatric institution.”
Could you see how that particular solution might not poll well? I appreciate the answer that says “It doesn’t matter if it polls well, it’s still the right thing to do” but at that point the arguments turn from one into one capable of changing the minds of swing voters into one that polarizes them.
Which is a more interesting conversation when one is up 5-6 senate seats rather than down 8–9.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. –Voltaire
that's why I resist taking it to gubmint first
LJ "Beaglescout" Miller Friday, December 12th at 4:32PM EST (link)When you depend on gubmint to be the first line of defense, you end up with gubmint effectiveness and efficiency. In other words, the wheel takes years to get up to speed but grinds everything in it to a powder, at a cost of eight bajillion dollars. The worst of all worlds. Too slow, too expensive, and too penal.
“Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.”
Preach it.
birdmojo Friday, December 12th at 10:20PM EST (link)I freely admit that both sides of the abortion debate sort of weird me out.
The wackier pro-choicers don’t seem to realize that they sound exactly like slave-owners explaining that the government has no right to stick its nose into their “property”. As if a baby were property. As if pregnancy were spontaneous. As if there were not implied contracts between informed adults regarding the probable outcome of unsufficiently protected sex.
The wackier pro-lifers don’t seem to realize that their rhetoric exceeds their stated solutions to the point where one questions their stated solutions… e.g., if abortion is, in fact, murder… why *NOT* imprison the woman who hired the assassin? If it is accepted that the woman who hired the assassin ought not be imprisoned, then why call abortion “murder”? Additionally, there seems to be a waving away of the power dynamic that exists between men and women (usually represented by the questioning of paternity laws… which turns into sputtering when one asks if abortion isn’t really a civil issue, rather than a criminal one).
I must say that I find the debate, on both sides, to resemble arguments between neo-confederacy types and PETA-types. There are so many unshared premises that reading the arguments between them is more likely to lead to a need for tylenol than, say, a new position on the part of the reader.
Additionally, it seems that there is so much more said than done, on both sides. As if another court decision would solve the problem. As if another law would result in anything but an underground economy. As if wishing in the one hand would result in it filling up first.
It makes me tired.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. –Voltaire
Amen brother
gensec Saturday, December 13th at 2:25AM EST (link)It does seem mostly like talking past each other. Most of the time I just write it off as pointless noise and move on.
I can’t say I have much hope of more reasoned debate on either side. For the foreseeable future I expect mostly “Yay for our team!” and “How dare the other team be so despicable!”
This diary actually gets credit for a calmer tone than that, but on content it was still talking past the real dispute.
You don't get it.
Menlo Friday, December 12th at 9:45PM EST (link)“Plan B” does not induce abortion. That is simply fact by defintiion.
Otherwise, I think you misunderstand. The same standard ALREADY holds for ANYONE who endangers one’s own life by any means, pregnant or not. It’s not something government initiates unless it is reported. Someone could call up an officer right now, report me as a threat to my own life, and have me hauled off in handcuffs. It already happens. No one is arguing for any change there.
There is nothing to poll because no other law would need to be changed. The only legal reform needed in the current law would be a madate on the medical profession of what cannot constitute legitimate medical practice. The rest is already there.
“Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.” -Ann Coulter
Really?
birdmojo Friday, December 12th at 10:09PM EST (link)Because I’m pretty sure that I can find a handful of folks who will explain to you in no uncertain terms that Plan B is, in fact, inducing abortions.
Should I bother? Perhaps you could explain to them that they just “don’t get it”.
Maybe you’ll find that they explain to you that “reasonable people can disagree”. Or, perhaps, they’ll explain to you that life begins at conception and if you don’t understand that, you just “don’t get it”.
“Someone could call up an officer right now, report me as a threat to my own life, and have me hauled off in handcuffs. It already happens.”
Pretend, for a second, that you’re talking to a libertarian who does not believe that the police should have the power to cart people off based on anonymous phone calls and who is likely to start talking about East Germany if someone does bring up something like that. Would you use a different argument or would you explain, again, that the libertarian just does not “get it”?
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. –Voltaire
Menlo Friday, December 12th at 10:39PM EST (link)The people making that charge against Plan B are not going by objective terminology. Abortion requires pregnancy which requires implantation. Moreover, people have become increasingly confused by the Chinese-made abortion pill, not available at pharmacies, and contraceptives.
That life begins at fertilization is irrelvant. The intent is to prevent fertilization. It can have a side effect of blocking implantation. I think we can agree that people can do what they wish to their bodies to keep others from attaching to them. I suppose the refusal to provide life support takes effect here.
I’m perfectly fine with your argument that more is needed to get police involved and that endangerment to one’s own life should not be allowed to warrant police action. It is really irrelevant to laws dealing with abortion though since it is already enforced. If you want to change it, seek changes in the laws that deal with endangerment to one’s own life. I’ll actually be on your side there.
“Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.” -Ann Coulter
"Not going by objective terminology"
birdmojo Friday, December 12th at 11:45PM EST (link)So “conception” means “implantation” rather than “conception”, then?
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. –Voltaire
That's right.
Menlo Saturday, December 13th at 12:00AM EST (link)That is the official medical and scientific definition.
“Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.” -Ann Coulter
Call Benedict XVI! We have new information!
birdmojo Saturday, December 13th at 12:03AM EST (link)I am certain that the position of the Holy Catholic Church will modify itself now that it has this information.
Wow! Official medical *AND* scientific? They’ve been doing it wrong for centuries!
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. –Voltaire
Yes
Menlo Saturday, December 13th at 12:11AM EST (link)Religious definitions may differ. The Catholic church was opposed when the definition changed back in the 50’s, and they still don’t acknowledge it.
Of course we can’t use Biblical or religious interpretations for terms in science and medicine.
“Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.” -Ann Coulter
An honest question.
birdmojo Saturday, December 13th at 8:58AM EST (link)Is a fertilized cell alive?
If it is, does it change the idea behind “life begins at implantation” into “life begins at conception” or is this yet another example of me just not getting it?
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. –Voltaire
Yes
Menlo Saturday, December 13th at 12:11PM EST (link)A whole human life begins at fertilization. It is important here to distinguish the terms “organism” and “cell” because there is not only a part of a human life existing at the time. It is a whole new distinct human living organism by virture that it meets the biological criteria. All humans begin as single cells.
Understandably, “conception” has become a confusing term for some people, largely because of disagreements by the Catholic church over the way science and medicine defined it. It’s been a major issue behind a recent order Bush gave to medical facilities receiving federal money. This is why I prefer to use the terms fertilization and implantation rather than conception.
The bottom line here is that new life begins at fertilization, but conception doesn’t begin until implantation.
“Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.” -Ann Coulter
Edit to add
Menlo Saturday, December 13th at 12:03AM EST (link)Just to clarify, “conception” means implantation rather than fertilization.
“Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.” -Ann Coulter
On enforcement...
redrightandnew Friday, December 12th at 3:22PM EST (link)This argument is tantamount to the pro-amnesty lobby’s argument that it’s impossible to catch all 12 million illegal aliens and therefore we should just legalize their actions. That a law will be difficult to enforce should not be a basis for not enacting it.
Should we expect to be able to enforce immigration laws for every illegal alien of every abortion? Of course not, but that doesn’t mean we should make the behavior legal.
“If this wasn’t America, I might be worried.” - Fred Thompson
Not exactly.
birdmojo Friday, December 12th at 4:19PM EST (link)It’s tantamount to asking whether the turrets on the wall marking the border really need machine guns.
I agree that unborn infants in the later stages of pregnancy do deserve legal protection.
My questions deal with enforcement.
We agree that something ought to be done about the problem… but if I want to ask you about enforcement of one’s proposed solution and you point out the machine guns in the turrets of the wall marking the border… well… I’m allowed to think that maybe the status quo would be better than a wall with turrets with machine guns.
It’s not saying that nothing should be done, I’m merely having issues with enforcement.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. –Voltaire
This is a straw man
Kyle-MI Saturday, December 13th at 1:50AM EST (link)Most of the prolife community would argue that the way to stop the vast majority of abortions is to stop the abortion providers. The point of stopping abortion isn’t to control women, it is to protect the unborn child. You can protect the vast majority of unborn children by concentrating the laws on the abortion providers.
Yes, there will be some illegal abortions, but there would be no point to have laws that everyone will always obey perfectly. For example, if people didn’t steel, we would not need laws to deter theft.
"strawman" "most"
birdmojo Saturday, December 13th at 8:48AM EST (link)Doesn’t the fact that you used “most” rather than “all” mean that it is not, in fact, a strawman?
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. –Voltaire
Yaeh it is...and the answer is the same...Your arguement ignorse the deterance factor
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 3:47PM EST (link)It’s not necessary to round up twelve million illegals and send them home…all you have to do is make them uncomfortable enough to leave…AZ has had great success limiting the number of Illegals draining limited resources by cracking down on employers and making it harder for the illegals to get work…
The same effect would happen with Abortion..the very possibility of being arrested and sent to jail for performing abortions would eliminate the majority of doctors performing them and the women seeking them…then you could add in the benefit of potential mothers having no alternative except have a child once she’s conceived or the father having to support it would make it all the more likely they would be extra careful to not get pregnant in the first place.
House Conservatives Fund
Michael Williams for Senate
Toomey US Senate
SarahPAC
This doesn't work as an argument at all...
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 3:31PM EST (link)If the neighbor hears you talk about to murdering your mother and reports it, the government can’t come in and arrest you preemptively and they wouldn’t in the instance you site…The government can’t act until a crime has been committed.
Once the crime of abortion, (murder) has been committed; Using the laws on murder, The Doctor who performed the abortion and actually killed the child would be charged and prosecuted for murder and the mother would be charged with being an accessory to murder
House Conservatives Fund
Michael Williams for Senate
Toomey US Senate
SarahPAC
It's up to the people how they want it enforced
zuiko Saturday, December 13th at 6:02PM EST (link)There is no political will to create some agency with black helicopters that swoops in and conducts surprise pregnancy tests or anything else of the sort. We don’t do everything we can to enforce any law, including those against crimes we can universally agree are always heinous such as murder. Enforcement is a political decision… and the will of the people will ultimately prevail there. There is no political will for the kind of enforcement you describe. Nothing even close to that.
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
Enforcement is a realistic concern...
asleep06 Friday, December 19th at 3:23PM EST (link)… but to this response I argue that finding a drowned baby next to a mother in a bathroom would also be a difficult situation to investigate with much encroachment on private spaces, but we still outlaw infanticide.
Small is beautiful.
Great Diary BeagleScout....one minor quibble...
Attack Mode Friday, December 12th at 1:36PM EST (link)You second to last paragraph. There is still an alternative to an abortion when the life of the mother is at risk, depending on how far along the pregnancy is. If the child is viable, in the sense that it could live in an incubator, the first option should be a c-section birth. Obviously there are some circumstances where this would not work out, such as an ectopic pregnancy, but these are rare.
Anyhow I see nothing else that I disagree with, I highly recommend.
“Land of the Free and Home of da Whopper” Peter Griffin…Family Guy
conform and celebrate diversity….or else!!!
Steel-Belted Radial Right Winger
“I’ll create 5 million jobs from out of unicorn farts and pixie dust” Justatron paraphrasing Obamessiah…yes I love it that much.
Good point
LJ "Beaglescout" Miller Friday, December 12th at 2:24PM EST (link)I agree completely.
“Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.”
p.s.
LJ "Beaglescout" Miller Friday, December 12th at 2:52PM EST (link)Did the diary improve on the comment version?
“Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.”
Very much so....
Attack Mode Friday, December 12th at 2:54PM EST (link)I wish I had written it my self!!
“Land of the Free and Home of da Whopper” Peter Griffin…Family Guy
conform and celebrate diversity….or else!!!
Steel-Belted Radial Right Winger
“I’ll create 5 million jobs from out of unicorn farts and pixie dust” Justatron paraphrasing Obamessiah…yes I love it that much.
Excellent Argument [n/t]
IL_Glock21 Friday, December 12th at 6:18PM EST (link)n/t
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- “Make love not war? Real men can do both!”
libertarian or not is irrelevant - all depends on the one big IF
gensec Saturday, December 13th at 2:11AM EST (link)The OP takes a few words to assert the moral principle that a single-cell zygote has the same or similar moral status that American society’s consensus attributes to a newborn child. There’s nothing libertarian vs. non-libertarian about whether someone is in the large fraction of American society that has similar moral beliefs about zygotes, or in the large fraction of America that rejects that moral belief.
After that you waste a lot of type propounding points that the overwhelming majority of Americans (pro-choice or pro-life, libertarian or not liberatian) already agree with applied to whatever stage of pregnancy they attribute the moral status of a child. Until you get to the part about rape exceptions which raises additional issues, there’s nothing controversial in all that. The vast majority of pro-choicers favor laws against late term abortions, because their moral belief is that an 8 month fetus has a moral status similar to a post-partum child. They already accept the idea that what they regard as a child has a right to life, so it’s a waste of time to argue that point which they already agree with. The number of pro-choicers who think 8-month abortions should be generally legal is probably no more significant than the number of pro-lifers who oppose a rape exception.
The “argument” offered why someone should adopt your moral belief is little more than an assertion.
Ask any geneticist when life begins and (assuming sexual reproduction) they’ll tell you it’s when the ovum is fertilized by the sperm.
You must be talking to some flaky geneticists, because life begins long before that. Both the spermatazoon and ovum are living cells before they meet. Oh but I’m twisting words you think? I should know what you mean by “life” when you’re asserting when it begins? Of course I know what you mean, by “life” you mean whatever it is that we regard with the moral status of a person. Your logical problem is trying to pass off your moral beliefs as science. There’s no scientific dispute about the genetic consequence of a spermatazoon joining an ovum, only a moral disagreement about what moral significance if any to attribute to that scientific fact.
So since the dispute between the vast majority of pro-lifers and pro-choicers is a moral disagreement, over what stage of zygote-through-fetus should have a moral status similar to a newborn baby, obviously the only way for pro-choicers or pro-lifers to change each others mind is to change the moral beliefs they have about the moral status of embryos. Once you change someone’s mind on that point, there’s no need to argue the other points, because they already agree.
With that moral disagreement over a fetus’ moral status at the core of the dispute, why do most ardent pro-choicers and pro-lifers simply assert their moral belief about that as a known fact, and spend most of their time making arguments that almost everybody already agrees with (as applied to whatever stage of pregnancy they think a fetus has the moral status of a person)? The answer is simply because it’s a lot easier to argue against straw men, than to argue about what really causes the disagreement.
Ardent pro-choicers take it for granted that a fetus obviously has no moral status of its own, and given that premise pound the table arguing how that proves pro-lifers are fixated with teaching sluts a lesson about responsibility. Ardent pro-lifers take it for granted that a zygote obviously has the same moral status as a newborn baby, and given that premise pound the table arguing how that proves pro-choicers are happy to let millions of babies get murdered. Both arguments are pretty easy to make from their respective premises, and probably emotionally gratifying for a lot of people who argue that way.
Trying to change someone’s moral beliefs about whether a zygote, embroyo, etc. at whatever stage has a moral status endowed with rights is much more difficult, maybe impossible. So there’s a strong temptation to retreat into the sanctimonious mode of argument, essentially asserting one’s own position on a moral dispute as the starting premise, and arguing against straw men from there.
I’m pro-choice, at least by the benchmark of most here, based on my view that some minimal level of self-awareness is when the moral status of person begins and ends. I used to be embarassed to be on the same side as the advocates of abortion rights appearing on the talking heads shows, because they almost invariably used the sanctimonious method of argument - their position on the moral status of an embryo as their starting premise. I had more respect for some of the pro-lifers on those shows, who actually recognized the point of dispute and argued for their moral positon on that. These days it seems the advocacy of both pro-life and pro-choice positions is mostly reduced to pounding on the table, making arguments that assert the fundamental point of dispute as the settled premise.
Do you really believe you’re going change any minds with this kind of argument? Or is it just for self-reassurance and preaching to the converted?
If nothing else, thought provoking.
IL_Glock21 Saturday, December 13th at 9:36AM EST (link)Especially considering that his argument on the beginning of life is taking the more scientific approach, and that’s leaving the pro-choice side to take a moral approach to that part of the argument.
That said, it seems less of a moral assumption on the author’s part than a scientific view of life being applied to natural rights arguments/laws that have generally been applied to adult situations. He focuses on when a new life begins… ie a new human being with its own complete (and generally unique) set of DNA, that under the right conditions and luck of health will develop into an adult human being.
As you point out, “life,” generally speaking, never begins in the reproductive process. The sex cells are alive when they come together, if they weren’t the process wouldn’t work. Life continues during the DNA replication and splicing that occurs afterward. And life continues in the new cell(s) with their new set of DNA guiding the rest of the process.
From here the author’s argument focuses on the idea that this is a new human being (as opposed to a cancerous cell that lacks the ability to develop into a new human being, or merely a piece of the original person such as a skin cell with the same DNA, which is not the whole human, nor is it a whole human in an early stage of development towards adulthood.)
Your approach adds a question of morality to this where no judgment of morality was made. The “moral status of the child” has little to do with whether we’re discussing a new human life or not… but the moral issues being pondered upon by those deciding whether it is a life worth protecting or a life that can be actively terminated for the convenience of others… generally speaking this is a decision that is normally made after conviction of a heinous crime, in cases of self-defense or defense of another who is/are being threatened by that other person, or against enemies of the state during times of war.
So why the exception for new humans in the earliest stage of development? Some might argue that the early stages are so underdeveloped to remove concerns of suffering, consciousness, etc to make it a pragmatic approach where the liberty of the parent(s) outweigh any serious concerns of doing harm. But in a broad application of a right to life, especially if one has already crossed the divide of unborn, there is no less life to have a right to any more than a child has less life than a teenager, etc.
It very well may be a special exception to an ideal that can be justified by some with our current technology and weighing the societal concerns… but this can easily be seen as a slippery slope by others if they’re unconvinced the exception is justified. Especially if they view killing as not only taking away what someone ‘is’ but also taking away everything they were destined to ‘be.’
That said, this argument is aimed squarely at an audience that generally supports taking the ideals in question to their logical extremes, and one that generally avoids convenient pragmatism when it comes to what they consider inalienable rights and limitations on government to prevent infringement of those rights. In that light it may be more compelling to the target audience than others who are coming at the issue from a different perspective.
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- “Make love not war? Real men can do both!”
You still end up at the same question of moral status
gensec Saturday, December 13th at 6:23PM EST (link)his argument on the beginning of life is taking the more scientific approach, and that’s leaving the pro-choice side to take a moral approach to that part of the argument.
Actually I’ve said this same criticism directed at pro-choice arguments more times than I’ve directed it at pro-life arguments. The dispute has always been a moral disagreement, and any who try to portray their arguments as something else are kidding the audience if not themselves.
The point here about the OP was that it’s assertion of his moral belief (on the core point of dispute) as scientific fact was just another variation on the rich tradition of pro-life and pro-choice arguments: asserting their position on the fundamental moral disagreement as the starting premise, than pounding the table arguing all the points that obvously follow if you accept the premise.
the author’s argument focuses the idea that this is a new human being (as opposed to a cancerous cell that lacks the ability to develop into a new human being, or merely a piece of the original person such as a skin cell with the same DNA, which is not the whole human, nor is it a whole human in an early stage of development towards adulthood.)
That’s fine, but the scientific facts cited are already common knowledge to people on both sides of the debate. The disagreement is still over what moral significance there is about those facts, such as the ones in your quote above.
Both pro-choicers and pro-lifers know the single cell zygote has a full DNA sequence and proper nurturing in a womb will likely result in a newborn child. The disagreement is a moral one, whether that potential endows the single cell with the same moral status as a one year old child. Some pro-lifers think everybody should accept that moral, and all argument should be based on that as a stipulated premise.
Whether the DNA and potential to develop into a child should endow a cell with human rights is a moral opinion. Some here hold that belief. Others including me don’t buy it. If I accidentally bite my tongue and spit blood into a napkin, that’s human life with a complete DNA sequence (mine), and with the proper nurturing in a cloning lab can result in a child. Even if there was a lab nearby willing to clone humans, I see no moral significance in tossing the bloody napkin in the trash.
Pro-lifers make a moral distinction between the rights of a cell’s DNA sequence that can develop into a child with help from a womb vs. a cell’s DNA sequence that needs help in a cloning lab. If someone’s moral belief is that a cell is endowed with human rights depending on what kind of nurturing is needed to result in a child, there’s nothing inherently illogical about that, but they shouldn’t be shocked that many others view both cells with the same lack of moral significance.
The “moral status of the child” has little to do with whether we’re discussing a new human life or not… but the moral issues being pondered upon by those deciding whether it is a life worth protecting or a life that can be actively terminated for the convenience of others
The bolded part of your statement is essentially the point I make. My moral view is that no single mindless cell as entitled to protection, and others hold an opposing moral view. No scientific dispute is in that.
Quick Dispute
IL_Glock21 Saturday, December 13th at 9:31PM EST (link)The author’s assumption seems less moral than an application of an oft stated right to life for human beings. And while you seem to be arguing that it is accepted fact that a zygote is a human being on both sides of this debate (as opposed to cancer or just a part of another human being) your argument dives down this same absurd reasoning by the ‘throw-away blood soaked napkin’ which is, of course just a part of another human… one that could be taken apart through various procedures and manipulated into other cell(s) to eventually produce what the author is talking about… a base cell for a human being that has the potential to grow into an adult human, but the DNA situation is more along the lines of an ‘artificial twin.’
I agree that there are moral issues abound on this issue, but the author seems to be avoiding them by assuming his audience generally agrees that the right to life cannot be arbitrarily denied, and resting on a logical extension of that right to its logical extreme. Once again you’re injecting the moral argument, which the author neither seems to be assuming nor addressing. To be fair though, it isn’t really a part of the issue that can be so easily avoided.
I’m still a bit surprised to hear that folks on the pro-choice side generally consider it ‘common knowledge’ and ’scientific fact’ that a zygote is a human being. Seems like this is one of the most common disputes I run into on the issue… but then I usually argue about it with democrats, so perhaps my impression has been skewed.
Then again, if you consider a zygote on par with a bloody napkin in the trash, I think I may be just getting mixed messages.
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- “Make love not war? Real men can do both!”
Choice of words vs. scientific facts
gensec Saturday, December 13th at 10:50PM EST (link)And while you seem to be arguing that it is accepted fact that a zygote is a human being on both sides of this debate
Absolutely not. What is accepted fact by both pro-lifers and pro-choicers is the genetic consequence of a spermatozoon joining an ovum to form a zygote cell. The moral opinion asserted by the author is that setting of the DNA sequence endows that single cell with the same or similar moral status as a human being, a moral belief that is rejected by about half of American society.
There’s a general consensus among Americans, pro-life and pro-choice, that “human beings” have a right to life. Some pro-lifers think that by applying the term “human being” to a single cell, they can piggy-back a ride on that general consensus instead of actually having to persuade people to change their moral opinions.
That’s just playing games with the common understanding of American English. But that consensus on the rights of “persons” or “human beings” does not exist with the definitions that include single cells; the consensus only exists with the commonly used definitions of those words, not the newspeak definition being pushed by the gamers,
When somebody refers to a “one and a half year old person” or “one and a half year old human being”, it’s safe to conclude they’re referring to a child born about 18 months ago, not one born 9 months ago. If a single cell was a “person” in American English, a newborn would be a 9 month old person.
absurd reasoning by the ‘throw-away blood soaked napkin’ which is, of course just a part of another human… one that could be taken apart through various procedures and manipulated into other cell(s) to eventually produce what the author is talking about… a base cell for a human being that has the potential to grow into an adult human, but the DNA situation is more along the lines of an ‘artificial twin.’
But of course almost everybody, pro-life or pro-choice, would agree that a 1 year old baby’s right to life should not be forfeited because he has the same DNA sequence as another human being and/or because that baby was cloned in a lab dish 21 months ago. The ‘artificial twin’ distinction, which you think should make a difference for the moral status of a single cell, is one that makes no difference for the moral status you would give 1 year old baby developed from that cloned cell.
Pro-choicers make a similar moral distinction between a single-cell zygote and a 1 year old baby developed from that zygote cell, as you make between a cloned cell and the baby developed from that cloned cell.
Just to clarify
IL_Glock21 Sunday, December 14th at 1:30AM EST (link)I wasn’t making a distinction between the 1 cell vs 1 year old human… I was making a distinction between one of your blood cells and one that has been taken apart and manipulated into another cell to create an artificial twin, which at that point would be a human being at the earliest stage of development.
I’m not putting your blood spatter on par with a zygote. Sorry for any confusion.
Sorry if I misunderstood your general consensus/scientific fact comment after quoting my ‘new human being’ comment as agreement that a single cell counts as one (which is what I was trying say there.
One might argue that your denial that the original cell is a human being in the earliest stages of development isn’t a moral issue, but a denial of scientific fact that begs the question of how many cells count before it’s a human being? 2? Enough for a nervous system? Enough to survive outside the womb (assisted? unassisted?) , if assisted does it depend on the cells or the technology? Etc etc. If the key is consciousness does that render all unconscious people or brain dead people non-human, at least temporarily.
It ends up a real mess because you can apparently accept that it is human, but cannot accept that it is a human being and the point in its development where it is bestowed that honor seems quite arbitrary. At least to some.
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- “Make love not war? Real men can do both!”
Revising the English language doesn't change the moral dispute
gensec Sunday, December 14th at 2:42AM EST (link)One might argue that your denial that the original cell is a human being in the earliest stages of development isn’t a moral issue, but a denial of scientific fact that begs the question of how many cells count before it’s a human being?
That’s a dispute you would have with the English language as it’s used by the American populace. “Human being” and “person” (generally used interchangeably) are commonly understood to not include fetuses. If the common understanding of person included fetuses like you think it should, a law saying “No person less than 21 years old may enter a tavern” would allow someone with a birthdate 20 years and 3 months ago to walk in and order a drink.
But just to get past the linguistic obfuscation, I’ll restate my basic point while taking into account your objections to the way Americans (and Brits etc.) speak English.
There’s a general moral consensus among Americans, pro-life and pro-choice, that human beings after birth have a right to life. A smaller but still overwhelming majority of Americans have a moral belief that late term fetuses in the last month or so have a moral status similar to persons after birth, morally entitled to legal protection (regardless whether or not those fetuses are called “human beings”).
There is widespread moral disagreement whether earlier term fetuses, embryos, etc. back to single cell zygotes (whether or not you call them “human beings”) have a similar moral status to persons after birth, morally entitled to protection.
Are you claiming that this disagreement is something other than a disagreement over moral beliefs?
Revising the English language to your liking would not change this moral disagreement at the core of the abortion dispute. As we see here, it only increases to the amount of type needed to state what the moral disagreement is.
Poor example imo
IL_Glock21 Sunday, December 14th at 4:26AM EST (link)The current laws are based on birth date… not existence as a human being date. So I’m not sure how that is at all relevant. But on the bright side I’m starting to understand your 9 month discrepancy in an earlier comment.
As far as fetus vs. human being the argument that these ideas are popularly considered different doesn’t change the dynamic of when a person is considered a human being. Quite honestly, and I’m seriously not attempting to be vulgar here, but using medical terms: the difference between a fetus and what you consider a “human being” in the last trimester is generally mandated to which side of the vagina it is on… or in cases of c-section… its proximity to the womb. A viable fetus isn’t any less of a human being… and without some scientific rational on why one cell less from a viable fetus is no longer a human being, we’re left in the muddy waters of logic on why it suddenly gains the status of human being over mere human garbage that can be tossed into a wastebasket like a nose bleed soaked tissue.
And the continuance of this conversation may be helping my primary claim that this post is at least thought provoking.
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- “Make love not war? Real men can do both!”
Regardless of word choice, you still have to change moral beliefs
gensec Sunday, December 14th at 9:26PM EST (link)As far as fetus vs. human being the argument that these ideas are popularly considered different doesn’t change the dynamic of when a person is considered a human being.
Whatever. I prefer to use English as it’s commonly understood by Americans, but I already translated my point into your preferred terminology just to avoid the distraction over word choice. So what’s the point of continuing to argue over whether someone should call a fetus a person?
For the approximately half of American people with the moral opinion that a single cell zygote (whether or not you call that cell a person) does not have a moral status similar to a person after birth, do you think it would change their moral opinions if all the dictionary publishers and English teachers announced that the words fetus, embryo, etc. were abolished, and henceforth the correct usage would be “human being in the Nth week before birth”?
Of course it would not change their moral views, no more than your views would be changed by a ban on calling a fetus a person. It would only mean using different words to express exactly the same moral opinions, as I’m now doing to indulge you. Wasting type trying to change common English vocabulary would only make sense if the moral beliefs themselves were less important to you than the words used to express those beliefs.
the difference between a fetus and what you consider a “human being” in the last trimester is generally mandated to which side of the vagina it is on
The late term fetuses (whether or not they’re called persons) example supports one of the main points I made in my original comment. There I said that most of the OP was a waste of type, arguing for points on life, liberty, property etc. that almost everybody (pro-life or not, libertarian or not) already agrees with. The real disagreement between the vast majority of pro-lifers and pro-choicers is a moral one, over whether those agreed points should also apply to early term pregnancies. For almost everybody, which side of pro-life vs. pro-choice they’re on is determined by whether they agree with the OP’s assertion that a zygote (whether or not it’s called a person) has similar moral status to a person after birth; the rest of the OP’s arguments don’t matter.
The vast majority of pro-choicers support laws banning abortion in the last months of pregnancy, because their moral belief is that a 9th month fetus (whether or not they call it a person) has similar moral status to a post-birth person. That proves my point that most of the OPs arguments are pointless, because almost everybody including pro-choicers already agrees with them. If being pro-choice was based on disagreement with those points, rather than rejecting the OP’s moral premise that a single cell zygote’s (whether or not you call that cell a person) moral status is the same as a person’s after birth, then most pro-choicers would favor the same unrestricted abortion for 9th month fetuses (whether or not they call them human beings) as they favor for early term abortions.
without some scientific rational on why one cell less from a viable fetus is no longer a human being, we’re left in the muddy waters of logic on why it suddenly gains the status of human being over mere human garbage that can be tossed into a wastebasket like a nose bleed soaked tissue
I agree with you about viability being a flawed criterion and have had a few arguments with pro-choicers over it, but that’s a separate issue. Whatever moral opinion someone has as a basis for deciding what stage of pregnancy abortion should be outlawed, your objection about “muddy waters of logic” drawing a line in the gray area between “definitely X” vs. “definitely not X” is refuted by real life experience. Our laws draw lines at some point in all kinds of gray areas, and it would be disastrous for society if we didn’t.
There are pollutants that if unregulated would cause many deaths, but there is uncertainty about exactly how high a concentration constitutes a risk of killing people. If the law limits a pollutant to say 200 parts per million, your objection would be that the distinction between that vs. 199 PPM or 201 PPM is arbitrary “muddy waters of logic”, so the only “logical” choice is to set a limit of 0 PPM. But for many pollutants the cose of reducing to 0 far exceed the costs of reducing it to a level that we believe is not a significant threat. Banning abortion at 10 weeks or 20 weeks based on whatever criteria is no more arbitrary than what we do with all kinds of laws.
And the continuance of this conversation may be helping my primary claim that this post is at least thought provoking.
You’re right it provoked debate, but almost all of it about the OP’s assertion of a moral equivalence between a single cell zygote (whether or not you call that cell a person) and a person after birth. Nobody’s arguing about the bulk of the OP that I said was waste of time, because most pro-lifers and pro-choicers already agree on those points.
I think it highly unlikely that any argument would succeed in changing your or the OP author’s moral opinion, that a zygote has a moral status same or similar to a 9th month fetus. My point has been that sharing or rejecting that moral opinion is what divides almost all pro-lifers and pro-choicers. Thus either side is wasting its time if, like the OP, it spends most of its time expounding arguments that assume its side of the moral disagreement as their premise.
There’s no silver bullet argument out there to use that will change pro-choicers mind (any more than changing pro-lifers minds), where pro-choicers will suddenly say “Oh man, I didn’t think about that! Now I understand, so agree we should ban abortion from conception.”
The only way you can change most pro-choicer’s minds is by convincing them to switch to your moral opinion, that a zygote should have the same moral status as a 9th month fetus. And those pro-choicers already know the DNA sequence is set when the spermatozoon joins the ovum, and that it usually will result in a 9th month fetus and birth if left undisturbed in the uterus.
Some pro-life advocates think those points on DNA and potential birth are slam-dunk q.e.d., but pro-choicers already know those points and react “So what?” Pro-life advocates will have to do better than repeating those stock lines to change pro-choicers minds.
Probably Getting Tedious
IL_Glock21 Monday, December 15th at 5:03AM EST (link)For me the idea of whether or not it is a human being is fairly critical, not something that can be disregarded. If man has an inalienable right to life endowed by his creator… the legalities and pragmatism of enforcement are less of a concern than when the endowment occurs in nature. Are we endowed at the point we leave the womb? Even though the natural difference between a viable fetus and a legal person is fairly trivial. That then begs the question if not then… when? What is the natural and logical point for such an inalienable right to have been endowed?
If it is successfully argued that we aren’t endowed with such rights until we reach puberty, then we’d almost certainly justify legal protections prior to that on moral grounds. But if we accept the idea as a natural fact that we are endowed with inalienable rights (ie rights that exist regardless of government/law] then determining when that starting point is, is fairly critical on this subject.
You insist that this can only be determined by individual moral considerations driving appropriate legal treatment. But the natural right in question is assumed to be independent of such laws, and would, in cases of contradiction, necessitate opposing them to defend the right. The moral arguments of either side being irrelevant in justifying a law that conflicts with an inalienable right.
Which I suppose leaves us with a few options to fall on:
1) Arguing that we are never endowed with such an inalienable right by a creator of any sort, be it parents or supreme beings… and arguing that the inalienable right is, in and of itself, a moral argument that can be tempered with other moral concerns. (Stalemate remains)
2) Arguing that the natural right does indeed exist, but cannot be taken to its logical extremes as it would be impossible… and thus necessitating a pragmatic approach to find the most logical balance between the competing right to liberty of the mother and the right to life of the child where those rights converge at their most gray shades. [Stalemate remains]
3) Arguing that the natural right does indeed exist, but cannot be taken to its logical extremes as it would be unconscionable… and thus necessitating a moral approach to weighing the liberty of the mother versus a yet undeveloped child who may lack the capacity to recognize, feel, or at some points be little different than a fertilized egg that fails to attach itself to continue the process of becoming a viable fetus, let alone an adult human being. This would likely assume that the fetus’s loss of possibility is too trivial a moral concern to force a woman to endure the hardships and societal obligations against her will. [Stalemate remains]
These possibilities seem to be what we’re left with (with some variances possible), but require that the natural right isn’t as Jefferson first described it, or is an ideal that cannot be realistically adhered to in this (or perhaps other) gray areas.
To an audience that generally take this idea of natural rights to heart, I could see a great deal of introspection on the matter if they’re pro-choice libertarians, and while they may fall back on one of these three rationales to defend their current position, it seems impossible to do so without questioning the merit or applicability of something they currently believe.
As more of a classical liberal who is in the middle ground of the abortion debate, favoring restrictions but not outright bans, I found this line of argument quite thought provoking as it excludes much of what I consider extraneous to classical liberal concerns, but which you seem to consider intrinsic to the debate.
Perhaps it won’t change my mind, but it certainly has it piqued.
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- “Make love not war? Real men can do both!”
Cute this...but vapid and empty as fact
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 4:00PM EST (link)The problem with your arguement and the whole in it is big enough to drive a convoy through it is this…
“I began when a specific sperm met a specific egg…every thing I am to day…my hair and eye color, skin color, etc were set in that moment…yes you can argue I was not alive then but add to the physical genetics the intellectual and reasoning ability encoded in my genes and I would say there is a good scientific argument to be made that I becmae a whole person in that moment even though my cells hadn’t started multiplying yet. I would argue there is a scientific basis for the arguement that life begins at conception and your argument to the contrary is nothing more than words!
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Your lack of reading comprehension proves my point
gensec Saturday, December 13th at 6:35PM EST (link)My point is that pro-life and pro-choice advocates tend to waste most of their arguments on issues that aren’t the basic dispute between them. Thank you for providing an excellent illustration.
In the part of my statement you quoted, I said “There’s no scientific dispute about the genetic consequence of a spermatazoon joining an ovum, only a moral disagreement about what moral significance if any to attribute to that scientific fact.”
So what’s your rebuttal consist of? You expound on the genetic consequence of a spermatozoon joining an ovum that both pro-lifers and pro-choicers already agree on,
Ace makes a song come to mind
SteveLA Saturday, December 13th at 6:45PM EST (link)“Monty Python - Every Sperm Is Sacred”
I’ll skip the embed video in the name of sparing the pointed stick, Google it if you’ve forgotten the tune.
______________________________________
Competency over ideological purity
I wouldn't say every sperm is sacred...but I would say the one that brought me into being is
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 11:08PM EST (link)and I dare say your kinship with the one that formed you should have a special place in your heart.
:>)
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The Pope echoes DeVine and the divine
Mike gamecock DeVine Saturday, December 13th at 11:11PM EST (link)I have said for years that it is wrong to fertilize more than one sperm and egg at a time for the purpose of in vitro fertilization.
The Pope
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2008-12-12-biomed-catholic_N.htm
Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com, Charlotte Observer and The Minority Report columns
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson
What office?
SteveLA Saturday, December 13th at 11:33PM EST (link)Game,
Help me out here with the Constitution. I keep missing that part where the role of His Holiness the Pope is spelled out, where his powers over the affairs of this country are enumerated.
Four Branches of government, who’d a thunk?
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Competency over ideological purity
OK you got me on that one
gensec Saturday, December 13th at 11:29PM EST (link)All right, I’ll attribute a great moral status to the single cell that begat me. For this I refuse to accept any logical consistency or precedent status. I just say so.
I see my mistake...I missed the "You say" part in that
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 11:06PM EST (link)My bad
I thought you were making an “on the one hand A and on the other B arguement when you were in fact making A the point and answering his assumption of B
I stand corrected
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Interesting...
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 4:14PM EST (link)I’m not asking this rhetorically but since the brain is substantially formed by eight weeks of gestation and completely formed by ten weeks…don’t you think there would be self awareness by at least 10 weeks?
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If a tree fals in the woods and there's nobody around....
Diogenes314 Saturday, December 13th at 4:33PM EST (link)You know the saying. The question here is how much self-awareness can be obtained in the womb with no sensory input? The human mind might be the most powerful analytical device ever designed, but without any input, does it do anything?
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Don't you think with a brain being fully formed
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 4:56PM EST (link)that a fetus can perceive touch…or sound? You don’t think…with a fully formed brain…that a fetus can feel the tongs, or the hanger…or what ever is used to rip it in pieces? Or that it can feel the pain of the Saline injection into the womb which burns and dissolves it’s flesh”
I’ve read and heard accounts from mothers who have had saline abortions who could feel the baby in her womb thrashing around it it’s death throws after a saline abortion. (I know Opra was one show in the early 90s when I heard from mothers that had this experience). Why were they thrashing around if it could feel or wasn’t conscious of the fact that is flesh was being burned from it’s bones?
Seriously…isn’t it reasonable to believe that a fetus is alive and has a consciousness once it has a fully formed brain at tenweeks or even at eight weeks when the brain has substantially formed and the synapses are being connected between eight and ten weeks?
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No doubt it can.
Diogenes314 Saturday, December 13th at 5:23PM EST (link)But does it? Maybe it responds to pain stimulus during an abortion-because that’s the first thing it ever felt. Total darkness, no need to eat or relieve oneself, nothing to see or hear-it is the ultimate sensory deprivation, before any sensation is felt. So the question is under these circumstances, does any real consciousness develope? And can we ever know?
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I take it you've not had kids or played with a child
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 5:37PM EST (link)when it is in the uterus? I used to talk to my kids and push on their feet and have them kick me…
As far as sensory deprivation…I guess you’ve never seen a sonogram…There is not a lot of room in there and a baby is always brushing up against something so I’m sure they can feel touch…
I guess you’ve never heard the sound when a doctor is looking for a child’s heart beat…the mothers heatrt can be heard plainly in the womb so sensory deprivation isn’t an issue…trust me
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Thanks for guessing...
Diogenes314 Sunday, December 14th at 12:42PM EST (link)Instead of just accusing me of ‘obvious woefull ignorance’ based on illogical assumptions and delusional thinking.
Anyway, I’ve never had any children, but I actually have known pregnent women, and seen sonograms. But since it seems you are basing your entire argument on personal experience, what exactly do you remember personally from your timew in the womb? Pretty vivid memories?
We can conjecture all we want on the level of conciousness of a fetus at various stages, but conjecture is all it is.
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Diogenes314 - You're Obviously Male
4fun1 Saturday, December 13th at 6:54PM EST (link)and woefully ignorant on how an infant in the womb reacts to the world around him. There is stimulus present daily… the taste of the food your mother eats, the pleasant comforting sounds of the daily activities and the horrible sounds that are loud and harsh. The beating of your mother’s heart and sometimes the sounds of her sobs. The comfort of a song sung and the tapping of fingers against a foot or bottom. The recognition of daddy’s voice after your born and you only turn for that particular voice. The comforting song that mommy sings that helps soothe your cries that you recognize from a time before the world got really crazy. The foods you still crave that your mom ate while she was pregnant or that you will never eat because you are sick of it.
You were formed with a set of opinions and a personality that your parents (much to their dismay in many cases) cannot control. All developed while in the womb.
Babies have an entire world their very own that informs them on a daily basis.
Fair question
gensec Saturday, December 13th at 11:10PM EST (link)since the brain is substantially formed by eight weeks of gestation and completely formed by ten weeks…don’t you think there would be self awareness by at least 10 weeks?
Actually the brain is developing all through pregnancy, so I presume you’re referring to some benchmark.
Anyway, based on my limited knowledge I’d draw the line on unrestricted abortion around 20 weeks. By self-awareness I don’t include autonomic functions like instinctive reflexes. I might change my opinion and draw the line later or earlier, maybe 10 weeks, as I learned more about fetal mental development.
However with Obama’s election, I think it highly unlikely that abortion laws will be returned to democratic self-government in the next 10 years, probably longer. Thus there’s no hurry for me to study the details, for casting an informed vote on whether to draw the line at 10 weeks or 25 weeks.
Failure to distinguish
Menlo Saturday, December 13th at 5:39PM EST (link)Fertilization marks the beginning of a new whole human life. Before that, there are merely parts of already existing humans. At fertilization, there is a whole and distinct living organism of the human species. It is the same one that will exist until natural death. Cells, tissues, and organs that are parts of a whole organism are not organisms.
Of course, that doesn’t address your point as to the value of life. I don’t think that’s going to work though. Look at all the people who say they value the life the same but accept that others may not. Look at the support Tiller the Killer has gotten in Kansas. Pretty much, if a “doctor” does it and calls it an “abortion,” people don’t seem to care.
Then there are the types who claim that it doesn’t matter. The woman’s desire to “not be pregnant” (though really a desire to eliminate a child) trumps anyone else’s life, regardless of that person’s moral standing.
The “self-awareness” argument is invalid for most of the duration of pregnancy because it is impossible to determine or really even define. Most likely, it doesn’t just “switch on.” It also fails to distinguish between those born who are without self-awareness but are expected to regain it,
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you're on the right track
asleep06 Friday, December 19th at 4:13PM EST (link)gensec, you’re on the right track. Intellectually sophisticated pro-lifers would agree with you that the science must be accompanied by the moral argument (as is the case in all public policy discussions), which is precisely where the conversation has been in the past three decades.
I commend to you Embryo which addresses your concerns very well.
I understand if you don’t have time or resources to read this, but if you’re ever curious as to how some of the best pro-life thinkers approach these questions, here’s one example.
Cheers,
Small is beautiful.
There's nothing 'libertarian' here.
Diogenes314 Saturday, December 13th at 1:30PM EST (link)A) First of all, there is no absolute “right to life”, there is a right not to be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. The Declaration wasn’t a legal but a political document, and as such is irrellevant.
B) You may wish to define fertilization as the point ‘when life begins’ but that is problematic. Both the sperm and ova are alive prior to this, and being alive doesn’t imply protection under the law anyway. An appendix is alive, and dependent on the human it is attached to. Kind of like the fetus. Of course you really start to go off the tracks here…
But surely, you say, a woman has a choice not to carry a child to term. Yes, I would respond. She has that right of choice before a child grows within her. When she has sex she earns the responsibility to deal with the consequences of her actions. Responsibility is always the inevitable result of having done something to earn it.
What about force, you may probe more deeply. Does not a woman who is raped or the victim of incest have the right to choose whether to carry a child to term? Let us consider, I respond. This is where good people may differ.
So 1) you are defining forcing women to bring all pregnancies to term (unless you give them permission otherwise) as “libertarian”? And claiming that ‘good people’ are required to agree with you?
But comparing a fetus to typhoid? At least that part was kinda original. A disease with civil rights, that’s fresh.
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category errors
LJ "Beaglescout" Miller Saturday, December 13th at 2:12PM EST (link)Responding…
1. arguing why something is right and something else is wrong is not equivalent to forcing someone else to do something. this is a serious category error.
2. the beginning of life is when the genetic structure is set and mitosis begins. nothing is controversial about that. in any case, the reason I argued that was to establish that the point at which humans are *created* with equal rights was that beginning point. once humans have rights they are pretty much permanent.
3. Typhoid Mary’s disease is not comparable with the infant, even though many pro-abortion types like to compare children with cancer and other disease. The point was that she had a condition she got involuntarily and if she didn’t make major sacrifices in her behavior would kill others. The child is more equivalent to the others whom she would infect if she were not quarantined.
Cheers
“Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.”
Faulty logic.
Diogenes314 Saturday, December 13th at 2:42PM EST (link)1) If you are saying that abortion is wrong, but nothing should be done about it, then that would be valid. If you are suggesting preventing voluntary abortion, then your entire ‘libertarian’ argument goes out the window.
2) You can define when ‘life begins’ at any point you desire. The fact is, an embryo still has no legal rights. As far as god-given rights, that is open to opinion. According to the book of Exodus, a fetus was pretty much property.
3) No, the offspring of someone geneticly predisposed to rape being raised by a rape victim (against her will) is likely to grow up to be a case of typhoid. And being forced to bring the little virus to term is pretty much a case of repeating the rape for 9 months.
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Diogones....I'm seriously having a hard time understanding you..
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 4:44PM EST (link)I don’t mean that as a digg because I don’t dislike you and really want to know where you stand on all this…
We keep bumping into each other in these threads and sometimes I think you’re pro abortion with the arguments you make but then you throw in something that makes me think you are pro life…I think you’ve even said you were pro life?
There is no absolute right to life, there is a right to not be deprived of life?
Is there really a difference…and isn’t a woman who has an abortion and a doctor who performs it depriving a fetus of life?
As for the declaration…you are absolutely correct…the Declaration isn’t a legal document and isn’t enforceable…but it is a statement of principle that formed the basis under which the Constitution…which is a legal document was formed….It can and should be used as a light to be shined on the Constitution or a filter if you will that gives the underlying meaning to the things in the Constitution…I don’t think anyone is arguing that the declaration should be enforced…but it does tell us what the framers were thinking when they formed our founding documents!
If I’m not mistaken…I’ve heard you argue elsewhere that there is no arguement that life begins at conception…so how doe that jive with this?
My issue with your thinking here is that an appendix is not…nor will it ever be a living and autonomous human being…the point you make here is in my mind totally irrelevent to the arguement at hand.
No one compared a fetus to typhoid or any kind of virus, (or is typhoid a bacteria?),. ..nor did anyone try to suggest giving a disease civil rights…(That shouldn’t even be mentioned because there will inevitably be a splinter group from PETA that will come along and suggest just that!), The arguement was that there are legitimate reasons for restricting one’s liberty when that liberty poses an imminent threat to the life of those around you! Of course the conclusion is that if a mother’s having an abortion is an imminent thereat to the life of HER child…then there is a compelling government to restrict her liberty by prosecuting her and her doctor for terminating the life of another.
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Since you asked.
Diogenes314 Saturday, December 13th at 5:10PM EST (link)1) I am personally pro-constitiution, anti-Roe v wade, anti- anything saying this is a federal matter one way or the other. Once it is turned back to the states, I am fine with whatever they decide. Let all the pro-abortion types move to pro-abortion staes, and anti-abotrtion types move to anti states.
2)There is no absolute right to life, there is a right to not be deprived of life?
Is there really a difference…and isn’t a woman who has an abortion and a doctor who performs it depriving a fetus of life?
The right is to not be deprived without due process. And legally the fetus has no rights, so no right to due process.
3) Actually the DoI and the Constitution had little to do with each other. Locke, Montesquieu, and English common law had more influence on the Constitution, and George Mason on the BoR.
4)Actually life never begins. It is all part of the same process going back to Adam in the Garden. And you say an appendix is not autonomous-neither is a fetus until late stages.
And no, life never ends either. Whether you want it to or not.
5)The arguement was that there are legitimate reasons for restricting one’s liberty when that liberty poses an imminent threat to the life of those around you!
There may or may not be in this case. But there is no way any of this is a ‘libertarian’ argument.
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Fair enough...where exactly is that in the Constitution?
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 5:51PM EST (link)as for the DOI..
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Menlo Saturday, December 13th at 6:00PM EST (link)Depending on the state, the unborn has a limited right to life outside an abortion done in accordance with state regulations. In Texas, there is a murder charge for a non-doctor attempting an abortion, even if the woman wants it and comes out unharmed.
By “life,” we are referring to whole distinct human organisms, not parts of them. Given that, there is a definite beginning and end. The whole science of biology depends upon it. Otherwise, you are speaking figuratively in metaphors, Such language can be nice in poetry, but it has no place in law.
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You know what...I want to come back to the Declaration of Independence and your arguement that it has no basis or influence on law...
AceInTX Saturday, December 13th at 10:55PM EST (link)The Supreme court used an obscure letter from jefferson to a church organization to invent the whole “Separation of Church and state regime we are currently saddled with…
I would argue the DOI has far more standing than that letter since it is a founding document and a statement that lays out the basis of everything that followed it…It explained the founder’s view of natural law and the right of the individual to liberty and the freedom from an oppressive government.
I know…it can be argued the Separation of Church and State construct could be illegitimate because it shouldn’t have been based on an obscure letter and I’ve made that argument…but I think the DOI is another thing entirely.
You do believe the court was out of line with that ruling don’t you?
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I've said so repeatedly.
Diogenes314 Sunday, December 14th at 9:55PM EST (link)As far as wanting Reynolds V. U.S. overturned. The difference with the DoI is that if you looked at the intent of the authors, they were basicly taking Locke’s argument for life liberty and property not being taken without due process. They were creating a polemic document that everyone in that day and age would understand the basis for. So you are still back to whether or not a fetus has due process rights. And there is nothing to show that they would have supported that. Back then, anti-abortion laws where they existed usually stipulated quickening as the point at which abortion would be proscribed. And most 19th century anti-abortion laws (as well as age of consent laws) were designed to protect females from predetory males they came into contact in droves with the start of the industrial age.
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Legally, there is a constitutional right to abortion.
asleep06 Friday, December 19th at 4:35PM EST (link)The right is to not be deprived without due process. And legally the fetus has no rights, so no right to due process.
Legally, there’s a constitutional right to abortion. You and I would agree that is simply bad law. Likewise, the fact that legally, the fetus has no “rights” is not particularly relevant if the point of the discussion is to understand whether the fetus has a right to life that ought to be legally recognized. There are rights that are not legally recognized…
Now, whether the fetus has a intrinsic right to life is another matter. But trying to dismiss Ace’s point that a doctor deprives a fetus of the right not to be unjustly killed simply by pointing to bad law is not a substantive point, just as saying “legally I have a right to abortion” does not matter when deciding whether such a right actually exists prior to the legal creation of a “right.”
Some rights are not created by law, only recognized or not recognized by law. (Others are created by law but have less standing.) The fetus’s right to life is not created by law, but is there by virtue of the fetus’s nature and is thus natural and inalienable, though not always recognized and often trampled.
Small is beautiful.
Libertarians need only reject judicial activism
Aurelian Sunday, December 14th at 10:24AM EST (link)Whatever libertarians feel about whether or not abortion should be legal, they should at least join with conservatives in rejecting judicial activism, and the absurd idea that there is a constitutional right to abortion.
The same goes for gay marriage.
Not good enough for the True Believers.
Diogenes314 Sunday, December 14th at 10:08PM EST (link)The fact that a Governor with a proven track record of appointing origianalist judges was dismissed out of hand by many in favor of a mendacious unelectable Huey Long lite poseur because he was a convert to the anti-abortion stance (I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt for not being swayed by their guru’s anti-mormon rhetoric) kind of says that there is ‘pro-life’ and then there is ‘not pro-life enough’ in the minds of too many in the movement.
For the record, I cauld care less where a candidate stands on abortion. Where they stand on jurists on the other hand is crucial.
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Fundamental Flaws
SIConservative Wednesday, December 17th at 9:27AM EST (link)Before going into criticisms, let me say that I agree with the thrust of your argument. You made an excellent case, so there’s no need for me to amend or extend the bulk of your post. That said, I have major problems with two statements that you made.
“Until it gets to the First Amendment, the Constitution has nothing to say on the matter of Human Rights. This doesn’t mean they didn’t exist until then. Americans had Rights before the Bill of Rights passed. Our Rights descended from English common, statute, and chancery law, and before that from the ancient traditions of free Christian Englishmen (the 1689 Bill of Rights not least among these enumerations of rights). But those are peripheral sources of Rights for Americans. Most central to the American concept of Rights is The Declaration of Independence.”
As the Declaration of Independence states, we are endowed by our Creator with rights. Legal recognition thereof originated in English Common Law, but the rights themselves were God-given. A proper libertarian argument must account for this, as the protection of life is not merely a human convention but part of the natural order of human beings. Failure to recognize this eliminates any hierarchy of rights.
“Well, you ask, what about circumstances where the mother will die if she gives birth? Bingo, I respond. You finally got the circumstance where the libertarian argument is squarely on the side of abortion.”
Here, I think it’s important to draw a distinction between the libertarian argument being on the side of abortion and the argument being on the side of recognizing the woman’s right to protect herself. It may seem a small distinction, but it is by no means insignificant. I think that this is what you meant, but it’s important to clarify anyway.
Awesome diary!
akhardys Monday, December 22nd at 10:38PM EST (link)The question is, will pro-choice fiscal conservatives understand this and abandon hope for capitulation or concession by the social conservatives? In order to unify, can conservatives agree that their future leader MUST be fiscally conservative and pro-life?
“…to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…”
Sorry, didn't past half of my comment...
akhardys Monday, December 22nd at 10:41PM EST (link)I’m sorry I missed it while it was hot but I’m glad I have it now for future reference.
I saw this just after reading a diary and comments that popped up today entitled “A Religious View of Abortion…But Not What You Expect”.
That diary and this hit upon the core of the abortion debate: when does life begin? After all, no one I know who is pro-choice is pro-murder…
The thing is, for those who believe life begins at exception, a pro-choice position is akin to a pro-murder position, and as such should be expected to be one of those non-negotiable aspects of a political platform. Since the value of life is greater than the value of property, it can likewise be expected that they will place more importance on the abortion issue than fiscal issues.
The question is, will pro-choice fiscal conservatives understand this and abandon hope for capitulation or concession by the social conservatives? In order to unify, can conservatives agree that their future leader must be fiscally conservative and pro-life?
“…to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…”