WashPo: Ultrasound/rape strategy a “pretty big blunder”
Advocates had used emotional, highly charged language to rally supporters against a mandatory ultrasound law that had already passed in seven other states with little backlash or fanfare…..
The abortion rights movement’s strategic success could, at this point, also be read as a pretty big blunder….
The abortion rights movement did have a victory in Virginia in terms of mobilizing its supporters in a way that didn’t really happen in 2011, a year when a record number of abortion restrictions passed. But that didn’t get advocates all the way to their end goal: Blocking new abortion restrictions from coming into effect.
~ Sarah Kliff, Washington Post’s Wonk Blog, March 8
Mar.10, 2012 10:19 am |
Ultrasound |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
It was clearly a victory, not a blunder. A minor victory, but it halted a provision of a law that would otherwise have easily sailed through the legislature (as it has in other states). As the article you quote (misleadingly, in my opinion) elaborates:
“Nearly all the outrage about the Virginia law was focused on the invasive nature of the [transvaginal ultrasound]…
“Facing widespread backlash, McDonnell dropped it… Some abortion rights advocates celebrated a victory, with McDonnell backing down. The opposition to Virginia’s law became notably more muted…
“The protest died down, but the abortion restriction was not halted. The legislature followed through on McDonnell’s request. They wrote a bill that would still require ultrasounds, but only those performed externally. They passed it. And, on Wednesday, McDonnell passed it.”
It’s unfortunate that the country is no longer willing to mobilize around women’s rights, such that forcing an ultrasound is not in itself seen as a big deal. But it seems like a viable strategy to me for the pro-choice movement to continue to mobilize around the most shocking and invasive tactics of the pro-life movement, and leave the more subtle and gray-area restrictions for the judicial system. The court of public opinion is many things, but it is rarely subtle.
“It was clearly a victory, not a blunder.”
I guess that depends on how you define success. If the goal was to have the abortionist determine which type of ultrasound will provide the information necessary to fulfill the informed consent requirements, then a victory it is. If the goal was to avoid having an ultrasound required before an abortion, not so much.
And then there’s the whole ugliness of having “rape” associated with a perfectly legitimate medical diagnostic tool.
“I guess that depends on how you define success.”
Success = the government not mandating an invasive procedure without regard to its necessity
More Success would’ve equaled the ultrasound requirement being dropped entirely (and left up to the doctor), but success is still success. And, see this article for the other successes associated with this strategy: http://www.jillstanek.com/2012/03/the-ramifications-of-mcdonnells-retreat-on-virginias-ultrasound-bill/
“And then there’s the whole ugliness of having “rape” associated with a perfectly legitimate medical diagnostic tool.”
I know! Previously, “rape” was only associated with penises. Ew, penises. I’m glad I don’t have to worry about coming into contact with one of them… Oh, wait. Scratch that.
My point? Rape was already associated with unwanted or forcible insertion of appendages *or* instruments into one’s vagina. Yes, you can be raped with an ultrasound device. Or a broom handle. Or a penis. Or a finger. That doesn’t mean that any of the above are, themselves, horrific things (or things that you wouldn’t want in you in any circumstances). It just means that they are all potential tools of rape, and only people with a very narrow definition of rape would insist otherwise.
It’s a good thing for society to acknowledge that you can be raped by your husband or your doctor or your legislator. Rape isn’t something that only happens in dark alleys to “bad girls.”
God forbid you’d have to look at someone before you kill them.
And the pro-lifers reveal their true motives! “God forbid you’d have to look at someone before you kill them,” Courtnay says.
The lawmakers say, “Blah blah blah, women’s health. Blah blah blah, standard medical practice.” But what they really mean–what you all really mean–is, “I think this is wrong and I’ll do anything I can to try to make it difficult or impossible for you to do, whether by forcing expensive and invasive procedures or by withholding funding from Medicaid or even withholding funding from your own private insurance.”
A fetus is not a U.S. citizen. The mother is. Lawmakers should be concerned with her rights first and foremost. Not arguing that an undeveloped fetus has no rights. But its rights are secondary to those of the full-grown person who is bearing it.
VS, if abortion is truly the killing of an innocent human being (and it is, I ascertain with every molecule of mother that I am), wouldn’t it be logical for me to get behind every lawful measure there possibly is or could be to keep the killings from happening?
That just makes sense.
You talk about the unborn as secondary citizens. When was the last time that language was used? And how did that end?
It’s not DNA that makes us worth protecting. I’ve never seen someone do a DNA test to ascertain whether someone was covered by the Bill of Rights. The fetus’s humanness has nothing to do with its rights.
It’s also not life alone that makes us worth protecting. There are no laws to protect the living blades of grass under our feet.
So what is it? Well, on the governmental level (civil rights), you have certain rights if you are born in America (or to an American citizen). Which a fetus is not. Or, on a more philosophical level, you may be conceived of having certain rights if you are self-aware, sentient, capable of feeling pain, and/or rational. (On fetal pain: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/fetus-feels-pain-37-weeks-study/story?id=14472566 On self-awareness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test )
Again, this lack of thinking, feeling, consciousness, etc. doesn’t mean a fetus should have *no* rights. I believe in preserving life (from dolphins to cows) unless there’s a good reason not to. However, a woman’s right to *not* be forced to carry and feed a fetus inside of herself–her right to not be a slave to her fetus–overrides the much-weaker rights of the unthinking & unfeeling fetus. In this sense–regardless of what the fetus would do or want if it could choose–the fetus is not innocent. It is forcing itself on the woman. If the woman wants it, great. If not, she should not have to endure this violation of her rights, regardless of the humanness of the being that is violating her.
In any case, if you reject the philosophical ideas around life’s value, all you have to fall back on is the religious ideas of value. And in America, at least, you can’t legislate religion. I understand the impulse to assert your values–equally, I would love to forcibly “free” people from their religions by outlawing churches–but it’s not okay to do that sort of thing. So I don’t try. And you shouldn’t, either. It’s one thing to try to convince people of something; it’s another thing entirely to legislate it.
It’s not about “women’s rights”. Women already HAVE rights (in this country, anyway).
It’s about ABORTION.
A “fetus” is a HUMAN BEING, therefore, YES..a CITIZEN of this country or any other
Doctors don’t just walk into a room and ram an instrument inside you with no warning. You give your CONSENT to have an ultrasound, a pap smear, breast exam, etc.
So what YOU mean, VS, is YOU want the “right” to kill your own child for the sake of your own CONVENIENCE.
Don’t hide behind the euphemism of “women’s rights”.
“A ‘fetus’ is a HUMAN BEING, therefore, YES..a CITIZEN ”
So, Pamela, if X-Men ever becomes reality–if, for example, the human species mutates in a noticeable way–would you be okay with killing those “mutants”? Would you be okay with slaughtering Wolverine and Charles Xavier and Bobby Drake (Iceman) because they’re not “human”?
If not, let’s leave “humanness” out of it.
If so, I’m appreciative of your consistency, but appalled at your lack of compassion… It’s not about who’s a human being. It’s a little more complicated than that.
As to consent: If my doctor is being forced by his legislators to put an instrument inside my vagina–and I’m being forced to agree, if I want a particular procedure–that’s rape. His legislators (and mine) should have no say in what specific procedures are done, as long as my doctor adheres to medical standards as laid out by, for example, the state Board of Medicine. Whether I’m being forced to endure a medically-unnecessary instrument being put in my vagina or being forced to endure a medically-unnecessary appendage being put in my vagina, if I *have* to do it to get an abortion and it’s *not* necessary, then it’s rape. Rape isn’t always you being tied down or slipped a drug. Rape can be other kinds of coercion and force, e.g., your boss says, “Blow me or I fire you,” your husband says, “Shut up, I know you want it,” your legislator says, “You’ll let me stick this in you or you won’t get your abortion.” Whatever “this” happens to be–an instrument or an appendage.
Also, please define “convenience.” I suspect your definition of “convenience” would include sneering at women who try to divorce their abusive husbands… “How terrible! A divorce of convenience. That woman doesn’t know the meaning of loyalty!”
“My point? Rape was already associated with unwanted or forcible insertion of appendages *or* instruments into one’s vagina.”
Absolutely. I despise when people try to equate rape (lack of consent and/or force) with unrelated things. When a women gives consent for an ultrasound, pap smear, or abortion, she is not being raped by that procedure. This law does not force ultrasounds on women that do not consent to it. No one is strapping women down and forcing them to undergo an ultrasound.
” I’m being forced to agree, if I want a particular procedure–that’s rape.”
Nope. And this type of comparison, equating a medical procedure that will be carried out respectfully with a medical professional to rape, is despicable.
If it’s not medically necessary, and the woman doesn’t want it, it’s rape. The woman’s forced to endure it and the doctor’s forced to carry it out–and neither of *them* are to blame, obviously. The legislators are. The legislators are the ones with the metaphorical guns to the doctors’ heads, forcing this rape. It’s no insult to the medical community to acknowledge that these doctors are being forced to violate their patients to comply with the law. No matter how careful or gentle your rapist is, rape is rape.
One legislator made that point “with a failed amendment requiring rectal prostate exams for men seeking Viagra prescriptions.” http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/23/MNIP1NBMQ0.DTL
If the requirement of a superfluous prostate exam is not rape, then neither is the requirement of a superfluous TVU. But guess what? They both are. Any invasive procedure of the genital region that’s not medically necessary and not wanted by the patient is rape, whether it’s carried out by a gentle doctor or a violent criminal. Just because someone is a medical professional, that doesn’t mean that any procedure or touch from them is automatically justified.
So the woman wants a suction thingy in her vagina that will pry open her cervix and kill her child (and that’s ok) but she doesn’t want the ultrasound probe. Why is one ok but the other is rape?
“So the woman wants a suction thingy in her vagina that will pry open her cervix and kill her child (and that’s ok) but she doesn’t want the ultrasound probe. Why is one ok but the other is rape?”
Are you asking why the first one isn’t considered rape? It’s called consent. You may as well be saying, “So, it’s okay if Ms. X wants her husband to stick a broomhandle up her vagina, but it’s not okay if *I* stick a finger in her vagina without her wanting it? Why!? A finger is much smaller and less invasive than a broomhandle!”
It’s not the size of the invasion or the respectfulness/gentleness/carefulness of the invasion that’s the issue. It’s the consent. Nothing more and nothing less than the unforced and uncoerced *consent.*
Ok, we’re getting somewhere. It’s all about the wantedness, correct? We should be able to want what we have done to us, correct?
What if the abortion clinic already won’t do an abortion without a transvaginal ultrasound? Is it rape then? You’re essentially saying that it’s okay for a doctor to rape women, but not a legislator. I would argue that both are equally wrong, but that a medical test that you must consent to before a surgical procedure isn’t actually rape.
http://www.lifenews.com/2012/02/22/planned-parenthood-rape-myth-debunked-99-do-ultrasounds/
Navi, if an abortion clinic won’t do an abortion without a TVU first, it’s a question of medical judgement. Doctors, within the standards of the medical community, have the authority and expertise to make that kind of judgment call. Lawmakers do not. If a doctor says, “This is standard practice. For your own safety, I won’t do X without doing Y first,” that’s not coercion or force towards the patient. It’s a collision of the doctor’s judgement and his patient’s wants. A doctor shouldn’t be forced to do something unnecessarily dangerous to a patient (even at the patient’s request), and if that doctor judges abortion to be dangerous without an ultrasound, that’s his call. The woman is free to seek a second opinion or find another doctor, but she’s not free to force him to act contrary to his judgement.
On the other hand, the lawmaker’s judgement should not enter into it. Medical procedures are private procedures, and the only people who ought to be concerned with them (as long as the doctor maintains the standards of care of the medical community) are the doctor and the patient herself.
The doctor and patient are analogous, in some ways, to two people in a relationship. If a woman says to her boyfriend, “If you won’t have sex with me after we’ve been seeing each other for a year, I’ll leave you for someone who will,” that’s between her and him. However, if their *lawmaker* said, “Couples who don’t have sex after a year of dating are now ineligible for marriage,” that would be a serious problem. It’s a matter of who should be concerned–who has a legitimate interest or something important to add to the decision–and who shouldn’t.
“It’s all about the wantedness, correct? We should be able to want what we have done to us, correct?”
If we are able to want, we should have a voice. But fetuses do not want. And even if they did, we can not know what they *would* want. You can’t claim to speak for them any more than I can.
Some of us are pro-life, and if we knew in the womb that our mothers didn’t want us, we would choose to force our mothers to bring us into the world anyway. Others of us are pro-choice, and if we knew that our mothers found their pregnancies to be terrible burdens, we would prefer not to force ourselves on them. I do not think that nonexistence is such a horrible thing that I would violate my mother to avoid it. If my mother had chosen abortion–and somehow been able to consult me–I would’ve supported her in it. In my mind, to do otherwise would be a horrific violation of her rights. Just because I’m alive doesn’t mean I have the right to do anything with another person’s body that I wish to.
VS, what you just wrote above may be one of the saddest things I’ve ever read.
And the pro-lifers reveal their true motives! “God forbid you’d have to look at someone before you kill them,” Courtnay says.
Are you kidding me? Where on earth have you been? If “OMG, the pro-life movement wants to stop abortions because they sympathize with the unborn!!!1!1!eleventy-one!” is some kind of massive revelation to you than I can only conclude you have been living under a rock or in a cave for the past forty years. Of course the pro-life movement wants to stop abortions. That’s not only not a secret, it is one of the major goals of the movement.
“The legislators are the ones with the metaphorical guns to the doctors’ heads, forcing this rape. It’s no insult to the medical community to acknowledge that these doctors are being forced to violate their patients to comply with the law.”
Despicable. A trans-vaginal ultrasound, carried out by a respectful medical professional with the patient’s consent, is NOT rape.
It’s no insult to the German soldiers to acknowledge that they were being forced to violate their prisoners to comply with Hitler.
VS, yours have to be some of the most unintentionally funny posts I’ve ever read here. So you are accusing pro-lifers of rejecting your oh-so-sophisticated philosophical ideas only to fall back on our religious ravings? All the while your so-called arguments are a mass of self-contradictory nonsense. You wouldn’t recognize a rational argument or a real philosophical idea if one rose up out of the ground and swallowed you whole.
Case in point: At one moment you insist that the fetus totally lacks sentience and volition and is incapable of wanting anything, the next moment you describe it as a guilty criminal subject to execution without trial or jury for willfully forcing itself on its mother. Then when it suits you to use to “lack of sentience” meme in another place, out it comes again. So which one is it? Do you even listen to what you’re actually saying?
“Are you kidding me? Where on earth have you been? If “OMG, the pro-life movement wants to stop abortions because they sympathize with the unborn!!!1!1!eleventy-one!” is some kind of massive revelation to you than I can only conclude you have been living under a rock or in a cave for the past forty years. Of course the pro-life movement wants to stop abortions. That’s not only not a secret, it is one of the major goals of the movement.”
The point is that mandatory ultrasound laws have nothing to do with “informed consent” or “medical safety” or whatever other subterfuge pro-lifers have invented in order to justify their necessity and everything to do with emotionally manipulating pregnant women, which to any reasonable person is an appalling broadside attack on the integrity of the patient-doctor relationship and a mockery of the legislative process.
Some of us are pro-life, and if we knew in the womb that our mothers didn’t want us, we would choose to force our mothers to bring us into the world anyway. Others of us are pro-choice, and if we knew that our mothers found their pregnancies to be terrible burdens, we would prefer not to force ourselves on them. I do not think that nonexistence is such a horrible thing that I would violate my mother to avoid it. If my mother had chosen abortion–and somehow been able to consult me–I would’ve supported her in it. In my mind, to do otherwise would be a horrific violation of her rights. Just because I’m alive doesn’t mean I have the right to do anything with another person’s body that I wish to.
Wow. Just…wow. How does a mother have to raise a child to make them say something like that? It reminds me of an episode of Tom and Jerry when the baby duck thinks that Tom is his mother when all Tom wants to do is eat him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udjN208U1mo&feature=related
Not “nonexistence”-you mean “death”. Two different things, partner. You’re essentially saying that your mom should’ve had the right to kill you whenever she felt like it, and you’d be happy to oblige her. Sick!
I love my mom-she’s nice-but she’s also a human being, and fallible. She is not some goddess that should never have to live through the ultimate consequences of her actions. I have two kids. Just because I have two kids also does not mean I am some cosmic devi that should have a legal right to determine the fate of everyone who happens to share half of my genetics.
Also, you bring up X-Men. Yes, they would be mutated humans, and a new species of humans. HOWEVER, they would still be human beings, and thus worthy of the protection of their lives under the law. The phrase “human being” encompasses any member of the genus homo. “Mutants” are homo superior, and therefore also human beings worthy of protection under the law.
P.S. I am not religious. <3
@xalisae: On a fandomy note, the X-Men is a really interesting pop-culture tangent in terms of pro-life or abortion apologetics. Because, given the number of eugenic abortions that are occurring IRL now, plus the amount of prejudice mutants face in the Marvel universe, it’s pretty obvious people would select against the X-gene (i.e., abort their unborn mutant children) in vast numbers. And the abortion defenders would be supportive of this because “not everyone is prepared to raise a mutant child” and “mutant children face so much difficulty in their life, so isn’t it more compassionate to spare them from it?” and on and on and on. So, if we’re going to talk about the X-Men, I think it’s worth pointing out that most–if not all–of them would probably be pretty strongly against abortion, if only in a we-want-to-survive sense.
Human life does not have a gradient.
heck yeah, Alice.
Think gender-selective abortions, only with superpowers instead. I am all about it, and am really stoked to see the new sidewalk counselors.
Lrning, you don’t seem to understand the idea of consent. Do you believe that a husband can rape his wife? Or has she automatically consented by agreeing to tie the knot? Would you consider it a consensual sexual encounter if a woman submitted to her boss’s sexual advances because he threatened her job and her reputation if she did not? Similarly, when a woman has no chance to fight back against the law if she wants to exercise her right to have an abortion, if she submits, unwillingly, to the government-mandated invasive ultrasound, it is not a consensual encounter. Rape can be coercive rather than physically forced. This one is coercive.
I have been raped, and this is rape. I have no problem with sex or pap smears or pelvic exams, but no one should be sticking instruments inside of me unless A) I want them to, or B) it’s medically necessary.
And if you think the doctors who grit their teeth and put up with this legislative nonsense deserve to be vilified for not resisting it–as you suggest the Germans should’ve resisted Hitler–then so be it. I, for one, do not judge them harshly for doing whatever they need to in order to continue providing what I–and they–consider to be a vital service.
Alice: What joan said.
Lori: My having carefully-considered and logical philosophical points is not automatically an insult to your intelligence or religion. But I can see you have chosen to take it that way. Which is why you have responded with a deliberately inflammatory post. You may wish to re-read the rules for the comment section.
In any case, no, my philosophy does not contradict itself. The fetus does not need to be a sentient creature in order to infringe upon the woman’s rights. I’m not advocating abortion to “punish” it as if it has moral guilt. Rather, I’m allowing that it is–albeit unwillingly–infringing on its carrier’s rights, and therefore, not “innocent,” in the sense of having done no wrong. When considering whether we should be allowed to remove it (and thereby, whether we wish to or not, harm it), we need to take into account whether leaving it there hurts anyone. It clearly does. (You’re free to research the side effects, risks, and complications of pregnancy and childbirth, if you have not experienced them yourself.) If a woman is willing to bear that harm in order to have children, good for her. If she is not, it is morally wrong to force her. It is a conflict of rights. The fetus does not have to be sentient to be “doing” something just by its very existence. (What is it doing? It’s occupying a woman’s womb and siphoning off her energy for its growth.) In that sense, I protest the terminology of “innocent.” “The fetus never did anything to you!” is not an accurate defense of it.
What other contradictions did you think you saw? Allow me to clarify them for you.
VS,
Do you live in a world where biological parents with default custody have no financial or other obligations to their offspring? Because this whole you treating gestating human beings as if they are strangers to a pregnant woman rather than her minor child is kinda weird.
Fine, xalisae–not X-men, then, the characters of Star Wars. They may look human, but they’re actually beings in a galaxy far, far away. Highly unlikely to share our genetic code. Would you be okay with killing them, or other sentient aliens that did not share our species or genus? If not, then you concur that it is not our DNA that makes us worth protecting and that the demonstrable “humanness” of a fetus’s physical and genetic characteristics is irrelevant.
On what logical basis, if not the one I’ve proposed, would you defend them?
Also, xalisae, the fact that you’re okay with forcing your mother to carry you and feed you inside her womb is disgusting to me. I was refraining from posting, “Wow, sick!” because I thought it was unnecessarily inflammatory… but if you’re going to go there: Wow, sick! Just because I was conceived doesn’t mean that I have the right to do whatever I want in order to survive. If your birth would require torturing someone, would you be okay with that? No? But I thought you were a fan of life at all costs! Similarly, I draw the line at forcing someone to carry me inside of them for months and months. If that means my nonexistence–and yes, it barely means anything to say “death” for a creature that can’t think or feel–then so be it. It’s not a claim of god-like rights for my mother. It’s a claim for personal autonomy, the right to her own body, and the right to not be enslaved to another. And yes, it is slavery or “forced labor” to make a woman carry and feed a fetus for nine months. And no, her having sex does not justify forcing her into this contract. It’s rare, but a possible cost of childbirth is death. Having sex is a normal human activity–especially for married folks–and should not be punishable by forced labor or even a small risk of death, if it can be alleviated.
“Do you live in a world where biological parents with default custody have no financial or other obligations to their offspring? Because this whole you treating gestating human beings as if they are strangers to a pregnant woman rather than her minor child is kinda weird.”
I’m not sure what you’re asking. There’s quite a bit of difference between the obligations one has to a birthed child and the obligations one has to an unformed one. Regardless, there are no laws against placing your child up for adoption if you wish to relieve yourself of custody. Adoption, however, is not an alternative to pregnancy and childbirth, as abortion is. It’s only an alternative to child-rearing. Part of the justification for abortion is that there *are* no other alternatives to pregnancy and child-birth–there are no other wombs to gestate that fetus in. But there are plenty of adults who could care for a born child for you if the burden was too much for you.
I don’t believe that blood ties are any more special than chosen ties. Biology can give you a family. But your genes are not superior to anyone else’s, and the fact that a fetus bears your genes or mine does not make it special, either.
VS, sorry but if you are going to protest the use of ‘innocent” for the fetus you have got to drop the word “guilty” as well. Because only beings who are capable of willing something can be moral agents, capable of being either innocent or guilty.
If you don’t think the fetus is really guilty of anything, or capable of it, then why did you use the word in the first place? No doubt for the emotional effect, in the hopes of shoring up a laughably weak argument.
Then you are off into another tack where you claim that though not morally guilty, the fetus is still somehow harming the woman by siphoning off her energy to feed itself, as though it were a kind of parasite — completely ignoring the fact that pregnancy is a perfectly natural event, and that the ability to accommodate that siphoning is built right into a woman’s system. There is nothing that the fetus is doing that the mother’s body is not cooperating with. How on earth did the idea of pregnancy get so screwed up that people cannot get this?
All you are left with when you take away the loaded language is the statement “this human being’s existence is an inconvenience to me, so I have the right to kill him or her.”
But why should we have the right to kill the inconvenient?
This brings us back to the question of rights. You claim that the fetus has “some rights” but never enumerate them. What rights exactly, does a fetus have? Until we know that, we don’t know if they supersede the mother’s rights or not.
Actually no thinking ethicist in the world is going to the say a human being at any stage of development has ‘some rights” but not the right to life. The right to life is the foundation of all other rights. It is the first of human rights. And yes, there is a reason they are called “human” rights rather than “person” rights.
If a fetus is a human being, then he or she has a right to life. And one human being’s right to his or her existence easily trumps another human being’s right not to be inconvenienced. Because one right, the right to life, is foundational, the right not to be inconvenienced is a much lesser and contingent right. (But I’m sure you are such a brilliant philosopher that you already knew all that, right?)
I can’t make it much clearer than that.
Oh, and that should clarify your question as to whether I believe that my “mom should’ve had the right to kill [me] whenever she felt like it” or anyone should have “a legal right to determine the fate of everyone who happens to share half of [their] genetics.” Clearly, I do not believe this. It’s a question of conflicting rights. So long as I am in somebody’s womb, infringing on their body, they have the right to expel me, regardless of the consequences to me. They do not “owe” me that space. Once I am born, however, I am not necessarily infringing on anyone’s rights. As long as there is someone in society who can and will feed me, my biological parents do not have the right to keep me and starve me. If they do not want to feed me, they are obligated to give me up to someone who will.
Only when there is *necessarily* a conflict of rights is it acceptable to kill fetuses (or indeed, kill *anything,* some would argue).
“Also, xalisae, the fact that you’re okay with forcing your mother to carry you and feed you inside her womb is disgusting to me. I was refraining from posting, “Wow, sick!” because I thought it was unnecessarily inflammatory… but if you’re going to go there: Wow, sick!”
Um, most of us find it fairly sick that you would deny that biological parents have to take care of their children until someone else can step in, if they wish not to raise their children to adulthood. I have a legal obligation to feed, shelter, and clothe my children, if I want to give up my parental rights and not have any obligation to them, I have to first make sure that they are taken care of before I skip along my merry child-free way. They have more rights than me, because they are much more vulnerable than me. It’s not the other way around.
“And yes, it is slavery or “forced labor” to make a woman carry and feed a fetus for nine months. And no, her having sex does not justify forcing her into this contract. It’s rare, but a possible cost of childbirth is death. Having sex is a normal human activity–especially for married folks–and should not be punishable by forced labor or even a small risk of death, if it can be alleviated.”
Again with the slavery thing. All parents, male and female, should be legally obligated to provide the necessities of care for their biological children until they can find another caregiver. It really is that simple. Children are dependents, they cannot take care of themselves, very young ones die without help. It is an accident of biology that the only person who can take care of the gestating fetus is the mother, but unless technology leaps forward there is nothing we can do about that. Just because we aren’t always happy about our obligations to kids we create, doesn’t mean that we get to shirk them before finding someone else to step in, and we can’t do that in the case of gestation.
“I’m not sure what you’re asking. There’s quite a bit of difference between the obligations one has to a birthed child and the obligations one has to an unformed one.”
Unformed? Fetuses are formed just right for the level of development they are in. I think you might substitute “biologically dependent” there. And true, there are different obligations. When your child is still biologically dependent on you, he or she cannot be removed without the child’s death. Those of us who want to protect children see that as too high of a price to pay for “freedom”.
“Regardless, there are no laws against placing your child up for adoption if you wish to relieve yourself of custody. Adoption, however, is not an alternative to pregnancy and childbirth, as abortion is. It’s only an alternative to child-rearing. Part of the justification for abortion is that there *are* no other alternatives to pregnancy and child-birth–there are no other wombs to gestate that fetus in. But there are plenty of adults who could care for a born child for you if the burden was too much for you.”
Yeah… except when parents get stuck, like my mother, with children they don’t want and can’t get rid of legally. Should it be cool for that parent to do what they want to that child, since they have no option to adopt it out? If you are really justifying abortion as acceptable because the mother has no other choice there, then how can you say that mother’s of born children are “wrong” if they choose to divest themselves of their parental responsibilities by killing the child after it’s born? As long as there is no other option other than raise the damn kid, would you be cool with that?
“It’s a question of conflicting rights. So long as I am in somebody’s womb, infringing on their body, they have the right to expel me, regardless of the consequences to me. They do not “owe” me that space. Once I am born, however, I am not necessarily infringing on anyone’s rights. As long as there is someone in society who can and will feed me, my biological parents do not have the right to keep me and starve me. If they do not want to feed me, they are obligated to give me up to someone who will.”
Except that, again, there are parents who get stuck in situations where giving up the born kid wouldn’t be feasible. Whose rights override whose in that case? And excuse me? So if someone wasn’t willing to take a child, it *would* be cool for your biological parents to starve or hurt you? Are you for real?
Personally, I think the dependent being who was created by the other being should have “trump rights”, but that’s just me.
Another newbie troll smacked down. I almost can’t watch. Oh, who am I kidding? Pass the popcorn!
See? And I can watch it all day!
Well done, Jack. Well done.
re: Killing Star Wars Aliens – I’ve always felt that the “Future Like Ours” argument functioned very well as a pro-life reason why the murder of hypothetical aliens would be wrong. Granted, at this point we are getting fairly far off the beaten track (Would you kill a wookie? Well, no, I wouldn’t. For reasons beyond the fact that if I picked a fight with one, it would probably kill me first.), and into the realms of the Space Whale Aesop.
Hans, you might look up the definition of “troll.” It doesn’t mean, “Anyone who disagrees with Hans,” FYI.
Jack, I’m not sure what your mother’s circumstances are, but my understanding is that, in America, any parent has the right to voluntarily relinquish parental rights and place a child in the public foster care system. I’m not “deny[ing] that biological parents have to take care of their children until someone else can step in.” The obligation to put one’s child in foster care or another home is a minor hassle compared to the insistence that a woman feed & carry a fetus internally for nine months and then birth it–with all the risks and pain associated with pregnancy and childbirth. There are no risks involved to your person when you hand a baby a bottle. There are plenty of risks involved to your person when you allow a fetus to use your body’s resources for nine months. That is part of where the conflict of rights comes in.
Pregnancy is a risky, invasive endeavor that spans a fairly long amount of time. Caring for a child until you finish the paperwork for fostercare is neither risky nor physically invasive nor a long-term ordeal, for most people. They are not comparable. Nor is the undeveloped fetus in the first trimester (when most abortions take place) comparable to a nine-month-developed, birthed infant.
“Just because we aren’t always happy about our obligations to kids we create, doesn’t mean that we get to shirk them before finding someone else to step in, and we can’t do that in the case of gestation.”
A fetus isn’t a kid.
”When your child is still biologically dependent on you, he or she cannot be removed without the child’s death. Those of us who want to protect children see that as too high of a price to pay for ‘freedom.'”
Again, a fetus isn’t a child. I haven’t heard you give any reasons yet why it should be treated as such.
“So if someone wasn’t willing to take a child, it *would* be cool for your biological parents to starve or hurt you?”
Shall we imagine that society where no one is willing to take in a child and feed it? (Leaving “hurt[ing]” it out of the question, of course, as there is a big difference between intent to actively harm and intent to merely remove or not support/feed.) Imagine a “society” of fifteen people who have survived a plane wreck in a remote locale. One of them gives birth to an infant a week into their desperate isolation. The mother dies. The father is not there. Who is obligated to shorten their life to give their meager supplies to feed the child?
If no one is, then why would the mother be? Genetics? If they all are, why? The infant is the most fragile of them and the least likely to survive. A utilitarian (which I sometimes am) would maximize the survival of the society, and would factor in the futility of prolonging the life of an individual who could neither assist the group nor fend for him- or herself if the group perished.
“Except that, again, there are parents who get stuck in situations where giving up the born kid wouldn’t be feasible. Whose rights override whose in that case?”
In that kind of gray area rights-conflict, I would want to know the details. To me, it’s like saying, “Someone tried to steal from me and I shot him. Who was in the wrong?” I can’t tell you without details. I would want to know if the thief had a weapon, if he was threatening you, or if he was young and relatively harmless. I would want to know what harms are being done to you and what your alternatives are. Are you raising a child with extreme disabilities in object poverty with no social mobility? Or are you just preferring your weekly movie night to buying child food?
I actually don’t see preserving the life of a fragile young human as a perfectly black and white issue. If I had to choose between raising my child in a POW camp or giving it a quick death, I would likely choose the mercy killing. If I had to choose between granting my child the painful existence of some of the rarest, incurable diseases or giving it a painless death, I would choose the painless death.
Even in the above plane-wreck scenario, where the death being chosen is more for selfish reasons, I don’t see why the infant “must” be preserved over the lives of the other humans involved. It’s an accident of biology, to use your words, that infants are so weak. From the fact that they are fragile, it doesn’t logically follow that we *must* protect them. Only your biological instincts tell you that. We don’t desperately protect butterflies, and they are fragile lives. Justify your values or don’t, but if you don’t have a logical system of morality, why should anyone abide by it?
Alice, imagining other beings that are like us but lack our DNA is really not that far off the beaten track. Analogies are used all the time to see the natural consequences of our logic and our values. A more “down to earth” analogy might be to great apes, elephants, dolphins, or whales, but most people are “speciesist” to the extent that they’d gladly kill a hundred self-aware nonhuman animals to save one human animal. It’s easier to set speciesism aside if we construct, for the sake of argument, the discovery of human-seeming aliens.
My problem with the Future Like Ours argument is that it A) values a probable person’s rights over an actual person’s rights, B) doesn’t define *how much* like ours a future has to be to have value–doesn’t lay out any criteria for actual life experiences–and C) allows for the idea that, if we are doing a disservice to a zygote by not helping it reach its future, we are also doing a disservice to an unfertilized egg if we do not aid it, too, on its potential path to personhood.
Valuing people with definable characteristics–capability for feeling pain & emotions (that is, sentience), self-awareness/consciousness, capability for rationality, etc.–is useful for a system of rights that includes human and nonhuman animals and alien lifeforms and pretty much any kind of life we might encounter. One doesn’t necessarily need to have *all* the characteristics of a person to have rights, but basic “human rights” start with having one or more of those characteristics. What anticipated life experiences are necessary to value a potential person’s potential future?
My last comment to VS is still in moderation, no idea why! No links and certainly not inflammatory. Please, mods, what gives?!
Jill asked the question today in another post. “How do we persuade pro-choicers”? It’s very difficult when we not only have totally opposed viewpoints, but seem to be talking totally different languages. One person will say the other is “sick” for thinking a mother has a duty to protect the child within her.
We have a situation today in which sex is considered a perfectly normal human activity, but pregnancy and childbirth are dire diseases that will kill you, and a fetus is a strange alien invader in its mother’s body.
No wonder we’re talking past each other. A whole new way of thinking, “abortion thinking” has sprung up in the last 40 years, composed of relativism, utilitarianism, radical feminist rhetoric, the contraceptive mentality, and the ideas our “me-first” culture. It’s not even possible sometimes to talk to each other anymore.
It’s sad. It makes me think there is no hope left for civilization.
VS,
In our Scandanavian heritage, we know from trolls. And they don’t all live under bridges.
Anyway, I think the term is closer to how one fishes for lake trout. Well, I’m not a bottom-feeder and I ain’t bitin’.
“Jack, I’m not sure what your mother’s circumstances are, but my understanding is that, in America, any parent has the right to voluntarily relinquish parental rights and place a child in the public foster care system. I’m not “deny[ing] that biological parents have to take care of their children until someone else can step in.” The obligation to put one’s child in foster care or another home is a minor hassle compared to the insistence that a woman feed & carry a fetus internally for nine months and then birth it–with all the risks and pain associated with pregnancy and childbirth. There are no risks involved to your person when you hand a baby a bottle. There are plenty of risks involved to your person when you allow a fetus to use your body’s resources for nine months. That is part of where the conflict of rights comes in.”
My mother was trapped with a sociopathic pedophile abusive man in a secluded cult-like church with no real options to escape, with or without her children. She thought her right to be free of responsibility to the youngest child she didn’t want (me!) excused all kinds of behavior. Like, according to my eldest sister, leaving me in my crib for hours without food or care. And, under your umbrella of conflicting rights, was a perfectly legitimate thing for her to do. Because, according to your philosophy, parents don’t have a responsibility to their offspring if it clashes with their right of bodily autonomy. She didn’t want to care for me, and there was no one else who wanted me, so she didn’t have to. That’s where this absolution of a social contract between adults and the offspring they create ends up. We simply have to structure society so the youngest and most vulnerable are entitled to care and protection, we simply do not survive as a species without this basic entitlement. And also, nobody has any rights at all if they are not living. To have a coherent system of human rights, at the very least we have to have alive humans to exercise them.
And really, I don’t think we have much to discuss. Because I cannot fathom a worldview where you don’t believe that we as a species have an obligation to protect our most vulnerable members.
Lori, you misunderstand the divergence of values entirely. From what I’ve seen, the typical pro-life philosophy values human life at all costs (or, at almost all costs). Where human life is concerned, it is fairly cut and dried, either for religious reason or for speciesist reasons. The other philosophy–mine, and many pro-choicers–sees life as valuable under certain circumstances. This is often described as valuing “quality of life;” specifically, quality of life for all sentient creatures, not just human life.
So, for example, I might find it moral to remove the feeding tube of someone in a permanent vegetative state. I know that I wouldn’t want to live like that, myself, and I don’t understand valuing the beating of someone’s heart when their brain is dead. You might find it immoral, because you value that life regardless of its quality.
On the other hand, I might find it immoral to raise thinking, feeling farm animals in inhumane conditions and slaughter them in torturous ways, and you might not be concerned with the quality of an animal’s life because it is not human.
I might find euthanasia to be a merciful solution to someone’s terminal pain; you might find it to be an outrage. Etc. It’s not radical feminist rhetoric or a “me first” culture that causes me to value a quality life over just heartbeat and bloodflow. Although it’s true that secularism helps puts things in perspective. And if you deride utilitarianism, too, you might want to explain what philosophy you yourself use.
On a different note, I’m curious that you don’t consider sex to be a normal human activity. What is it, then? A dire sin? Even between a husband and wife? (Or whatever other religious constraints you might put on it to separate us from other animals?)
Also, pregnancy has long been a threat to women’s lives. That’s nothing new to the last few years. In fact, per the Wikipedia page on maternal deaths (which cites, for example, the incidence of maternal deaths in the Dublin Maternity Hospital 1784-1849), maternal deaths have probably historically been around 1 in 100, “climbing to 40 percent of birthgiving women” in the maternal hospitals in the 1800s. Regardless of whether people are willing to admit it, pregnancy and childbirth have historically been great killers of women. Giving women freedom from unwanted pregnancy, whether through contraception or through abortion, has opened the doors for them to attain equal education and power in the workforce and independence. When women are chained to their biology, they don’t have a chance of becoming equal citizens at all. But perhaps you don’t think women should be equal citizens?
“Only when there is *necessarily* a conflict of rights is it acceptable to kill fetuses (or indeed, kill *anything,* some would argue).”
VS, what are the two conflicting rights involved? I know one is the right to life, what is the other right?
“She thought her right to be free of responsibility to the youngest child she didn’t want (me!) excused all kinds of behavior. Like, according to my eldest sister, leaving me in my crib for hours without food or care. And that, under your umbrella of conflicting rights, was a perfectly legitimate thing for her to do.”
Nope, didn’t say that. But I can see that you’re too blinded by the trauma of your personal story to actually see and consider what I did write. So, you’re right. We don’t have much to discuss. If you can’t actually see the difference between what I’m saying concerning the resolution of a conflict of basic human rights (such as the right to not have your body invaded or violated) and the abusiveness that was casually and capriciously visited on you, we really can’t have a discussion.
Furthermore, my allowance for people to seek self-preservation over the preservation of infants in dire situations does not allow for the abuse or prolonged suffering of those infants or any sentient creatures. I have no desire to dissolve the social contract between adults and children in most circumstances. Fetuses, however, are not children. I have enumerated the differences, and you have failed to give any evidence to the contrary.
Good day.
My problem with the Future Like Ours argument is that it A) values a probable person’s rights over an actual person’s rights, B) doesn’t define *how much* like ours a future has to be to have value–doesn’t lay out any criteria for actual life experiences–and C) allows for the idea that, if we are doing a disservice to a zygote by not helping it reach its future, we are also doing a disservice to an unfertilized egg if we do not aid it, too, on its potential path to personhood.
I’m going to take these in order of relevance.
C: A zygote is a complete human organism. An ovum/sperm is not. This is not “my opinion.” It is a basic, set-into-stone fact of human biology. If you wish to take issue with this, you had better do it armed with at least four embryology textbooks to back up everything you say. Which leads nicely into…
A: A complete human organism is not a “probable person.” As a complete human being, they become an “actual person.” Not to recognize them as such requires us to redefine the word “person,” which is not something you have done.
B: You’re right. The concept of respecting the rights of creatures that are similar, but not necessarily the same, as human beings does require potential broadenings of which creatures whose rights we do and don’t respect. This could be difficult or even inconvenient. That does not suddenly make it okay to stop caring about the potential harm we could do, even when it is hard. Which, by the way, is why you won’t see me going to SeaWorld. After looking into it, I can’t really say that the potential future of cetaceans differs sufficiently from that of humans to not accord them rights. And while I’m never going to be able to spring Shamu from his prison, I can–at the very least–not contribute to it.
“Lrning, you don’t seem to understand the idea of consent.”
I understand consent and I understand coercion. In Virginia, if a woman wants to get an abortion she now needs to consent to an ultrasound. NOT rape. The fact that 83% of National Abortion Federation members already perform trans-vaginal ultrasounds for ALL of their early abortion patients tells me that the majority of abortionists find it to be a medically necessary test. So, yeah, I’m not gonna get too upset over this law. I don’t see why anyone that cares about women would fight to prevent a state government from mandating that ALL abortion providers follow what is the current standard of care for abortions.
Women’s lives have been lost because abortionists failed to diagnose ectopic pregnancies. Making abortions safer for women by mandating ultrasounds is a good thing, in my opinion. Women should be protected from shoddy doctors. I might not agree with abortion, but that doesn’t mean I want the women that seek them to die!
http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/deaths/blectopicdeaths.htm
Tyler, it’s not a one-to-one rights-conflict. On the fetus’s side, it is simply the right to life. On the woman’s side, however, several rights are involved: The right to not have your body invaded against your will (also called the right of bodily autonomy). The right to not have your energy put to another’s use (also called freedom from forced labor). The right to life (considering that a possible consequence of childbirth, although no longer a highly-likely one in developed countries, is death). I could probably name more, but those are sufficient…
Multiple rights of a fully-developed person tip the scale when weighed only against a potential person’s right to life.
VS, why not simply be pro-life for all species, human and non-human?
Also, please define “convenience.” I suspect your definition of “convenience” would include sneering at women who try to divorce their abusive husbands… “How terrible! A divorce of convenience. That woman doesn’t know the meaning of loyalty!”
I have to define “convenience” for you..really? I think not.
You’re comparing HUMAN pre-born children to FICTIONAL characters? That tells me a lot about how YOUR mind works, VS. As for “mutants” well..I have a few “parts” in me that I wasn’t born with, so I guess that makes ME a “mutant”.
A HUMAN pre-born baby is created by HUMAN pro-creation, so you CAN’T leave “humanness” out of it.
As for your RIDICULOUS conclusion that you “suspect” I would “sneer at women who try to divorce their abusive husbands”…
You don’t know me..OR my life. First of all..I don’t “sneer” at anyone…in ANY situation and for your information, I have talked SEVERAL young women INTO leaving abusive relationships!
You talk about MY lack of compassion???? Yes..because abortion is SO compassionate.
I’ve been a volunteer at a Crisis Pregnancy Center, gathered food and clothes for the needy, AND provided child-care for FREE for a young mother who was just starting a job and couldn’t afford day-care.
I’m GLAD to be alive, and my SINGLE MOTHER was GLAD to have me.
Some of us don’t feel BURDENED by fertility/womanhood, VS.
“On the fetus’s side, it is simply the right to life. On the woman’s side, however, several rights are involved: The right to not have your body invaded against your will (also called the right of bodily autonomy). The right to not have your energy put to another’s use (also called freedom from forced labor). The right to life (considering that a possible consequence of childbirth, although no longer a highly-likely one in developed countries, is death). I could probably name more, but those are sufficient…”
Why do you not grant the fetus the same rights as the Mother? What is the criterion you use to ascribe rights to one human being and not another?
VS, what does “equal” mean in your phrase “equal citizens”?
VS, pardon me for jumping in, but this struck me –
When women are chained to their biology, they don’t have a chance of becoming equal citizens at all. But perhaps you don’t think women should be equal citizens?
Do you think that women’s biology makes them inherently unequal citizens?
If yes, do you think that perhaps if the biology of just about 50% of the world renders them unequal citizens, then it is the criteria for equal citizenship that needs to be changed, not biology? Society and citizenship are constructed concepts, after all. Biology is not. It seems a bit silly, from where I am at least, to say, “The natural biology of this gender renders it unequal in the society we have constructed! Clearly these people need to be liberated from this oppressive biology!” Like, maybe the biology isn’t the oppressive aspect of that situation.
Just a thought.
“C: A zygote is a complete human organism. An ovum/sperm is not. This is not “my opinion.” It is a basic, set-into-stone fact of human biology.”
So what? Why does being a complete, if undeveloped, human organism give something value as opposed to being “merely” the vital seed of a human organism? Why consider a zygote to have a future worth preserving, but an egg to not have one?
“A: A complete human organism is not a “probable person.” As a complete human being, they become an “actual person.” Not to recognize them as such requires us to redefine the word “person,” which is not something you have done.”
There are two definitions of the word “person”: the dictionary definition (a human being) and the philosophical definition (a being of value with certain rights). If you choose to take a circular view, then persons are humans and humans are persons and humans should be valued because persons are valued. But that is useless, philosophically. It is not true that something is a person (a being of value with certain rights) or not a person because of human DNA. Marquis admits that DNA itself is not a criteria. He claims, however, that it is having a future like ours that makes something a person with a right to life.
However, he never asks, “In what sense does anyone have a future?” How do we “possess” something intangible and probabilistic? If I have a lower probability of having a future than you do–say, because I’m conceived in an area with a high infant mortality rate–is it more okay to abort me than it is to abort you?
I disagree very much that it is the unknowable possession of a particular future that gives any of us value. It is, rather, characteristics that we currently bear, such as consciousness, not things like a future that we may or may not achieve.
“B: You’re right. The concept of respecting the rights of creatures that are similar, but not necessarily the same, as human beings does require potential broadenings of which creatures whose rights we do and don’t respect. This could be difficult or even inconvenient. That does not suddenly make it okay to stop caring about the potential harm we could do, even when it is hard. Which, by the way, is why you won’t see me going to SeaWorld. After looking into it, I can’t really say that the potential future of cetaceans differs sufficiently from that of humans to not accord them rights. And while I’m never going to be able to spring Shamu from his prison, I can–at the very least–not contribute to it.”
Well said. I appreciate that. But my real concern in point B (that Marquis doesn’t define *how much* like ours a future has to be to have value, doesn’t lay out any criteria for actual life experiences) is that it can be narrowed as easily as it can be broadened. You obviously have a generous heart to be so willing to include our nonhuman cousins, but many would take the opportunity to, instead, excuse murder. They can easily ask, “How is the future of a child born in a war-torn third world country at all like the future of my child? It is not. Thus, I would do better to preserve the privileged lives of American children than waste money preserving the lives of those who are doomed to be miserable, anyway!”
By not having a set of standards that can be quantified at all, Marquis’s philosophy is useless. It’s as all-encompassing or as cruelly narrow as the listener wishes. It can’t be an argument for something to be valued if it can’t lay out a good criteria for its defining characteristics.
The Philosophy I am trying to ascribe to is Personalism and not Personism. Check wikipaedia for the difference.
Lrning: “Women’s lives have been lost…”
As Joan said, don’t try to pretend it’s about *women’s* lives being lost. If you think it’s important for lawmakers to legislate standard medical practices into law, you should start with legislating rules for actual high-risk medical procedures. Lawmakers should start deciding the rules for your heart surgery, liver transplant, etc. Abortion is actually a very, very low-risk procedure (early on, when most are had). Why should it be singled out? No reason, except that pro-lifers will do anything to stop abortions, and they know the public is not on-board with that, so they coach it in terms of “information” and “saving women’s lives.” You’re actually about saving fetus’s lives. Stop cloaking it in something it’s not, and we can talk about the issue at hand–namely, what it is and is not okay to do to someone to preserve a fetus’s life.
FYI, making something a law that’s already standard medical practice doesn’t actually save lives. It just changes the legal processes involved if someone gets hurt afterwards from a doctor not doing something they were supposed to (from a medical malpractice suit to a criminal case). That is, assuming all abortions actually required an ultrasound as standard medical practice to start with.
“Valuing people with definable characteristics–capability for feeling pain & emotions (that is, sentience), self-awareness/consciousness, capability for rationality, etc.–is useful for a system of rights that includes human and nonhuman animals and alien lifeforms and pretty much any kind of life we might encounter. One doesn’t necessarily need to have *all* the characteristics of a person to have rights, but basic “human rights” start with having one or more of those characteristics. What anticipated life experiences are necessary to value a potential person’s potential future?”
Your criteria for determining when a human being should be considered a person is highly subjective and personal. It is selective and without rational support. In the paragraph above you have simply stated the axioms you have chosen to support your arguments. I think your effort to establish criteria reveals that you are setting up arbitrary distinctions between human beings in order to grant certain human beings rights and others no rights. You are engaged in an endeavor to exclude certain human beings from the status of legal persons, which IMO is not a noble use of one’s mind. You are forcing legal distinctions on reality that need not be forced or made. Finally your criteria is far from complete. If the list was continued you would find that both of the human beings you have contrasted, Mother and embryo, have more in common than what they don’t have in common.
vs, no I most certainly do not think sex between husband and wife a sin, neither has any other Christian I have known ever even remotely thought that. Nice way to deflect an argument with ignorant prejudice.
I wholeheartedly agree that sex is a normal human activity. What I objected to was your statement that pregnancy and childbirth are not normal human activities. What you have done is taken one possible negative aspect of the latter (women sometimes develop complications and die in childbirth) and inflated it until it poisons the whole. Well heck, women are often raped or stabbed to death by their lovers — if you harped on that enough, people might think it a good reason for avoiding sex entirely. What I meant to say is that sex, pregnancy and childbirth are a continuum, a natural continuum from one end to the other, and a natural good for our species. You evidently do not or cannot see it that way. We are fast losing sight of this central idea. Unless we agree that everyone should reproduce via petri dishes, it could mean the end of the human race.
Terrific, wonderful way to make your point about childbirth — citing statistics from the 1700 and 1800’s. Do you really think this makes some kind of case for avoiding childbirth today when maternity rates have been drastically lowered?
Yes, I believe that women should be and are equal citizens. And I also happen to think we’d do a much better job of getting all of our rights if we didn’t insist on jettisoning our biology as a liability and assuming that we must be exactly like men in order to be equal to them. What would have happened in the 70’s if women had actually stood up and said “We are women, we are free and equal to you in rights and we have babies! Deal with it! Since we are now planning to be a greater presence in colleges, universities and the workplace we are going to be demanding some major changes in the way you men run things to accommodate both us and our babies.”
Instead, we got sold abortion as a sop, and what did we get? I have horror stories I could tell about female relatives whose supposed maternity leaves turned into them being let go from their jobs. Today there is practically zero aid available for pregnant students or student mothers on our college campuses. Why should they accommodate us really, as long as there is abortion? Abortion is not just our right, now it’s apparently our duty to our boyfriends or husbands or parents or bosses to not prevent them with a child that is inconvenient to them. You never mention this aspect of abortion, VS, but it goes on, it’s there.
At any rate, please top condescending to those of us who are Christians as if we can’t be feminists or believe in equal rights. Listen to us instead of characterizing us based on prejudice.
As for your question about philosophy, you would have to read my moderated/lost post first. I’m going to try and send it through again.
Alexandra, in a pre-society imaginary world, women are still unequal in the commitment of their physical resources to procreation. Without contraception and abortion, there is an inherent inequality in women’s control over their own bodies and thus their abilities to freely perform certain tasks. For example, when I am 8 and 1/2 months pregnant, it is unlikely that I will be able to perform grueling physical tasks, no matter how much society attempts to accommodate me. So, if my career is in the military, construction work, athletics, factory work, etc., I am automatically out of the game at a certain stage of pregnancy. Much earlier if I happen to have a particularly rough pregnancy. And even setting the ability to do grueling physical tasks aside, being forced into pregnancy carries all sorts of other risks and side effects with it.
That has nothing to do with society as we have constructed it and everything to do with a difference in biology that anti-abortion/anti-contraception philosophy adherents refuse to allow us to correct. You wouldn’t withhold heart medication from someone, saying that their “difference” from you is a valuable gift of diversity that we should accommodate in other ways. So why would you withhold contraception and other medical technology that helps women cope with and gain control over their bodies?
Of course I agree that society should do a *lot* more to accommodate women in pregnancy, child-bearing, and child-rearing, but the simplest accommodation to start with is giving women control of their bodies and their fertility, via contraception and abortion, the way men have by nature. It is the correction of something that is not a moral flaw, but rather, is a unique vulnerability. It doesn’t make men “better” then women. It just means that they have one particular advantage. Luckily, modern technology enables women to have it, too.
You wouldn’t withhold heart medication from someone, saying that their “difference” from you is a valuable gift of diversity that we should accommodate in other ways. So why would you withhold contraception and other medical technology that helps women cope with and gain control over their bodies?
Well, heart disease is a disease, an aberration, something contrary to a healthy biological function. Which pregnancy is not. So I guess that’s why I would “withhold” abortion – though I don’t know where I ever said I would withhold contraception or other technology. I don’t think that heart disease is a gift of diversity, but I definitely think pregnancy is.
I suppose, VS, that if you believe that women’s biology renders them inherently unequal (which seems pretty misogynistic to me, but I understand it’s not meant that way), then you have two choices: construct something to “remedy” the biology, or construct something to remedy the inequality it naturally imposes. It is interesting how many people would rather change biology than change society. I suppose changing society is harder, as you can’t do it in a quick trip to the doctor. It is, like you said, the “simplest” accommodation.
“Why not simply be pro-life for all species, human and non-human?”
I am. Up to the point where there is a conflict of rights, I do not believe that any life should arbitrarily be extinguished. But, Tyler, we have rights conflicts every day. When my right to life conflicts with a tomato’s right to life, I have to make a decision. Is it okay to kill a tomato? Why or why not? Seeing how a tomato doesn’t have any of the characteristics I previously ascribed to persons, I come down on the side of it being okay to kill a tomato so I can eat and live.
When that same right to life conflicts with the rights of a pig or cow, things get more complicated. I would assert that my right to life exceeds that of a pig or cow, because of a farm animal’s limited rationality and lack of self-awareness, but I do not believe that my desire to enjoy a steak gives me a right to participate in the torture and inhumane treatment of animals, as is commonly done in American industrial-farm complexes. I can easily find sustenance without killing a cow right now, so I do. I have a right to live. I don’t necessarily have the right to eat steak capriciously at another creature’s expense.
Just as our rights interact with the rights of plants and nonhuman animals, so do our rights interact with the rights of fetuses and people in our society. When there is no rights conflict, it is not acceptable to kill. When there is, the value of the life has to be weighed against other things, big and small. It’s not always kill-or-be-killed. I would kill a cow and enjoy a steak if I could raise the cow peacefully and kill it without inflicting fear or pain. I would pluck a flower painlessly from the ground (and thereby kill it) if I felt it would bring me some small pleasure to take it home… On the other hand, I wouldn’t kill a person at all, except in direct self-defense or the defense of another’s life, or to spare someone great pain. But a fetus, with more similarity to a blade of grass than even a cow–in terms of feeling and thinking and awareness–I would not be inclined to spare if it was invading someone’s body unwanted. I do not know in what ways you think “mother and embryo” are alike. Superficial physical and irrelevant genetic similarities, yes. Mental and emotional capabilities (and thus, philosophical relevance)? No.
Alexandra, I assumed you would prefer to withhold technology because you were siding with Lori, who says that “pregnancy and childbirth are… a natural good for our species,” which (presumably) we should not try to prevent. A “gift.” Regardless of whether a woman actually wants it or not. Personally, I don’t want it. You’re free to try and change society for yourself–and I’ll gladly help you, for all women’s sakes–but I don’t appreciate being told that I should happily welcome the “gift” of my vulnerability to pregnancy. Any more than I welcome the “gift” of my family’s genetic predisposition to diabetes. It may be a natural fact, but that doesn’t mean I have to embrace it. Or that I’m declaring myself inferior for trying to avoid it.
I’m glad your mother was glad to have you, Pamela. If we’re talking about gratitude, I’m glad my mother had a choice. And I’m glad I have one, too.
“Superficial physical and irrelevant genetic similarities, yes. Mental and emotional capabilities (and thus, philosophical relevance)? No.”
VS, there is your metaphysical belief system, which differs from my own. I think the genetic make-up of an embryo is morally significant and differentiates it from a blade of grass and endows it with characteristics like its Mother. With that said, I find that many forms of life share much in common which warrant us giving them respect and not to randomly and capriously kill them. Plants like humans require nutrients to grow, they grow and die. Animals have more in common with humans, indeed, humans are one form of animals. Animals have senses like humans. I do not disagree that humans have superior rational abilities. But these rational abilities are only the differing characteristics and not the life affirming characteristics. So we should not wantonly kill any living creature. It is not the absence of conflicting rights that tells me we should not kill plants or animals unneccessarily, rather it is the inherent worth of plants and animals, their very life that tells me they have value. It is this inherent value of all creatures that the Bible recognizes when it tells us that everything God created was good.
Moreover, IMO it is the human soul that makes all human life sacred, the fact that we image God.
The criteria you have defined that permits you to kill is a moving target and is not well defined. A new criterion you have introduced among the other criteria you raised tonight is “to spare someone great pain.” This new criterion is quite loaded, You would have to define what you mean by “great” and what you mean by “pain”. In any event, I do not see how carrying a baby to term constitutes a “great pain” for the majority of Mothers. I think you would have to define a specific pregnancy such as an ectopic pregnany to warrant calling it a “great pain.” To permit each and every pregnancy to be called a “great pain” lacks discernment and sufficient reason to permit the extinguishing of the existence of the embryo at the discretion of the Mother.
“What you have done is taken one possible negative aspect of the latter (women sometimes develop complications and die in childbirth) and inflated it until it poisons the whole.”
Pregnancy doesn’t have to result in death to not be a walk in the park. There’s no need to inflate the risk of mortality to see that pregnancy can be an unpleasant experience. Other than to produce a wanted child, how often have you willingly embraced nausea and vomiting, back aches, weight gain, fatigue, mood swings, and the level of pain that accompanies child birth? I don’t want a child, and so to force that on me, or anyone–in addition to the invasion of my body that a fetus would represent–is reprehensible to me.
If one wants a child, then pregnancy is a trial to be endured with a joyous result. If one does not want a child, then pregnancy is–or can be–a pointless, physically and mentally torturous ordeal.
“Well heck, women are often raped or stabbed to death by their lovers — if you harped on that enough, people might think it a good reason for avoiding sex entirely.”
Yes. And if someone doesn’t want sex, you don’t force it on them to show them what a gift it is. Likewise, if someone doesn’t want a pregnancy, they shouldn’t be forced to endure one, either.
“What I meant to say is that sex, pregnancy and childbirth are a continuum, a natural continuum from one end to the other, and a natural good for our species.”
Just because something is natural doesn’t make it good. The natural progression of AIDS results in quite a nasty death, for example. It is natural for tornadoes to destroy things in their path. Arsenic is natural. On the other hand, band-aids are unnatural, man-made creations. Artificial, in-home refrigeration is unnatural. Houses are unnatural.
It is no insult to women who wish to bear children that some women do not. Likewise, it is no insult to women if a woman wishes to delay her child-bearing for a few years, or restrict it to a certain number of children. And studies have shown that the ability to delay child-bearing has a powerful impact on a woman’s ability to achieve high-level education, among other markers of success. With contraception and abortion, we have control over our bodies. To me, and to many, it is a vital ability.
(By the way, the maternal mortality statistics from the 1800s was a direct refutation of your claim that it is only modern “abortion rights” thinkers of the last 40 years who have conceived of pregnancy as a possible detriment to women. It is clear that pregnancy has always been risky, and quite likely that women knew it and did not universally crave pregnancy.)
Tyler, I do not consider a fetus to be a person. Therefore, I do not need to prove that a fetus has caused its progenitor great pain in order to allow for killing it.
And I’m sorry, but if your system of value comes from the Bible, I don’t have time to get into that tonight. Suffice to say, the Bible is not a basis for legislating in America.
Speaking of religion, however, I would note to Lori that I have not said anything condescending towards religion in this thread. It is merely not a basis for legislating, and not something we have in common. Nothing of what I wrote was intended to be sarcastic in the slightest, toward religion or anything. If I asked a question, it was a genuine request for clarification. If I made a point, it was intended to be straightforward. I may not have much time to continue on this thread. If I do not have time to address someone’s posts further, I apologize.
Hopefully, however, we have seen each others’ positions at least a tiny bit clearer. If not… well, better luck next time!
Where did I refer to anything that Lori had written at all?
I can certainly understand you not wanting to be pregnant. I don’t want to be pregnant either. I’ve been pregnant before and unlike Tyler – who I can safely guess hasn’t, lol – I know that pregnancy can be a GREAT PAIN. I am perfectly within my rights to try not to get pregnant, in a variety of different ways. Once I am pregnant, I am not within my rights to kill another human being, is all.
You equate pregnancy to your family’s tendency towards diabetes. (I hope your family is all ok, by the way! My partner’s mother has diabetes and it’s no picnic, I know.) To extend that analogy a bit, there are social, financial, and environmental constructs that can make diabetes (or a propensity for it) better or worse. We can create a society that naturally encourages healthy eating and physical activity, via things like the Farm Bill and prudent urban planning and whatever else; and we can create a framework for addressing the medical, financial, and social needs of those who get diabetes, and supporting them. These things are all in our power, as citizens and as a society.
In this example, abortion is like – just to stretch this all to absurd limits – a medical treatment that cures diabetes, that requires the heart of one other human being not dead from natural causes. This would be grossly unethical. This is not even one person dying so that another may life – it’s one person dying so that another may live the way they want to. (Now imagine that diabetes was not a lifelong condition but a temporary condition – it would seem even more unethical and absurd to go around killing people to access this treatment.) Your right to not get diabetes is as absolute as nature will permit. Your right to not HAVE diabetes stops where someone else’s heart begins.
“And I’m sorry, but if your system of value comes from the Bible, I don’t have time to get into that tonight. Suffice to say, the Bible is not a basis for legislating in America.”
Nor is VS’s personal secular atheistic worldview a more legit basis for legislating in America than is the Bible. However, recongizing the intrinisc value of life (all life) is not confined to a Biblical worldview, just ask xalisae.
VS, you seem to be arguning that the default position should be that society allow a woman to decide if she will abort her child or not. I think the default position society should take is to protect the life of the child in the womb until sufficient reasons prove the Mother’s life is in danger. Which position is more reasonable? Which position allows for fear, whim and passion to rule the day? Which position allows for reason?
“Also, pregnancy has long been a threat to women’s lives. That’s nothing new to the last few years. In fact, per the Wikipedia page on maternal deaths (which cites, for example, the incidence of maternal deaths in the Dublin Maternity Hospital 1784-1849), maternal deaths have probably historically been around 1 in 100, “climbing to 40 percent of birthgiving women” in the maternal hospitals in the 1800s. Regardless of whether people are willing to admit it, pregnancy and childbirth have historically been great killers of women.”
It is a good thing we don’t live in the 18th and 19th century any longer. VS I appreciate your use of statistics but you should really find some statistics that are more current so that you can justify the modern day widespread abortion epidemic. If you can’t find maternal mortality rates for the 21st century, perhaps you could use, at least, maternal mortality rates from the 20th century?
Alexandra: DNA aside, we have no reason to consider a fetus or embryo to be a person with rights equal to a woman’s rights. And, as I’ve been trying to clarify here, DNA is an entirely arbitrary and unjust basis for giving or taking away rights.
(I apologize for the confusion re: Lori–I saw that you had replied to something that I’d written to her and assumed you were backing her up.)
Tyler, you’ve been responding to points I haven’t been making for the last 6 posts or so. I don’t have time to continue to clarify for you. Please just go back and re-read my posts from the top.
“Alexandra: DNA aside, we have no reason to consider a fetus or embryo to be a person with rights equal to a woman’s rights. And, as I’ve been trying to clarify here, DNA is an entirely arbitrary and unjust basis for giving or taking away rights.”
This is just your opinion VS. You have no proved this. You simply want to assert that it is self-evident that an embryo doesn’t warrant being recognized as an individual. You can’t prove this is true, just as we who believe in God can’t prove to you that God exists through the use of the scientific method. In conclusion, I say the embryo has value and is a person because it has human DNA like all other human beings defined as legal persons.
I guess that I see no better dividing line for “human” or “not human” than having human DNA. If something has human DNA but is not human, what is it?
And: When does an entity become a human being, if not at the moment its human DNA is created? People draw lines at a variety of points: birth, viability of pregnancy…there is a well-known professor who ideologically draws the line after birth, during infancy. I have heard of Mormons, I think, recognizing something as being human when there is quickening in pregnancy. I am agnostic and don’t believe in any god, so fairy tales about “ensoulment” do nothing for me, and it must come down to what we KNOW scientifically rather than what we BELIEVE. Thus, DNA. In your opinion, when does a being become a human being, if not when his DNA is created?
There are a lot more questions that follow these, of course. ie just because something is a human being, does that mean it is inherently deserving of life? Right to life versus right to bodily autonomy? etc.
OK I am mercifully leaving work in a bit so I may not be back tonight. Because, you know, I only comment on blogs when I’m at work. That’s how I roll. ;)
“Tyler, you’ve been responding to points I haven’t been making for the last 6 posts or so. I don’t have time to continue to clarify for you. Please just go back and re-read my posts from the top.”
Just one time and it was because I was shocked that you used statistics from so long ago and that you seem to have ignored all the advances in medical maternal care over the years.
Alexandra, as I said previously:
“It’s not DNA that makes us worth protecting. I’ve never seen someone do a DNA test to ascertain whether someone was covered by the Bill of Rights. The fetus’s humanness has nothing to do with its rights.
“It’s also not life alone that makes us worth protecting. There are no laws to protect the living blades of grass under our feet.
“So what is it? Well, on the governmental level (civil rights), you have certain rights if you are born in America (or to an American citizen). Which a fetus is not. Or, on a more philosophical level, you may be conceived of having certain rights if you are self-aware, sentient, capable of feeling pain, and/or rational. (On fetal pain:http://abcnews.go.com/Health/fetus-feels-pain-37-weeks-study/story?id=14472566 On self-awareness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test )
“Again, this lack of thinking, feeling, consciousness, etc. doesn’t mean a fetus should have *no* rights. I believe in preserving life (from dolphins to cows) unless there’s a good reason not to. However, a woman’s right to *not* be forced to carry and feed a fetus inside of herself–her right to not be a slave to her fetus–overrides the much-weaker rights of the unthinking & unfeeling fetus. In this sense–regardless of what the fetus would do or want if it could choose–the fetus is not innocent. It is forcing itself on the woman. If the woman wants it, great. If not, she should not have to endure this violation of her rights, regardless of the humanness of the being that is violating her.”
As a further thought-exercise on DNA, I said, consider “the characters of Star Wars. They may look human, but they’re actually beings in a galaxy far, far away. Highly unlikely to share our genetic code. Would you be okay with killing them, or other sentient aliens that did not share our species or genus? If not, then you concur that it is not our DNA that makes us worth protecting and that the demonstrable “humanness” of a fetus’s physical and genetic characteristics is irrelevant.”
If your moral code is shaped by logic, you will look for what it is that you actually value of life and be consistent by that. Is it DNA? Would you discriminate against aliens? Is it rationality? Is it the ability to feel pain? Or is it some combination of traits?
And, as I’ve been trying to clarify here, DNA is an entirely arbitrary and unjust basis for giving or taking away rights.
Except that it’s not. Look, all aliens, mutants, and other hypotheticals aside, we both agree that humans have rights. If they didn’t, you could hardly make arguments about competing rights or women’s rights or rights of any kind whatsoever. And there is no basis for determining what a human is aside from DNA. None. Aside from which, even if biology were arbitrary as you claim, the developmental level of an individual, which you claim ought to be the basis for assigning rights, is considerably more arbitrary and unjust than arguing for an intrinsic value (i.e., that humans are valuable simply because they are human). And certainly much less clear and poorly defined.
VS, I wanted to apologize for getting, uh, rhetoric heavy, on you earlier. It’s not generally how I try to debate, a lot less polite and logical than I like to get. Sorry about that. I fervently disagree with you, but I need to keep it more rational.
Jack, believe me you have nothing to apologize for. If VS were honest she should admit that her position is no more rational than anybody else’s. VS has only tried to frame an entirely irrational argument in rationality. I am not saying my (or anybody’s) argument is more rational than hers, but I am saying none of us has reached the level of rationality to claim someone else is being irrational!! In other words, one of VS’s main underlying arguments is that every argument is, at bottom, irrational and cannot be proven.
If you followed any of what I just said I will give you a thousand dollars!!
Oh, Tyler, I wasn’t apologizing for the substance of my last post. I am apologizing for the “rhetoric” rather than “debate” form that I put it in, and I think my tone was a bit rude, since I was pretty irritated when I wrote it. I don’t debate just to lambast people I disagree with, I debate to try to prove my points and change minds and hearts. It isn’t fair to expect her to take my points seriously when I phrase them improperly.
Jack which comment are you referring to.. I think I read all of your posts and I don’t recall ever thinking you were rude, or had a tone. I thought you made excellent points tonight.
VS: ”DNA is an entirely arbitrary and unjust basis for giving or taking away rights.”
Tell that to death row inmates saved by DNA.
http://www.jillstanek.com/2012/03/washpo-ultrasoundrape-strategy-a-pretty-big-blunder/comment-page-1/#comment-395930
Just that one, the other ones were fine. This one I lost my temper and went on a rant against her worldview, rather than answering her point by point and trying to show why I think her world view is wrong.
rasqual what an amazingly concrete point.
VS: “However, a woman’s right to *not* be forced to carry and feed a fetus inside of herself–her right to not be a slave to her fetus–overrides the much-weaker rights of the unthinking & unfeeling fetus. In this sense–regardless of what the fetus would do or want if it could choose–the fetus is not innocent. It is forcing itself on the woman. ”
The fetus is not innocent?
What the hell?
What kind of blatherskite is that?
Are dolphins guilty? Is a rock guilty if it falls on your foot?
We don’t think of even cancers as guilty, but now in addition to being considered as disposable as cancer and as unwelcome as a parasite, we’re supposed to see the little unborn bastards as bearing some kind of guilt as well?
I’ll remember, VS, as a man, next time I’m around someone with “weaker rights,” what prerogatives you’ve established are mine to exercise at will.
Good Lord.
Wow, this troll’s dehumanization of human beings is topped only by a raging narcissism:
The troll posted on another thread that hey everyone come over to this one to see how smart I am!
LOL!!
Jack, that was one of my favourite posts by you. I would never thought you were angry at VS when you said it. I see nothing wrong with ranting against her worldview. It made me think of all of the other adults who were almost aborted (or survived abortions). Your story was reality, something that should be apologized for or denied. We can safely say that the people who wanted to ignore your existence were wrong,
You miade valid points about the needs of children being an important factor to consider when structuring society. A person has to get into some heavy theortical thinking in order to deny your line of reasoning, and the substance of your points.
In fact, I see Pro-life ranting as rather important and, ironically, so do pro-choicers. I think that is why so many pro-choicers try to post so much and never concede a point. i think pro-choicers want to monopolize the discussion.
VS: “If your moral code is shaped by logic, you will look for what it is that you actually value of life and be consistent by that. Is it DNA? Would you discriminate against aliens? Is it rationality? Is it the ability to feel pain? Or is it some combination of traits?”
Hnau.
These are not novel questions to theists. The popular Christian author C. S. Lewis treated the matter over 70 years ago.
A pretty fair treatment here.
http://www.cslewis.org/journal/hnau-what-c-s-lewis-on-what-it-means-to-be-a-person/
Jack in my early post one sentence should have read as follows:
“Your story was reality, something that shouldn’t be apologized for or denied.”
BTW, the majority of active pro-choicers seem to have taken community organizing 101.
“And, as I’ve been trying to clarify here, DNA is an entirely arbitrary and unjust basis for giving or taking away rights.” -VS
“Except that it’s not.” – Alice
Says who? I spend paragraphs and paragraphs to illustrate this, and you reply, “Nuh-uh!”?
“Look, all aliens, mutants, and other hypotheticals aside, we both agree that humans have rights.” -Alice
No, we don’t both agree that *all* humans have rights and that *no* nonhumans have rights. You can’t assume that, and you haven’t proven it.
“If they didn’t, you could hardly make arguments about competing rights or women’s rights or rights of any kind whatsoever.”
Not true. I don’t make the claim of rights based on genetics at all–I make the claim for rights based on certain characteristics that seem to determine morality on a fair and consistent scale.
“…Even if biology were arbitrary as you claim, the developmental level of an individual, which you claim ought to be the basis for assigning rights, is considerably more arbitrary and unjust than arguing for an intrinsic value (i.e., that humans are valuable simply because they are human). And certainly much less clear and poorly defined.”
Lack of clarity is a sign that we’re getting somewhere. If philosophical questions had black and white answers, there would never have been a need for philosophers. The answer is not “human DNA = good, everything else = not good” just as it isn’t “white men = good, everything else = not good” as some people conceived of long ago. But tell me: If you don’t think the capacity to feel pain or the capacity to feel emotion is important when you’re deciding whether it’s okay to kill something, then what is? It works for “Should I hesitate to kill a tomato? Should I hesitate to kill a dog?” and “Should I hesitate to kill this new alien lifeform?”, equally. The other, more sophisticated characteristics (Is it self-aware? Is it rational?) play into higher-order rights, but the basic feel pain/feel emotions criterion is a good start. What would you substitute? What criterion would you eliminate?
No problem, Jack. I admit I was a little taken aback by it. Having read some of your posts on other threads, it wasn’t what I had expected. But I’m sure my own rhetoric and tone slip sometimes, as well. It’s an emotional topic. I appreciated the other on-point comments you’ve made.
VS: ”DNA is an entirely arbitrary and unjust basis for giving or taking away rights.”
“Tell that to death row inmates saved by DNA.” -rasqual
That’s not what we’re talking about. Are you deliberately derailing, or don’t you see the difference? DNA evidence identifying someone’s presence at a crime scene vs. DNA evidence proving that someone has rights?
Rasqual, did you read my follow up to that post, by the way? I elaborate that I’m not ascribing guilt to the fetus; I’m merely pointing out that it is not innocent in the sense of “not doing harm.” Your comparison to cancer is an apt one. Cancer is not evil; it merely lives and does what is natural to it. We would not call it guilty, but neither would we call it innocent.
I continued, “I’m not advocating abortion to “punish” it as if [the fetus] has moral guilt. Rather, I’m allowing that it is–albeit unwillingly–infringing on its carrier’s rights, and therefore, not “innocent,” in the sense of having done no wrong. When considering whether we should be allowed to remove it (and thereby, whether we wish to or not, harm it), we need to take into account whether leaving it there hurts anyone. It clearly does. (You’re free to research the side effects, risks, and complications of pregnancy and childbirth, if you have not experienced them yourself.) If a woman is willing to bear that harm in order to have children, good for her. If she is not, it is morally wrong to force her. It is a conflict of rights. The fetus does not have to be sentient to be “doing” something just by its very existence. (What is it doing? It’s occupying a woman’s womb and siphoning off her energy for its growth.) In that sense, I protest the terminology of ‘innocent.’ “The fetus never did anything to you!” is not an accurate defense of it.”
ninek, I would think that you’d be concerned with making pro-lifers just look a bunch of ad hominem-flinging goons without reading comprehension. But then, I guess it’s my fault for inviting you to the party…
ME: “What I meant to say is that sex, pregnancy and childbirth are a continuum, a natural continuum from one end to the other, and a natural good for our species.”
VS; Just because something is natural doesn’t make it good. The natural progression of AIDS results in quite a nasty death, for example. It is natural for tornadoes to destroy things in their path. Arsenic is natural. On the other hand, band-aids are unnatural, man-made creations. Artificial, in-home refrigeration is unnatural. Houses are unnatural.
ME: Here, once again is where we run into the entirely different world views and language. When a Christian or anyone else trained in the natural law tradition (as I am) says something is a “natural good” for our species, they means something entirely different from simply “what happens in nature” or anything having to do with the natural vs. the man-made. I forgot that you probably don’t know about this.
What I meant is that the way nature functions in the reproduction of our species is a benefit to us.
When we look at the form some natural process has we can see the proper function: for instance, at the process and tell that the fact of male and female complementarity works wonderfully well to give children two parents who can raise them, parents who can model male and female to both boys and girls. By observing life, we can tell the way these things are supposed to work; and that destroying this web woven by nature brings bad results. For those who believe in God, this is because we believe that these functions of nature are part of God’s eternal law for things are supposed to work.
I certainly never claimed that every woman has to have children if she doesn’t want them. I am not married and have never had children — not exactly by own own design. I absolutely do believe that no one has the right to kill a child already conceived.
This brings us back to the question of rights. You claim that the fetus has “some rights” but never enumerate them. What rights exactly, does a fetus have? Until we know that, we don’t know if they supersede the mother’s rights or not.
Actually no thinking ethicist in the world is going to the say a human being at any stage of development has ‘some rights” but not the right to life. The right to life is the foundation of all other rights. It is the first of human rights. And yes, there is a reason they are called “human” rights rather than “person” rights.
If a fetus is a human being, then he or she has a right to life. And one human being’s right to his or her existence easily trumps another human being’s right not to be inconvenienced or suffer in some way. And in regard to putting the woman’s right to life against her child’s, it’s ridiculous to put a woman’s remote chance of dying in
childbirth against the almost 100 percent chance
of the fetus dying during the abortion.
All this last bit is part of my lost post – I hope it will go through.
“You claim that the fetus has “some rights” but never enumerate them. What rights exactly, does a fetus have? Until we know that, we don’t know if they supersede the mother’s rights or not.
“Actually no thinking ethicist in the world is going to the say a human being at any stage of development has ‘some rights” but not the right to life. The right to life is the foundation of all other rights. It is the first of human rights. ”
Actually, you’re correct. I misspoke. It’s not accurate to say that the fetus has fewer rights. The fetus has the same rights as the woman. It merely has weaker rights, such that the conflict between a fetus and a woman necessarily favors the woman.
“There is a reason they are called “human” rights rather than “person” rights.”
No, there isn’t. That’s just semantics.
“If a fetus is a human being, then he or she has a right to life.”
As I’ve been saying, you can’t just assert that someone or something has rights. That’s the question we’ve been arguing all along. The fact that a fetus is human is a matter of science. The question of whether it has rights equal to that of a woman is not.
(Also, I’m not terribly well-versed in the “natural good” theory, but the idea that “We can look at the form and see the proper function” strikes me as presumptuous. How does one decide what something’s “proper” function is, and who’s to say that something might not have multiple proper functions?)
VS: When you said ”DNA is an entirely arbitrary and unjust basis for giving or taking away rights” you were generalizing about DNA, not about the unborn. I’m just using understanding of grammar and syntax to appreciate what you’re saying. Context didn’t help, because often in argument generalizations are raised in support of some point. This had every appearance of being such a case, and since DNA frequently vindicates innocence and restores lost rights, as a generalization about DNA it was flatly wrong.
More later. Gotta run. Good morning, everyone. Didja set your clocks ahead?
VS I have never responded directly to your main philosophical point:
“Again, this lack of thinking, feeling, consciousness, etc. doesn’t mean a fetus should have *no* rights. I believe in preserving life (from dolphins to cows) unless there’s a good reason not to. However, a woman’s right to *not* be forced to carry and feed a fetus inside of herself–her right to not be a slave to her fetus–overrides the much-weaker rights of the unthinking & unfeeling fetus. In this sense–regardless of what the fetus would do or want if it could choose–the fetus is not innocent. It is forcing itself on the woman. If the woman wants it, great. If not, she should not have to endure this violation of her rights, regardless.”
So I will do so now. Even if we accept your premise that an embryo is “forcing itself on a woman” and deny her responsibility in getting pregnant, for example she was raped, you still have to establish that the “assault” by the embryo rises to the level that would permit Mom to kill the embryo. In short, we need to examine each pregnancy in question. Once we begin examining each pregnancy it becomes practicial for the State to establish a default position for all pregnancies. You are arguing that the default position should be that a woman gets to choose. I am arguing that the State should protect all embryoes save in those cases where the Mother’s life is truly threated. To continue your line of thinking, society should evaluate the level of “assault” that is being waged on the Mother by the embryo. Each embryo does not cause a pregnancy that puts the Mother’s life at risk; and therefore, a Mother should not be permittted to kill the embryo in every or pregnancy.
VS, you seem to be arguning that the default position should be that society allow a woman to decide if she will abort her child or not. I think the default position society should take is to protect the life of the child in the womb until sufficient reasons prove the Mother’s life is in danger. Which position is more reasonable? Which position allows for fear, whim and passion to rule the day? Which position allows for reason?
With respect to the DNA issue you did not acknowledge the full import of Rasqual’s statement. If society grants DNA to be valuable, morally significant, in determining someone’s identity for legal purposes, it is sufficiently valuable to identify an embryo as a legal person. Rasqual’s statement has legs, and I hope some brainy pro-life lawyer starts using it. Poetically, Rasqual’s illumiinating point brings us back to your comparison in which you compared an embryo to a rapist. How sweet it is.
You’re so vain, I bet you think this comment’s about you…
All arguments we’ve seen before… bless you pro-lifers who have more patience than I.
Says who? I spend paragraphs and paragraphs to illustrate this, and you reply, “Nuh-uh!”?
And we have all spent paragraphs and paragraphs refuting you to which you have replied the same thing. For example, in your attempt to dismiss the “Future Like Ours” arguement, your reply essentially boils down to, “Even though this argument is expressly designed to expand rights–not the other way around as I have chosen to apply it–and even though it functions in concert with the rest of the pro-life philosophy rather than simply existing in a vacuum, I am going to dismiss those two facts, and therefore this argument.” Which is neither a complete response nor a fair one. I chose not to pursue any of this not because your response was sufficient, but because the discussion of what we should do for non-human animals is an ancillary tangent that does not help us address the central issue of the discussion.
No, we don’t both agree that *all* humans have rights and that *no* nonhumans have rights. You can’t assume that, and you haven’t proven it. … Not true. I don’t make the claim of rights based on genetics at all–I make the claim for rights based on certain characteristics that seem to determine morality on a fair and consistent scale.
That’s not what I said. I am not asserting in the points you responded to that any particular part of humanity has any specific right. Simply that you and I both agree that there is a such thing as rights that at least some humans possess. You, by virtue of the fact that you are arguing for a right to bodily autonomy, obviously agree on that point. Otherwise there would be no such right and your whole argument would lack any foundation whatsoever.
Lack of clarity is a sign that we’re getting somewhere. If philosophical questions had black and white answers, there would never have been a need for philosophers.
No. I reject this entire ideology outright. Lack of clarity is a sign of absolutely nothing at all except a lack of answers. And if philosophical questions did not have answers, then we would have no need for philosophers. When philosophy leads your worldview to become more murky instead of more clear, you are going the wrong direction and need to turn around.
Well said Alice.
VS, your version of the self-defense argument ignores the differing circumstances of each “assault”/pregnancy and the varying degrees of “harm” perpetrated by the embryo against the Mothers. You must evaluate the harm caused by each embryo in each pregnancy otherwise you are simply advocating that we grant Mothers the right to kill with no governing parameters.
Even in self-defense legal cases the victim (the Mother in your example) needs to be able to prove that their (her) life was in danger.
VS furthermore, if we continue the self-defense analogy, I think it is reasonable to argue that the embryo is trying to “flee” the Mother and in US self-defense law a person is not allowed to kill a criminal fleeing a crime.
VS, you should hang around in order to talk with Doug – he is our resident pro-choice legal expert.
I think all right to kill advocates like VS should be scrutinized by the Police in order to ensure they are not practicing what they preach on born humans in addition to unborn humans. Not to say that their advocating for the right to kill the unborn should go unscrutinized.
Lori, what a great blog you have.
VS’s argument (STILL, even after having that pointed out to her) completely ignores the status of gestating human beings as the minor child of the pregnant woman in question. Seriously…if you shot your child coming towards you with a knife and then tried to say it was self-defense, I don’t think you’d get too far with the cops, because it’s a flippin’ child. Not only should they not have a knife because a parent has a responsibility to make sure they don’t obtain/retain one, but based on how easy it would be to take one away from a child, you’d be in some big trouble.
Our female bodies are built to produce children. That is what ovaries and a uterus are for. That is why the walls of the vagina are accordion-like in nature. This notion that gestation and childbirth are horrifyingly and irreparably damaging to a woman’s body is patently absurd. My grandmother has 9 living children and gave birth to 10. My mother has 6 living children and gave birth to 7. It’s kinda what we do. VS’s argument makes her sound as though she’s new to this planet and has a bone to pick with biology. Pregnancy is not a crippling/debilitating disease. It doesn’t cause one’s brain to liquefy and pour out of their ears. We still have full control of our faculties and are quite capable of maintaining autonomy of OUR BODIES without infringing on the rights of the bodies of our children. There is no slavery involved-our bodies work in cooperation.
Alice-
Well-said: “No. I reject this entire ideology outright. Lack of clarity is a sign of absolutely nothing at all except a lack of answers. And if philosophical questions did not have answers, then we would have no need for philosophers. When philosophy leads your worldview to become more murky instead of more clear, you are going the wrong direction and need to turn around.“
Mods,
I have a comment awaiting moderation. Not sure why, I didn’t say anything coarse (for once). :/
“But a fetus, with more similarity to a blade of grass than even a cow–in terms of feeling and thinking and awareness–I would not be inclined to spare if it was invading someone’s body unwanted.”
You can reason with a person who thinks like this, it’s like trying to reason with a Nazi. The only solution is to keep them away from positions of power (like becoming a politician or a doctor) where they can implement their diabolical ideas. And especially keep them away from small babies, the elderly and other vulnerable people.
“You claim that the fetus has “some rights” but never enumerate them. What rights exactly, does a fetus have? Until we know that, we don’t know if they supersede the mother’s rights or not.
“Actually no thinking ethicist in the world is going to the say a human being at any stage of development has ‘some rights” but not the right to life. The right to life is the foundation of all other rights. It is the first of human rights. ”
Actually, you’re correct. I misspoke. It’s not accurate to say that the fetus has fewer rights. The fetus has the same rights as the woman. It merely has weaker rights, such that the conflict between a fetus and a woman necessarily favors the woman.
***
So you agree that a fetus has a right to life, just a “weaker” right to life.
You say that a fetus has weaker rights than the woman because it isn’t sentient. All right, where is your evidence for this? Actually there is plenty of evidence against it. Are you aware that babies immediately after birth clearly recognize their mother’s voice? That’s because they learned to do so in utero. The ability to learn certainly indicates sentience, doesn’t it?
That troll’s material is only new if you’ve never been on the internet before. My fetus is now apparently an illegally immigrating clump of cells. LOL! I’m so convinced.
Yeah. I like how VS thinks we haven’t heard this BS before.
Not that sentience should matter, Lori.
A comatose preemie still has the protection of law, ESPECIALLY if they are expected to make a full recovery (which, SPOILER: 99.9% of gestating human beings WILL, if you count their immediate lack of sentience as being impaired/injured in some way). That parents have an obligation to their children regardless of the state that child is in is something the law fully accepts post-birth as it currently stands. Rectifying the current situation to include children at EVERY stage is a logical progression given the latest scientific and medical advancements.
VS, also needs to address the fact that historically, and currently, human rights have always been granted to those who belong to the species homosapiens. VS needs to address the reality that wookies, and mutant humans do not exist and that human embryos do exist and are part of the human species. If we could get VS to refrain from creating ficitional scenarios we might make some progress in the discussion and find areas of agreement such as protecting and defining what constitutes the health of the Mother.
Here is another reason why I like Rasqual point that DNA is already used in the legal system to free convicted criminals. I like it not just for its legal significance and potential to liberate the unborn from their non-legal-person status, but it is easy and effective way to explain personhood and to convince the moderate lefties and independent soft hearted. Those individuals who very compassionate and soft on criminals will see how unfair it is to allow the Courts to use DNA to determine a legal person’s guilt or innocence but is not allowed to determine that same person’s personhood. It makes no sense, implicit with the whole use of DNA is the fact that DNA identifies a legal person. This is a controversy waiting to be discussed in public.
A discussion of this controversy will educate and update the public about the scientific/medical communities understanding of when life begins.
Thank-you VS.
Well for my part, I think it’s a bit laughable that someone would bog us down in theorizing about aliens while the slaughter of humans continues. The wolf howling at our door is not worry about how to treat migrating aliens. It’s how to stop the slaughter that’s claimed 60 million in the U.S. alone since RvW.
“But it illuminates the question to explore the gedanken experiment of aliens…”
:-/
“Your reply essentially boils down to, ‘Even though this argument is expressly designed to expand rights–not the other way around”
Just because something was designed to do something doesn’t mean it actually *does* what you wanted it to do. There are plenty of medications that were designed to help people that actually do them great harm instead. What a philosophy–or law or drug or anything–was designed to do says nothing about what it actually *does.* So it’s irrelevant. So of course I ignored it. That’s not dismissive; that’s just how logic works. Only the relevant parts of an argument merit a reply.
If for some reason you had started posting about seaweed, and you didn’t find a way to make it relevant, I’d have ignored that, too.
“and even though it functions in concert with the rest of the pro-life philosophy rather than simply existing in a vacuum,”
The rest of the pro-life philosophy? That would be what, exactly? You can’t accuse me of ignoring a point you never made.
“I am going to dismiss those two facts, and therefore this argument.’ Which is neither a complete response nor a fair one.”
I’m sorry if you found losing the argument over Marquis’s FLO proposal to be unfair. But that’s irrelevant. My response to it, as it was presented, was complete.
“I chose not to pursue any of this not because your response was sufficient, but because the discussion of what we should do for non-human animals is an ancillary tangent that does not help us address the central issue of the discussion.”
The discussion of nonhuman animals–and aliens, and tomatoes, for that matter-is perfectly relevant and helpful in addressing the central issue of this discussion: namely, what has rights and why. If you want to answer the question accurately, you must be sure to answer it consistently for all things that should and should not have rights (or should have more or less rights, or weaker or stronger ones). If your logic consistently falls through when extended to nonhuman persons, then your logic is faulty and shouldn’t be applied to human persons, either.
No, philosophy does not and should not have easy answers. That’s a fairly tale for children who cannot perceive shades of gray. Adults should be able to handle the gray areas of morality without falling to pieces and without rejecting philosophy altogether. But adults should also be able to conceive of a consistent philosophy that actually works logically. If you can’t do the one, I guess I shouldn’t be terribly surprised that you can’t do the other.
In any case, all the pieces are there if you’re capable of seeing them. I don’t have time to reiterate or simplify any more than I’ve already done. If you want to see reason, I’ve laid it out. If you don’t, then you won’t see it no matter what I say. By the way, xalisae, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, that if you’d heard the complete logical procession of the pro-choice philosophy, you would’ve understood it by now. If you’ve actually heard it before, and you still don’t understand it, well, better luck next time.
Adios.
I think some of you are coming down a bit too hard on VS. I agree that her case for legal abortion does ultimately fail when held up to scrutiny. But she’s still a human being and should be treated with respect. How are we supposed to change abortion proponents’ hearts if we just insult them and call them names? While her arguments might not be new to some of us (see: David Boonin, Peter Singer), she has behaved with civility and at least made a serious attempt to understand the issue from the pro-life side. This is more than we can say about the trolls here (both the resident variety and the drive-by variety). And making us think critically about our position on a more sophisticated level helps us for when it actually matters.
You’re actually about saving fetus’s lives. Stop cloaking it in something it’s not, and we can talk about the issue at hand–namely, what it is and is not okay to do to someone to preserve a fetus’s life.
Firstly, thank you for saying this. You’re correct, the pro-life side is really about protecting the life of the fetus. I’m glad you can agree with us there. Many of the more colourful types like to claim that we have ulterior motives (controlling women, “slut-shaming”, creating a theocracy, or some other elaborate conspiracy theory). You have effectively reduced the issue to the question of whether we should protect the unborn. But to answer that question, we must first ask ourselves what is the unborn?
You assert that universally protecting human rights (as opposed to using your functional criteria to assign value) is ultimately a religious position, and therefore one that should not be a basis for any legislation. However, I could just as well say the same about yours. Why is it sentience, self-awareness, pain capacity, and rationality that should grant entities legal protection? Is it not just based on some metaphysical worldview? Keeping abortion legal implies that one worldview is false, and the other is true. The same goes for making abortion illegal. So ultimately, which position should be favoured should come down to which has more explanatory power. Tyler said it well: which position is more reasonable?
Each criterion that you listed can be used to exclude some people that we would (intuitively) see as valuable members of the human community and/or justify actions that are (intuitively) morally wrong. There are some humans with brain damage that cannot feel any pain. Yet they’re still considered equal to pain-capable humans for all relevant purposes, and rightly so. Self-awareness, according to the article you cited, is absent in humans until around 18 months after birth (based on the mirror test). Surely infanticide is morally reprehensible? If so, self-awareness doesn’t define personhood. Nor does rationality. A baby that can barely choose which hand to use to grab a ball isn’t capable of making logical decisions, but it’s still very clearly wrong to kill. A reversibly comatose human wouldn’t satisfy any of the four. Why, then, does killing humans with lesser degrees of these traits seem so wrong? The most reasonable explanation is that they are inherently valuable based on the type of being they are, not some accidental property that can be gained or lost. The one thing they have in common is their humanity, and you have not demonstrated any important differences between these humans and a fetal human.
You try to argue against human dignity by bringing up the hypothetical case of a mutant or extra-terrestrial organism that also has a personal nature. I would have no problem with accepting that these beings would also have a basic right to life. If this became a reality, we would say that humanity is not necessary (but still sufficient) to warrant legal protection. And based on their inherent capacity to act as rational moral agents, I would argue that fetuses (from this newly discovered species) would have same the right to life as adults. I fail to see how this in any way undermines the pro-life position or the idea of universal human rights.
The next major objection that you have is the one of conflicting rights. I agree that this is an important dilemma. Either the baby’s right to life outweighs the mother’s right to avoid the burdens of pregnancy and childbirth, or we must generally tolerate abortion. I hold that the former is true. Firstly, as xalisae pointed out, parents do have the duty to provide ordinary care for minor children in their custody. This would explain why any civilized society has child support laws. Even if they end up forcing a father to work longer hours in a job that’s dangerous and/or physically demanding, his children still have a right to be fed.
Secondly, pregnancy is much safer than it was in the 19th Century. The hospital in Dublin that you mentioned, in all likelihood, today has a lower maternal mortality rate than any hospital in the U.S. But abortion is illegal in Ireland and legal in America. Modern medicine, not access to abortion, has dramatically increased a mother’s chances of surviving pregnancy. Driving a car is statistically much more dangerous than having a baby. My neighbour is a terrible driver, but I don’t have the right to kill her (even though it would make the highways a bit safer for me and other road users). So it would then follow that the relatively small dangers involved with pregnancy wouldn’t justify abortion in the general case. The emergency case, where it’s the only way to save the mother, would (and I do support keeping it legal only in that case). But that accounts for an extremely tiny percentage.
Alexandra’s point also stands. If it were possible to cure an illness like diabetes by killing a vulnerable human (conscious or not), it wouldn’t be right to do it. Pregnancy, which is temporary, safer, and has some benefits, shouldn’t be a justification for killing someone. Another objection could be made if we play on one of your previous thought experiments. Suppose there is an extraterrestrial species that is of a similar, personal nature to humans. These beings are functionally superior to us (stronger, more intelligent, better senses) but are barbaric and warlike (think the Saiyans from Dragon Ball Z). They take pleasure from causing death and destruction, and want to eliminate the human race. If what you’re saying is true (that the rights of the person with greater functionality always outweigh the others), a human (or a rare benevolent Saiyan) would be morally wrong in resisting the genocide. After all, one has a basic right to pursue happiness and this would take precedence over a lesser being’s right to life. You yourself said you would have defended your own execution if your mother had made that choice. But this is a ridiculous conclusion. Might does not make right.
If you want to answer the question accurately, you must be sure to answer it consistently for all things that should and should not have rights (or should have more or less rights, or weaker or stronger ones).
No, actually I don’t need to go through all this when you and I already have all the common ground we need to debate the question of abortion: namely, we both agree human rights exist. In order to address the question of abortion, this is the only common ground we need. Anything else, while it might be an interesting intellectual exercise, is a smokescreen.
…Also, just as a side note, it is astonishingly arrogant of you to declare yourself to have won any part of this argument just because I chose to indulge your desire to talk about anything but the actual morality of abortion only so far and no further.
No, philosophy does not and should not have easy answers. That’s a fairly tale for children who cannot perceive shades of gray. Adults should be able to handle the gray areas of morality without falling to pieces and without rejecting philosophy altogether.
Rejecting the notion that philosophy must, necessarily, make things more confusing instead of more clear does not equal “falling to pieces.” In fact, accepting the notion that “we just can’t know or understand the answer to the important questions” does not make you mature, it makes you lazy. If you are unwilling to do the philosophical work required to actually answer the damn questions that are put to you, then it is no wonder you wander around in a fog with question marks over your head when presented with any important questions. The only people who would willingly accept the idea that everything is only going to get less and less clear are either those who are afraid to have a concrete answer because it might offend somebody or those who don’t really care what the answer is. I’m not sure which category you fall into, but then, I’m not sure which one is worse so it hardly matters.
If you want to see reason, I’ve laid it out. If you don’t, then you won’t see it no matter what I say. By the way, xalisae, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, that if you’d heard the complete logical procession of the pro-choice philosophy, you would’ve understood it by now.
And again with the remarkable arrogance. “If you understood what I was saying, you would obviously agree with me.” You know what? No. Categorically no. Understanding the argument you are putting forth does not mean that we must necessarily agree. I’ve heard it before and quite frankly, not only is it uncompelling, it is disturbing in the extreme. The fact that we understand what you have to say quite clearly and accurately does not mean we agree with you or accept your conclusions. It just means we’re on the same page. If you cannot accept that understanding is not the same as agreement, then maybe you should leave as you planned.
First of all, Alice, I do want to apologize for my tone. I think tension is getting a little high in here. I read your statement, “When philosophy leads your worldview to become more murky instead of more clear, you are going the wrong direction and need to turn around,” as “When philosophy confuses me, it’s time to stop thinking about it and fall back on what I’ve always thought.” I don’t mean at all to imply that there are no good answers. There may not be answers that everyone agrees on, but some are clearly more solid than others.
However, if you don’t have any rebuttals to the points I’ve made concerning Marquis’s FLO argument, I can’t help but assume you’ve conceded on that front. Losing a battle doesn’t mean losing the war, and it’s not arrogant to point out that you’ve abandoned that fight and, apparently, ceded it to me. If you would like to challenge that assumption, please answer my points.
“If you are unwilling to do the philosophical work required to actually answer the damn questions that are put to you, then it is no wonder you wander around in a fog…”
I have no idea which questions you think I haven’t answered. I’ve already answered your question–your assumption–that I believe that all humans have rights. I don’t believe that all organisms with human DNA have rights. And the fact that some humans have rights doesn’t change anything. Some things that are round are good to eat (e.g., oranges); that doesn’t mean all round things are good to eat (e.g., baseballs). So, no, you can’t assume we have common ground there. We don’t.
Alice VS has changed her position throughout the thread from acknowledging that the unbron have rights to bluntly stating she does not believe the unborn have rights.
See VS’s comments at March 10, 2012 at 12:17 pm
“Not arguing that an undeveloped fetus has no rights.”
and VS’s comments at March 12, 2012 at 12:10 pm
Alice don’t waste your time. Like Doug, VS just loves to argue.
That sure is some clear and consistent thinking VS!
I perfectly understand your points. I just wholeheartedly reject them and think you’re a monster for being able to maintain them.
The basis for granting ALL human beings (all living members of our species) basic human rights regardless of age/level of development/ability/etc., it simply that I am a human being, and I govern myself by restricting my actions based on the consideration of others that I would like to be given were I in their shoes. This is an idea I like to call “basic human decency”, although, after meeting a few people like yourself, I’m finding the notion to not be so basic as I once thought it was.
Now, the rights granted to certain lifeforms can be expanded to cover additional lifeforms if we feel that to be essential (in your case of Star Wars, I’d say we’d probably have to inquire as to what the current standards are set by that entity’s governing body, if any should exist, and even still, if those standards were set by someone like you, we should probably like to review them to make certain we aren’t capitulating to something unjust). But, they should at the very least encompass every organism that shares our make-up and genetics. It’s better to err on the side of caution, right?
I’m not surprised to see such an arrogant tone in someone who thinks that they should be allowed to discriminate between “fit” humans, worthy of life, and “unfit” humans, suitable for death wholesale. Let me guess: you’re a vegan, right? Ha.
“You say that a fetus has weaker rights than the woman because it isn’t sentient. All right, where is your evidence for this? Actually there is plenty of evidence against it. Are you aware that babies immediately after birth clearly recognize their mother’s voice? That’s because they learned to do so in utero. The ability to learn certainly indicates sentience, doesn’t it?”
Sentient means “capable of feeling pain [and thus, by extension, emotion].” The latest studies on the issue of fetal development have concluded that fetuses do not feel pain until around 35-37 weeks (just before birth). Before then, fetuses have the neurological development to detect and react to touch, but they do not distinguish “good touch” and “bad touch” yet. This was determined through noninvasive brain scans of prematurely born babies at various weeks of development. The study is from University College London, published in Current Biology in 2011.
However, I think you meant rationality. The ability to learn does not actually imply rationality. It is possible for the body to learn without involving thought. Think of, for example, the saying, “It’s like riding a bicycle–you never forget how.” The skill of riding a bike is mostly muscle memory. Your body remembers how to do it, not your mind. Just like a flower can turn towards the sun, but cannot think, so can a fetus react consistently to familiar and novel experiences and still not be mentally processing them in the way that we would conceive of as “thought.” Neural development in the forebrain is not yet there for thought.
My evidence that a fetus is neither sentient nor rational is simple scientific fact. What we know about fetal development makes sentience and rationality just as impossible for a fetus as it is for a flower.
“VS has changed her position throughout the thread from acknowledging that the unbron have rights to bluntly stating she does not believe the unborn have rights.”
Oh, Tyler. Allow me to clarify myself: I do not believe that all organisms with human DNA have rights. For example, someone in a permanent vegetative state does not have rights. They have certain courtesies that we extend to them due to their former position in society, but they do not have rights.
I do, however, believe that fetuses have rights, based on their potential personhood. However, these rights are weaker than those of an actual person who is part of society.
Human DNA, by itself, is not special and does not necessarily confer rights.
Navi, you raise some excellent points. It may take me a bit to get back to you, but I will. Let me start by saying that no single characteristic on my list defines personhood, by itself. Personhood results from a combination of traits. Of course, it’s a gray area as to which traits could be removed and something could still attain personhood, but if something has all these traits, it seems pretty clear that we can agree that it is a person, and if something has none of these traits, it seems pretty reasonable to agree that it is not.
That’s actually very much like the definition of many things. A car is still a car if it doesn’t have a radio. It’s still a car if you take out the seats. But if you take off the wheels and take out the engine and the steering wheel and the whole steering column, too, and you take off the doors and take out the seatbelts and take off the hood, at what point is it still accurate to describe the remaining shell as a car? If someone asked you, “Do have a car?” and you owned the aforementioned shell, would it be truthful of you to simply say, “Yes”?
Even if you would say yes to that, what if you had nothing left of the car but a single car door? Can you still say yes? What parts of the car are essential? What parts are merely standard?
VS any philosophy of life is situated in a metaphysical understanding of reality – if you can’t see that you are bound to always be frustrated by those who think differently from you, and especially those who religious. Religious people, implicitly, perhaps not wittingly, acknowledge this all the time. It would make you a lot nicer person if you would at least acknowledge the honesty that religious people bring to the argument.
The FLO argument is just one of many pro-life arguments. The objections to it have been well documented. You are expounding a a pro-choice theory that is a blend of the interest theory and the self SA theory. However, for any of these pro-choice theorires to be discussed honestly one has to acknowledge the metaphysics that they embrace. We are bound to not agree.
You accept that sentience is the defining characteristice of life, we do not. We believe human DNA does identify a human being as a legal person and as a person for philosophical discussion. We accept, to use your words, the “circular” argument you so casually dismiss that each human being is a human person. For the record Marquis does support using DNA as a characterisitic of when a person should be recognized because the FLO distinguishes between a fertilixed egg and unfertilized egg.
BTW, VS you promised that you weren’t spouting the same boring pro-choice “blob of tissue” argument. After all of your posts, it seems that is exactly your argument.
If you’re bored, Tyler, please, please leave. As I said many posts ago, I haven’t really been talking to you, and you’ve not really contributed anything here. Please go take your circular arguments elsewhere.
But if you take off the wheels and take out the engine and the steering wheel and the whole steering column, too, and you take off the doors and take out the seatbelts and take off the hood, at what point is it still accurate to describe the remaining shell as a car? If someone asked you, “Do have a car?” and you owned the aforementioned shell, would it be truthful of you to simply say, “Yes”?
Actually, yeah. If you have enough of a car, whether or not it’s all there, whether or not it runs, as far as the DMV is concerned, you do. If you have JUST THE FRAME of a motorcycle, and have the VIN, you have a motorcycle. After an accident, if they haul your now incomplete piece of trash to an impound lot, you have to pay for them storing your car, even if it’s just a bunch of poop. You utilitarian worldview really doesn’t lend itself to practicality.
Also, here’s your rebuttal to your fetal pain b.s., courtesy of Dr. Sanjay Gupta:
http://www.painassociation.org/fetalpainarticle.htm
This is tangential to the debate, but the emerging medical consensus on fetal pain is not in agreement with the small number of studies arguing that the fetus doesn’t feel pain until c. 30 weeks. The emerging consensus is that pain is felt at at least 20 weeks. This link has more information. Though the site is pro-life, the medical testimony therein appears to be pretty non-partisan.
http://www.doctorsonfetalpain.com/
Fabius,
That is why I used Dr. Gupta as an additional resource. He’s non-partisan, and has been (is?) a health contributor for CNN.
Good point xalisae, this was just the first thing I could think of (was only commenting in passing).
There’s an important legally and morally accepted concept that is also being ignored by both sides: if someone knowingly and willingly puts an entity with legal rights into a position of dependence or peril, one is legally and morally obligated to care for or assist that legal entity until such time that the situation of dependence or peril is alleviated, UNLESS the party that places the other in dependence or peril will also be placed in a position of immediate danger. This applies to entities that are not even legal wards of the parties that place them in these positions (an example is false imprisonment; if you close a bank vault knowing that you might lock someone inside, and you become aware that this indeed happened, you are legally on the hook for getting that person out of peril/dependence on your help without further injuring them.) You can’t deny that responsibility even if it inconveniences you or causes you to give up other rights, and the only way you can deny your responsibility is if there is imminent threat that you might be harmed or killed. Pregnancy is not such a situation unless the pregnancy is itself causing the pregnant woman to be in a state of mortal danger. In the vast majority of cases, a woman willingly enters into an act knowing that pregnancy, and a new human organism, could result. Her voluntary act might indeed cause someone to be in a position of peril/dependence upon her. She might not intend for this to happen, but it’s still a known outcome. If she becomes aware of this dependence, like a person finding out they’ve locked a comatose infant in a bank vault, she would still be on the line to get this person safely out of that position of dependence AS LONG AS she was not also put into mortal danger. There is even more precedence to show that parents are even more on the hook if they place their own offspring in such a position. There is no legal reason to fail to extend this overwhelmingly evident practice to pregnancy, where women in the majority of cases enter into an act that they know could place a new human organism (one that VS has asserted has human rights, though ‘weaker’ ones, whatever that means) into a position of dependence upon them. It’s logically inconsistent.
Navi, to continue:
My position does not require me to assert that beings with more intelligence or better self-awareness have stronger rights, merely that the possession of these traits, in some combination, grants rights. (Similarly, a car with 6 wheels is not somehow “more” of a car than one with 4 wheels.) The fetus, as a living creature, can be acknowledged to have the basic rights of any living creature, but, lacking the characteristics of a person, cannot have equal or stronger rights than the woman does. Even if you want to grant it rights based on its potential to become a full person, it would still be reasonable to think that those rights (those of a potential person) would be weaker than an actual person’s rights.
As to humans vs. aliens, I feel that it would be appropriate to step back and ask, “What is philosophy for?” One of the things philosophy is for is offering us moral guidelines to follow in morally ambiguous situations. Upon discovering an alien species, how would we possibly judge if they were “person-like” enough to grant them rights? If we fall back on rights-as-DNA, then we have nothing to judge the aliens with except for their DNA. What criteria do you propose we use to judge them to be persons or not-persons?
As to the idea of reversibly-comatose humans: There is a difference between something that could become a person and something that could be and has been a person. But in some senses, I do think that the reversibly-comatose person is holds rights more as a courtesy than as an obligation. Someone who has been a person is a member of society in a way that something that has never been a person is not, and on that basis (membership in society), we choose to grant them rights even if they do not currently qualify for them.
A person who is merely sleeping (and will, quite shortly, wake up, without needing anything from us to do so), who is obviously a mere breath or shout away from consciousness is one thing. That person should be treated as entirely possessive of his rights. But a person in a literal coma who requires intensive resources to maintain life and reacquire consciousness? Are we obligated to do everything possible to grant that person life and consciousness, even at (for example) the expense of our own bodily autonomy?
I would like to offer the example of the kidney donation and bone marrow donation lists. If we, as a society, are obligated to surrender whatever of our bodies is expendable to maintain each others’ lives, shouldn’t it be mandatory that everyone be on the kidney and bone marrow donor lists? (Let alone the after-death organ donor lists.) Shouldn’t every healthy person be legally required to donate blood and/or plasma as often as possible? If not, why not? If inconvenience, pain, discomfort, some health risk, and invasion of the body are not sufficient reasons to withhold life from potential people (fetuses), why are they sufficient reason to deny life to those who could live if you donated your kidney?
Also, if you wouldn’t mind clarifying this line, I would appreciate it. You said, “Pregnancy… is temporary, safer, and has some benefits.” I understand “temporary,” although temporary is quite relative. If I were in a coma, for example, for nine months, I would not, upon awakening, say, “Nine months? Oh, just a temporary coma, then!” If I were told I would have to subsist on nothing but bread and water for nine months, I would not say, “Oh, just a temporary inconvenience.” Likewise, I do not consider the invasion of my body for nine months to be a temporary inconvenience.
As to “safer,” I understand that as both “safer than it used to be” and “safer than certain other activities,” but “safer” does not mean “safe.” What level of riskiness do you set as your bar? If you acknowledge that risking your life for a fetus is not necessarily something we should demand as a given, then what level of risk would cause you to come down on the side of the woman? If she had a 20% chance of surviving, would you prohibit abortion? If she had an 90% chance of survival, would you prohibit abortion? What level of risk would you mandate that women accept?
And, life aside, do you see health as a factor at all? What if giving birth would do permanent harm to the woman (thus taking out your “temporary” factor)? Hyperemesis gravidarum, for example, is highly unpleasant and dangerous, as is HELLP Syndrome, as are postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. The fact that we are better at treating these, when they are discovered, does not mean that they are no longer serious risks. Especially to women with certain medical histories.
But my #1 question in mentioning this assertion is the last bit you said, “Pregnancy…has some benefits.” What do you mean by that?
Xalisae, your link to Gupta is copyrighted from 2007 and references studies that place fetal pain awareness at 30 weeks. It is not a rebuttal to the most recent studies from 2011 that place fetal pain awareness at 35-37 weeks.
Fabius, your link also references older studies (in addition to being from a non-neutral source).
Also, xalisae, per the car analogy: A) legality does not dictate morality (unless you’re a moral relativist) and B) the DMV wouldn’t consider a single car part to be a car, but a single car part can be an integral piece of the definition of a car (e.g., tires, an engine).
“If someone knowingly and willingly puts an entity with legal rights into a position of dependence or peril, one is legally and morally obligated to care for or assist that legal entity until such time that the situation of dependence or peril is alleviated, UNLESS the party that places the other in dependence or peril will also be placed in a position of immediate danger… In the vast majority of cases, a woman willingly enters into an act knowing that pregnancy, and a new human organism, could result. Her voluntary act might indeed cause someone to be in a position of peril/dependence upon her. She might not intend for this to happen, but it’s still a known outcome. If she becomes aware of this dependence, like a person finding out they’ve locked a comatose infant in a bank vault, she would still be on the line to get this person safely out of that position of dependence AS LONG AS she was not also put into mortal danger.”
First, as I pointed out to xalisae, legality is not a base for morality. It is illegal for me to park my car in certain places, but it is not necessarily immoral to do so.
Second, putting someone in a “position of dependence” does not actually legally require you to care for them. Otherwise, schools that inadequately educate their students (thereby placing them in a lifetime position of dependence) would owe those former students support.
Furthermore, consenting to an act does not mean consenting to its consequences. Car accidents are fairly frequent, for example, but we don’t blame pedestrians if they get hit by a car (even though they know they are risking being hit by a car when they choose to cross the street).
But morality is INDEED a base for legality. We legislate morality all the time. Unless you’d like to (erroneously) argue that laws against rape, theft, and murder are not, at least in part, based on morality? They derive, I assume, from the rights you ascribe to other human beings. Rights are a metaphysical concept that are derived from a view of morality. Your off-point example was a law that has a separate basis…most likely practicality or utility. The argument is not that there are different bases upon which to make law, but that law does indeed, from time to time, have a basis in morality and this particular area of law is inconsistently applied in reference to pregnancy. Please stay on point, it’ll make this a lot easier for both of us.
Your analogy about consent is erroneous. The point of crossing the street is to get from point A to point B. The point of sex, biologically, is reproduction. Human sexual activity would not exist unless biology had a purpose for it. That purpose is reproduction. The reason you want sex is the biological incentive for it: that’s the pleasure that biology uses to get you to do it. That’s what all humans do it for. Our most successful ancestors were the ones that derived the most amount of pleasure from sex. That’s the whole point. The more pleasure, the more you reproduce. Whether or not you have sex for the pleasure aspect, it STILL DOES NOT CHANGE WHAT ITS PURPOSE IS. You can ignore it all you want, but pregnancy is not just a consequence of sex, it’s the biological REASON that sexual intercourse even exists in mammalian species. Sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming “lalala” won’t ever change that, because pregnancy can only naturally result from sex. It’s not only that it’s a consequence, it’s the ONLY PURPOSE FOR WHICH SEX EXISTS. Not wanting to consent to that outcome, consequence, or result is not a logical basis for denying that it exists and is the only reason the act you want to engage in exists in the first place. If your consent is to the incentive to the act, you cannot deny the act’s purpose out of a selfish want to do so. Your analogy to crossing the street is completely erroneous because crossing the street doesn’t exist to have cars hit pedestrians (and your other statement about not blaming the pedestrian isn’t true, either, since even pedestrians who get struck can be partially or fully to blame for the accident…I know, I’ve seen people drunkenly jaywalk into traffic and be fully at fault). Now, that we’ve established that consent to biological act of sex is consent to its natural purpose, let’s address your other point about “schools inadequately educating students”. Again, is the purpose of education to place a person in a position of “dependence”? No, and failing to adequately educate a person isn’t condemning anyone to a position of dependence (I know, I went to an exceedingly underperforming school and I’m not dependent on anyone). Another point: dependence is in a physical sense as defined by the law. All the law requires is that if you put someone in a position of physical dependence or peril, that you not abrogate your responsibility until other adequate help arises or the situation abates. Killing someone to relieve your responsibility is not allowed. And whether you like it or not, yes, you are legally on the hook for anyone you directly place in a position of dependence on you. You do not have the right to wantonly kill anyone that is dependent on you through your own elective actions. If you lock someone in a room, you are required by law to let them out, or get them help if you can’t do it yourself (even if your school analogy was pertinent, there are social programs that assume that responsibility, so then again, you’re not abrogating the responsibility because another picks up the slack). You can’t just kill them to abrogate your responsibility. If you engage in an act that you know has natural consequences, like drinking and driving, you are legally responsible for any person you put in a position of peril/dependance on you if you get into an accident. You are required to get them help. You cannot choose to kill them to abrogate responsibility. If your actions put them in a position of dependence/peril, you are legally obligated to aid them, and NOT kill them to relieve yourself of responsibility (even if you didn’t CONSENT TO HITTING SOMEONE WHILE DRINKING AND DRIVING). If your actions put a human being in your womb who now is dependent on that environment to survive, you can’t just kill them to abrogate responsibility. Unfortunately, the legal system seems to make an idiotic oversight when it comes to women putting their children in a position of dependence, then making the choice to abrogate responsibility in the form of killing them.
@VS: I am sorry to do this, however, given some IRL drama that has developed, I’m afraid that if I wrote a response to you right now, the tone would be very similar to my last response. And barring that one, and your post that it was in reply to, the tone of our discussion has thus far been very civil. And I would feel fairly churlish snapping at you after your last post to me. Despite our sharp disagreements, I find myself–for once–reluctant to spoil the courtesy. So, I am–for the moment, at least–withdrawing from the thread. If you stick around the blog, I’m sure we’ll have an opportunity to debate further, so I don’t think this will be the last chance we have to interact.
Lyssie, I don’t have time to respond to your long, rambling post right now. Suffice to say, laws may be based on morality, but that doesn’t mean we should base morality on the law.
Furthermore, if we did base morality on the law, I could just wave my hand and end this whole argument of whether fetuses are persons or not, because the law says they are not.
Lastly, while one purpose of sex may be reproduction, there are other valid purposes for sex: pleasure, romantic bonding, etc. Biology may link pregnancy and sex, but there is no reason for biology to have the last say. Many people engage in sex for these other purposes throughout their lifetimes. That does not mean they consent to having unlimited children.
Again, VS: You’re completely missing the point. While you might WANT to engage in sex for other purposes, you completely ignored the fact that sexual intercourse only HAS one purpose. The pleasure, bonding, etc, are all geared toward providing an environment most suitable for raising offspring. Sexual intercourse would not exist if biology had found an alternative method by which certain sexually reproducing organisms actually produced more of their own. The incentives for which most humans consent to sex (the pleasure, the bonding, etc) developed later, since the most procreatively successful humans (with more children) were the ones that derived the most pleasure from the act and actually stuck together after the children arrived (the bonding). You still have not shown that sex has any other PURPOSE, even if people decide they want to do it for other reasons. Biology doesn’t just LINK pregnancy and sex…one is the PURPOSE of the other. Of course people who engage in sex for the pleasure/bonding aspect don’t usually want unlimited children, but they can’t logically deny that the only reason sex exists is to create children in the first place. Whether you like it or not, engaging in the act carries with it the potential that a new human organism will be placed in a position of dependence on one of the engaging parties, who then should not have the right to abrogate the responsibility they caused by killing the dependent party.
And I never argued that law is the basis for morality. YOU’RE the one persisting in saying that I am. I said that a certain type of law, based in morality, exists. I further argued that it is logically and legally inconsistent to fail to extend it to pregnancy, when other legal precedents based in morality exist to support doing so. Please stop detracting from my point and address it adequately instead of trying to make others think that I’m arguing something else entirely. Unless you’re that confused, in which case, I’ve addressed this twice, and I really can’t help you. What is it that you like to say… better luck next time?
And it’s hilarious that you don’t have time to address my previous “long rambling post” when others take the time to respond to yours.
VS please watch this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVxz71ygHbk&feature=player_embedded#!
Lyssie, the difference between rambling & not rambling is (among other things) called “paragraphing.”
Also, unless one posits a god, sex has no purpose except that which we ascribe to it. Purpose implies intent. Evolution has no intentions. Evolution is just a description of a process whereby some species proliferate and some do not. The only intent that matters is the intent of the human actors involved.
“Xalisae, your link to Gupta is copyrighted from 2007 and references studies that place fetal pain awareness at 30 weeks. It is not a rebuttal to the most recent studies from 2011 that place fetal pain awareness at 35-37 weeks.”
You complain about a study from 2007 and yet you used statistics from 17th and 18th century for maternal death rates!! Yikes, you sure busted xalisae’s argument! (That last sentence was sarcastic.)
Please stop with pop philosophy.
ummm…as someone with a background in biology, I’d say that the purpose of intercourse is pretty definitively reproduction. Otherwise, contraceptives wouldn’t need to exist.
Oh look, everyone, I offended VS with my lack of ‘paragraphing.’ I’m just offended that her response to me was so utterly pathetic. I’m sorry my formatting doesn’t come through, since I’m using a phone to post, but I couldn’t really care less if I offend your delicate grammar sensibilities while you profess that it’s ok to kill nascent human organisms that, in the vast majority of cases, are placed into a position of dependence on the very people who caused that dependence, then seek to kill them.
And here it is again… Whatever people INTEND to get out of the act of sex (pleasure/bonding), does not equal the act’s ultimate and only real biological purpose… It would not even exist as a concept unless it was evolutionarily developed as the means by which our species reproduced. If we evolved to reproduce any other way, sexual intercourse would not even exist for humans to imbue it with other reasons to do it. The process by which humans achieve that bonding and pleasure also facilitates conception (orgasm), making me think that you’ve allowed biology to successfully dupe you into seeking the incentive for the sexual act in order for it to work. Your intent is merely a desire to seek the biological incentive. So no, I don’t buy your weak BS that intent is all that matters. Better luck next time.
And to back up what Xalisae said… With a research background and degree in genetics and developmental biology (focusing on mammalian development), I have yet to find any expert in the field of early human development to refute that sexual intercourse’s biological purpose is anything but the reproduction of the species, even if our species derives other benefits from it. That, my friend, is because sex only has the ultimate purpose of procreation. And with that, I humbly await your chastisement for ‘rambling’ and your feeble attempts to refute me, unless your ‘intent’ is otherwise. I wouldn’t want to interfere with your ‘intent’, now would I?
Hey Lyssie, once you are out of school, do you think you could look into that whole DNA issue. I am sure there is academic papers/discussion on the use of DNA as evidence already but I am curious to know why no one, as far as I know, has tired to use DNA to prove that an embryo is a person and that the embryo should be treated as such in the courts. How can DNA be allowed as evidence that proves that a convicted criminal is innocent but not be allowed to prove that an embryo is a person?
VS, since humans are omnivores they eat both plants and animals. However, generally speaking our species is not a cannibalistic species. We are like bears. We don’t eat our young or each other. Perhaps, it is because of this, our non-cannibalistic nature, that we instinctively abhor the idea of killing our offspring. You can call this the NO theory – the Non-cannibalistic Omnivore pro-life theory.
Who knew that reading books about dinosaurs to my pre-schooler would come in handy for a pro-life discussion?
OMG, is that windbag still here?!! Joan already used the car analogy weeks ago. Bo-Ring.
What if the evil queen in Snow White had an argument with the mirror about little illegally immigrating fetal rapists: This thread is what it would look like!
“No fetus will ever be as smart as me, so let’s snuff ’em! Rotten little embryonic rapists!!!”
Tyler: “How can DNA be allowed as evidence that proves that a convicted criminal is innocent but not be allowed to prove that an embryo is a person?”
Because the DNA is much more useful in educating pro-choice half-wits that the fetus is at least a unique human life, not “part of the mother” as a surprising proportion of urban (and other) hillbillies apparently believe.
It would be pointless to expect folks to think of the fetus as a person – an abstract concept upon which agreement is difficult even apart from the abortion question — without first acquainting them with some concrete biological facts where scientific unanimity obtains.
A child cannot run until she has first learned to at least crawl.
Edit: But actually, a funner response would be to ask you what logical connection there is between DNA vindicating the innocence of a prisoner on the one hand, and DNA proving the “personhood” of a fetus on the other. You seem to imagine that the former entails an expectation of the latter. Can you explain — using reason and logic — how? Alternative: acknowledge that cheap rhetorical whimsies are domiciles of cards.
Tyler, what do you mean specifically? I can look up a lot of things for you, but I’ll need a specific place to begin looking. There are a TON of research papers dedicated to DNA…and right now, my school work is a real beast. I’m done in early May for the year, however. I’ll try to look stuff up for you in between job shadowing and volunteering at the local CPC. :) If you’re interested in me looking up the legal consequences of DNA, I’d be more than happy to do so. :)
Hi Lyssie,
I am not sure where to begin but I was thinking that perhaps a case could be made where a father assert his rights as a biological father by using DNA evidence. Could this father use DNA to prove the legal personhood of his child? Could a lawyer simply use all the cases where DNA was used to free convicted criminals as precedent cases that established that DNA is accepted by the courts as valid form of evidence that establishes the identity of a person? Similarly paternity cases could be used as evidence that the courts have no problem using DNA as evidence to establish the identity of persons. It is my understanding that proving the personhood of the unborn won’t violate the right to privacy a women has with her doctor but it will establish that a right to privacy does not permit one to kill the unborn.
I was also thinking that if it is medically possible to get DNA from the unborn while the babies are still in the Mother’s womb then a reasonable case could be made that these babies are legal persons. It is my understanding that DNA identifies not only what a person is but also who they are.
On a separate note, would you happen to know how is it possible to have laws that protect the unbron from wrongful death while still maintaining that they aren’t persons legally? Does the unborn go in and out of existence depending on the type of case before the courts? It seems inconsistent to grant the unborn protection under one set of laws while not granting the unbron protection under another set of laws.
Most likely these ideas have been tried before. Hopefully there is some merit to these ideas and I am not way off base. Moreover, I don’t want to distract you from your studies. This is definitely something that could wait to summer.
But actually, a funner response would be to ask you what logical connection there is between DNA vindicating the innocence of a prisoner on the one hand, and DNA proving the “personhood” of a fetus on the other. You seem to imagine that the former entails an expectation of the latter. Can you explain — using reason and logic — how? Alternative: acknowledge that cheap rhetorical whimsies are domiciles of cards.
DNA doesn’t prove the *innocence* of a prisoner but only their *identity* – to me identity and personhood are inseparable – they are both legal constructs – otherwise DNA would only prove that the perp was a different human being (or dog, or cat) and not a different legal person and hence, the prisoner would not be set free.
Rasqual: “But actually, a funner response would be to ask you what logical connection there is between DNA vindicating the innocence of a prisoner on the one hand, and DNA proving the “personhood” of a fetus on the other. You seem to imagine that the former entails an expectation of the latter. Can you explain — using reason and logic — how? Alternative: acknowledge that cheap rhetorical whimsies are domiciles of cards.”
DNA doesn’t prove the *innocence* of a prisoner but only their *identity* – to me identity and personhood are inseparable – they are both legal constructs – otherwise DNA would only prove that the perp was a different human being (or dog, or cat) and not a different legal person and hence, the prisoner would not be set free.
Bu using DNA the courts have said a human being is a legal person.
Rasqual,
To re-phrase my answer. If the courts did not accept the human DNA sample as human DNA of a legal person then any DNA (human or otherwise) found at a crime scene would be sufficient to prove that the wrongfully convicted perp did not commit the crime. The courts have said it must be DNA of a different human being in order to set the wrongfully accused free. Implicit in this idea is the assumption that the *human* DNA found at the crime scene identifies another *human being* who could be held legally responsible for the crime, which in turns implies that the DNA represents the legal personhood of somebody. In short, the court is saying that it will treat human DNA as evidence of legal person.
What do you think of my response?
Tyler: “What do you think of my response?”
I’m confused about its overall point. ;-)
Rasqual do you agree that the Courts accept the validity of the science behind DNA?
If so the court must accept that the legal personhood is “made up of”/ composed of DNA. The courts are accepting science’s understanding of what comprises a human being and are saying that this scientific understanding of a human being is sufficiently related to the legal concept of person and that the scientific understanding of a human being may be used as evidence of a legal person’s whereabouts, identity, and innocence or guilt in a criminal law proceeding. If the courts accept using the science of DNA for this purpose how can they reasonably disregard ability of science to establish that there is a separate human being and legal person existing in the womb?
I would go further and say that as soon as the courts accepted the science of DNA they granted the unborn legal personhood – in validating the science of DNA, they validated the legal personhood of the unborn.
“Oh look, everyone, I offended VS with my lack of ‘paragraphing.’ I’m just offended that her response to me was so utterly pathetic.”
Wow, you’re really immature. This is the last thing I’m going to post to you, considering that you haven’t brought anything new to the table otherwise, except for a really nasty, bitter tone.
Without the concept of religion–which I do not believe in, and which is not the basis for legislature in America–nothing has a natural, intrinsic purpose. Purpose: n. The reason for which something exists or is done; an intended or desired result. Sex has multiple functions (e.g. reproduction, pleasure, bonding), but it has no purpose other than the purpose(s) of its participants. Biology is not an entity with reasons or desires, so reproduction cannot be the desired end of sex for biology. Sex only has a purpose if you believe in Intelligent Design (i.e., God wants us to have sex to reproduce and thereby populate the Earth). Evolution is not thoughtful or purposeful. It doesn’t want us to survive or not want us to survive. Some species happen to survive through sexual reproduction. That doesn’t mean sex is for reproduction. It just means that one of the functions of sex (reproduction) is useful for survival.
In secular philosophy, nothing has a purpose except for the purposes we, humans, ascribe to them.
Again, where have I referenced religion? Can you point to ANY posts where religion was even mentioned? No? That’s what I thought. My posts are purely based on scientific philsophy. What you WANT your sexual acts to be about does not change what their purpose is for. Do you deny that sexual intercourse would have evolved biologically if mammalian evolution had determined another way by which to procreate? Can you LOGICALLY do so? Biology might not have a ‘desire’, but you lack the ability to deny that the most successful members of our species derive from those who experienced the most pleasure (the incentive) from sex. Having the ability to desire and want something from sex does not ascribe to it a purpose. Horses do not exist to provide to humans a means by which to traverse jumps. We might use them for that (I used to be an equestrian), but they exist to propagate and serve a vital position in the ecosystem. The fact that we might appropriate their usefulness for some other reason is not their purpose. Intent does not need a God (obviously, look at you), and it does not define the purpose for which entities or actions exist. I cant help you if you cant see that point. Youre hopelessly ignorant if so. And if you have cerebral difficulties separating thoughts because I post on a phone, I can’t help you. Better luck next time, right?
Just as an aside… Is anyone surprised that VS took to calling me immature when she couldn’t refute my scientific points? Instead of actually addressing my points, attacks my format. Furthermore, she takes the position that she won’t address me again. She never has to own up to the illogical and indefensible stances she holds. Intellectual and moral cowardice, eh? Come up with a real reason for why sex exists in the first place, and then… We’ll talk. You can’t. Humans didnt invent it just for their ‘intent’, nimrod. It had a purpose, and you decided that the incentive for that purpose is an end unto itself, which makes no biological sense. Grow up. Woman up. Lrn2science.
VS: “This is the last thing I’m going to post to you, considering that you haven’t brought anything new to the table otherwise, except for a really nasty, bitter tone.”
Meh. When it’s observed that some blacks are angry in a civil-rights kind of way, liberals generally say “Well what do you expect? Sheesh.” When pro-lifers are angry after 60 million unborn have been slaughtered in a half century, it’s taken as strangely uncivil.
For my part, I never (ever) give a rip if pro-choicers find pro-lifers a bit brusque — or worse. The disproportionate reaction is not the pro-lifer’s. It’s the insensate pro-choicer’s for meh‘ing the murderous toll on countless unborn while wincing at a pro-lifer’s epithet, or whatever. It’s pathetic, really — straining a gnat and swallowing 60 million babies. Human incarnations of Moloch himself (except orders of magnitude more ambitious), as far as I can tell, waxing wroth about pro-life politeness.
Tyler: I’d have to see a more ambitious treatment of the question. I can’t connect the dots, myself, as readily as you seem to be doing.
Trying to refrain from getting involved in Lyssie’s little tantrum… Sigh. I shouldn’t have bothered writing the second paragraph, the one refuting all her points–it was apparently too long for her to read. Alas. But maybe some more-thoughtful reader will get some use out of it…
No kidding, Rasqual. I saw through the very first feeble attempt to meagerly respond to my post, and subsequently the second that found my format too appalling to adequately respond. I have no patience for those that find format to be an unforgivable sin, but see that wantonly killing nascent humans is a right, even when those killing them put those new humans in a place of dependence in the first place. She needs to grow up… Her feigned indignance at the fact that I can’t, for whatever reason, adequately format my posts on my phone is just a shroud for her intellectual inequity in addressing my posts about the only biological purpose for sex. I’m not put out. And I certainly can sleep well at night knowing my philosophy on life doesn’t support people killing those they willingly and electively place in positions of dependence.
“Biology is not an entity with reasons or desires, so reproduction cannot be thedesired end of sex for biology. Sex only has a purpose if you believe in Intelligent Design (i.e., God wants us to have sex to reproduce and thereby populate the Earth). Evolution is not thoughtful or purposeful. It doesn’t want us to survive or not want us to survive. Some species happen to survive through sexual reproduction. That doesn’t mean sex is for reproduction. It just means that one of the functions of sex (reproduction) is useful for survival.”
Understood. 100%. Believe me. Now if someone would just tell all the yahoo secularists who use telic language with respect to evolutionary biology. Their mysticism would make Krishna blush.
“Stop anthropomorphizing things. They don’t like it!”
Rasqual, I have no general complaint about the political usefulness of anger. But when it means you can no longer address a logical, non-hostile opponent without name-calling, you’ve started shooting yourself in the foot. If you’ve read Stanek’s recent article on converting pro-choicers, you’ll see that none of it involves a nasty tone.
By the way, you can’t connect the dots that Tyler is connecting because there is no logic behind them. He’s conflating the identification of a legal person’s particular identify with the identification of any being’s philosophical personhood.
Since your definition of purpose includes ‘the reason for which something exists’… Can you tell me why sexual intercourse exists? We didn’t invent it for pleasure, if that’s your ludicrous assertion. Why does sexual intercourse EXIST?
“Biology is not an entity with reasons or desire” -VS
“Understood.” -Rasqual
Good? I wasn’t particularly talking to you, and you don’t seem to be making any actual points here, but I’m glad at least one of the pro-lifers understands, I suppose.
In any case, I’ll keep an eye out if any of the calm, more-rational debaters reappear, but I don’t have the patience to tolerate any more empty, cheap attacks, so I may be absent for a bit. Feel free to carry on…
And anyway, it doesn’t really matter. In a secular order, the personal certainly is the political. A postmodern view has it that all human relations are about operations of power — so screw it. Just crush the secularists and establish a theocracy. There’s no transcendent argument that can impugn such an aspiration — so let’s go for it!
Whoops! Someone already beat the Christers to it — in Europe. Well dang the luck. All the secular Kufr will just have to pay the Jizya and watch their backs while venerating Darwin (pbuh). Celebrate diversity! Allahu Akbar!
Why, Lyssie? THERE’S NO REASON. There’s no reason that I exist. There’s no reason that you exist. There’s no reason that sex exists. Or that apples exist. Apples do not exist for the purpose of us eating them, or for the purpose of making more trees. They exist for no reason. They serve a function–they do useful things–but they don’t exist for a REASON.
Can you understand that?
Jesus, I’ve been reduced to shouting. I need to learn to sign out faster…
Rational, according to whom? It’s my INTENT to be rational, and who are you ascribe any other value to my posts..? Right? And *whatever higher power* forbid that ignoring points but decrying format is anything but condescendingly nasty. When you vilify the ‘format’ of a post but conveniently ignore the substance, you’ll see that anyone here will certainly view that as condescending and ignoring points as an intellectual degenerate and evidence of a nasty or selfish disposition.
“Purpose” as in why did sexual reproduction not fall by the wayside while we evolved, VS. What was useful about sexual reproduction that meant those genes didn’t get lost over the years?
So that little definition you brought to the party…it’s rendered useless then? Since, you know, it says the definition of ‘purpose’ is the “reason for which something exists or is done”. So if you have no reason for existing or I have no reason for existing… And there’s no reason for anything… Why bother with a definition that explicitly defines something as a reason for which something exists or is done? You’ve backed yourself into a logical corner. Congrats.
VS: “But when it means you can no longer address a logical, non-hostile opponent without name-calling, you’ve started shooting yourself in the foot.”
I think you’re appreciating a model of persuasion peculiar to genteel, educated folk. But even that’s not strictly a norm. Some great debates in history included plenty of invective — they just didn’t lack sound logic, which is what made them great debates. Whatever else the wit made them, it didn’t gut their quality as debates, because it was immaterial to the use of reason.
Doesn’t matter — there are countless modes of discourse that transgress boundaries of etiquette, and function within their own universes. And persuasion isn’t always the most important thing in conversation. Not by a long shot. Nor is persuasion uniformly a linear thing. One doesn’t always come by increments to a conclusion; it’s often a crisis. And crises are often beyond our control. Catastrophe theory and all that.
Some of us are probably polemical catastrophes waiting to happen. ;-) I generally don’t worry about what I say any more. Which is not to say I don’t regret — for the sake of others — occasions when I probably could have been more politic.
Furthermore…I’d appreciate it if you took any actual time to answer the question instead of sidestepping it. Why did sexual intercourse develop? Second grade answer: It has a biological purpose. You ‘cleverly’ putting your fingers in your ears and saying that nothing ever has a purpose, but can be ‘useful’ doesn’t change that functional bodies and acts can have primary purposes. Flowers on a plant exist for reproduction. That is their purpose. Us, as humans, wanting to plant them because they’re pretty doesn’t change the reason for which flowers exist. Pretty flowers are not, in and of themselves, useful. Again, another one of your useless points is rendered moot. Answer questions, don’t cowardly avoid them.
Hmm. VS, the principle of sufficient reason is not a religious notion. You seem to dismiss it out of hand. I find that disturbing. :-)
To claim with certainty that things have no reasons implies, to my mind, the arrogation of an extent of knowledge I’m doubtful you can possess.
Rasqual… I wish I could like your posts (they make me giggle wildly), but my phone doesn’t let me. Rest assured, I appreciate your snarky support, my brother or sister. :)
Install Dolphin and change the user agent. They even have a plugin to make toggling that at will a simple matter.
Or are you one of these commies who uses iStuff? ;-)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Defines “purpose”, then when reminded that words in a definition have meaning, too, gets all existentialist on us. FUNNY STUFF!!!
XD
“Without the concept of religion–which I do not believe in, and which is not the basis for legislature in America–nothing has a natural, intrinsic purpose.”
In this sentence what does “nothing” mean?
“In secular philosophy, nothing has a purpose except for the purposes we, humans, ascribe to them.”
Two points about this sentence:
1) Can I fairly say that this sentence is a declaration of intellectual war – that the most persuasive argument wins, an assertion that “might is right”, as Nellie referred to, it denys objective truth. (VS, I am just rephrasing.);
2) Your understanding of rationality is “instrumental”. You view rationality as an instrument that ascribes purposes to things instead of something that can receive and discern things from nature. Radical forms of instrumental thought leads to epistemological anarchism. VS, please do some research on what it means to be rational.
I am going to try discussing this DNA idea one more time, perhaps someone with a science background can tell me where I am going wrong or at least clarify.
IMO the use of the science of DNA by the courts tells us, the Public, 4 things (need another word here):
1. the courts accept the validity of the science of DNA, in particular;
2. the courts accept the validity of the use of science in the courts in general;
3. the courts are making selective use of science when it defines who/what is a legal person;
4. the courts are using some science implicitly when defining a legal person.
Alternatively, the courts need to explain how they can say that DNA found in a blood sample is not a legal person; but that the same DNA found in a human being is a legal person. The courts need to explain how they are using the science of DNA, and how they are using it or not using it.
For example, the courts would be willing to accept that it was not Barrack Obama or a Dog but Bill Clinton who left the stain on the intern’s blue dress based on DNA evidence? I am asking how is the court able to do this, to understand this? Intuitively I understand it, but how does one explain this idea without getting into concepts of legal personhood? Can someone with a science/legal background help out?
“Why, Lyssie? THERE’S NO REASON. There’s no reason that I exist. There’s no reason that you exist. There’s no reason that sex exists. Or that apples exist. Apples do not exist for the purpose of us eating them, or for the purpose of making more trees. They exist for no reason. They serve a function–they do useful things–but they don’t exist for a REASON.”
VS, how can you be so certain that apples don’t exist for a reason?
Rasqual, I guess I am asking: how do the Courts connect the dots?
How can the courts use the science of DNA to determine guilt and innocence, but not use the science of human development and embryology to help it define who is a legal person? To me this means the courts are selectively using our scientific knowledge. To me that is inconsistent.
Okay, since this thread is not dead, I believe the twenty-four-hour rule has had sufficient time to work its magic.
I’ve already answered your question–your assumption–that I believe that all humans have rights. I don’t believe that all organisms with human DNA have rights. And the fact that some humans have rights doesn’t change anything. Some things that are round are good to eat (e.g., oranges); that doesn’t mean all round things are good to eat (e.g., baseballs). So, no, you can’t assume we have common ground there. We don’t.
This is the second time you have assigned more meaning to the statement “we both agree on a such thing as human rights” than what I put into it. So, do you believe in a such thing as human rights? Not any specific humans, nor any specific rights. Just, is there a such thing as a right that any human beings ever possess? I will be happy to get to the rest of our discussion, but nothing I say will much matter unless I know what page you are on with this question.
So, any such thing as a right that any human beings have: yea or nay?
I admit it, Rasqual… I’m an iCommie. :P
Hello, Jack.
““Purpose” as in why did sexual reproduction not fall by the wayside while we evolved, VS. What was useful about sexual reproduction that meant those genes didn’t get lost over the years?” -Jack
I think the confusion here is over the multiple senses in which there can be a “reason” or a “why” for something. For example, if a grandmother were hit by a car, and her grandchild turns to his parents and said, “Mom, why did grandma have to die?” it would be both accurate and inaccurate to respond, “Because when a car hits you at that speed, it ruptures most of your internal organs, and so the doctors couldn’t save her.” That’s the cause of her death, the reason she died, but the question is obviously seeking a reason at a higher level. On that level, you cannot posit a reason without positing a higher being who influences certain things to happen.
At the simple cause-and-effect level, sex’s most evolutionarily significant function is its potential for reproduction. Similarly, the most evolutionarily significant function of sight is the detection of predators and food sources at a distance. That doesn’t say anything about the relative value in modern society of detecting predators versus, for example, reading. With the advent of contraception and in vitro fertilisation, sex is no longer necessary for reproduction, nor is reproduction a necessary consequence of sex.
In other words, yes: I acknowledge that historically, sex was vital for its reproductive function. And its reproductive value is one of the reasons it persisted. But that doesn’t mean that, as Lyssie is trying to prove, “consent to biological act of sex is consent to [reproduction, because reproduction is] its natural purpose.”
To say that having sex is automatic consent to reproduction is as bizarre as saying that eating is automatic consent to getting fat. After all, evolutionarily speaking, the best candidates for survival were often those who stored energy as efficiently as possible–who gained fat and did not shed it easily–and those who preferred high-fat, high-energy foods. It’s natural and (historically, over our evolution) best to prefer fatty foods and put on weight. That doesn’t mean that fat is something we ought to accept as good and right and healthy (beyond acknowledging that a small amount is necessary for personal survival).
Neither reproduction nor fatness have special moral weight just because they are natural consequences of genes that have historically been a boon to our species. Or just because they are products of essential functions (eating, sex) of our bodies. We fight weight gain with treadmills, we stymie reproduction with contraception, and we don’t consent to the consequences of something just because those consequences are “natural,” or because those consequences were historically useful.
Good heavens! I should have predicted as much: get struck down with a nasty bug for 4 days, and watch how the excitement flares in my absence!
VS wrote:
A fetus is not a U.S. citizen. The mother is. Lawmakers should be concerned with her rights first and foremost. Not arguing that an undeveloped fetus has no rights. But its rights are secondary to those of the full-grown person who is bearing it. (March 10, 2012 at 12:17 pm)
… which contrasts rather curiously with this:
Also, xalisae, per the car analogy: A) legality does not dictate morality (unless you’re a moral relativist) (March 12, 2012 at 7:20 pm)
…and this:
Lyssie, I don’t have time to respond to your long, rambling post right now. Suffice to say, laws may be based on morality, but that doesn’t mean we should base morality on the law. Furthermore, if we did base morality on the law, I could just wave my hand and end this whole argument of whether fetuses are persons or not, because the law says they are not.
(??) All right… may we then conclude that you, madam, are a moral relativist? Unless I missed your strident decrial of the injustice by which unborn children are supposedly denied citizenship (and I contest that point, by the way), and that their rights are unjustly subordinated to fellow humans who simply happen to be bigger and older, you seem to take that alleged state of affairs (i.e. fetus = non-citizen) with equanimity, for no stated reason beyond the fact that it “is law”.
Case in point: you state that “a fetus is not a U.S. citizen” (again, which I contest); but you seem to think that this declaration, even if we assumed its accuracy, somehow settles the matter. Surely you see that it does nothing of the sort? If people ask you whether that fact of law is RIGHT and JUST (and you acknowledge this distinction, in your reply to Lyssie), replying that “it is, in fact, the legal state of things” really says nothing at all to the point.
Do think about this reasonably: law-MAKERS should be concerned with ENACTING rights which are JUST and GOOD (i.e. in keeping with the objective moral law); they are the ones who MAKE the laws (hence the name), after all… and it would be an exercise in futility for them to enact laws which never strayed from previous laws; how would new laws in new venues ever be made? It is the JUDICIARY (not the legislature) which is charged (within theoretically sane limits… alas for the survival of those sane limits, in our days!) with interpreting and applying those laws, yes?
Tyler wrote:
How can the courts use the science of DNA to determine guilt and innocence, but not use the science of human development and embryology to help it define who is a legal person? To me this means the courts are selectively using our scientific knowledge. To me that is inconsistent.
Well…. yes (in the deeper sense), and no (in the shallower sense):
If you pretend (which is a loathsome mental experiment, I know) to be an abortion-tolerant, euthanasia-tolerant individual, you would then recognize the right to life only in those people whom you deem suitable (i.e. who impress you sufficiently with their mental acumen, etc.). If someone (such as a person with Trisomy-13, Down’s Syndrome, “locked-in syndrome”, sufficient mental handicaps, etc.) falls below that standard (whatever it is), that person would no longer qualify for any considerations (DNA-based or otherwise) from you. It is only the humans who would make your “pre-approved persons list” who would be eligible for exoneration from criminal conviction based on DNA evidence; otherwise, you’d feel as if you were wasting your time (i.e. as if you were trying to prove the innocence of an individual culture of fungus for your mother’s death; you’d feel quite fine with obliterating it in any case, mother or no).
So in the one sense, a death-infliction-tolerant individual is being perfectly consistent; only the “eligible, pre-approved human persons” would be considered for such testing in the first place. In the other sense, they are being quite inconsistent… by hand-picking the “chosen few” who qualify for such “VIP status” in the first place.
There is also the small matter of abortion being a sort of “sacred cow” which guards our society’s worship of unrestricted sexual license (and is therefore guarded most fiercely); DNA testing of death-row inmates doesn’t really do that (and is therefore not as stridently defended).
Yes, Alice, if I wasn’t clear before: Yes, I believe in rights. And yes, I believe that some humans have them. Go on…
Paladin. There are two separate arguments being made. 1) Legally, fetuses do not currently have rights or personhood, and therefore, lawmakers do not currently have legal grounds for making policies that impinge on a woman’s rights in favor of a fetus’s nonexistent legal rights. There is no legal justification for extending laws that protect legal persons to those who are not legal persons.
And, 2) There is no logical reason why fetuses should be recognized as persons equal to you and me per secular philosophy, so they should not be recognized as such by law (in America, at least, where laws are not to establish the particular code or beliefs of any religion).
(And of course I don’t think fetuses should be recognized as legal persons anywhere in the world, but the pro-choice/pro-life debate in America is about American law, which is grounded in secular philsophy.)
Oh, and if you really think I’ve ”no stated reason [against fetus personhood] beyond the fact that it ‘is law,'” you obviously haven’t read much of the thread. I’ve spent plenty of words stating my reasons, and they have nothing to do with the law. Please read before commenting.
“There is no legal justification for extending laws that protect legal persons to those who are not legal persons.”
VS, this is just false. Lawmakers do have legal justification for extending laws that protect persons who are not legal persons. How did women ever gain the status of legal person? How did slave ever gain the status of legal person? Because the court saw that they belong to the human race and should be treated equal under the law. It was never their sentience that caused the lawmakers to recognize them as legal persons, it was simply their humanity. The “sentience” argument didn’t even exist back when these individuals were granted legal personhood. Can you please clarify what you are talking about?
Also, if I had realized that one exasperated word (“rambling,” to describe a 61-line post with no line breaks) and a note that I didn’t have time to immediately write an in-depth response would lead Lyssie to post a stunning 49 lines of nasty sarcasm and invective—aside from the actual arguments she lays out—I never would’ve said anything to her. Better to just let someone believe that they’re right than endure this kind of nastiness. You’re surprised that you don’t hear a lot of smart pro-choice arguments? Most of the smart pro-choicers probably stay far, far away from you. I pity the few who have ventured into this forum.
Not to mention, of course, the random sneers and name-calling from the non-contributers. Is this forum always so appallingly maintained? I know it’s the Internet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have mods. Especially when you explicitly claim that your forum has “rules.”
Anyway, if you want a response from me, post courteously. If you want me to ignore you, post whatever you feel like…
Tyler: I should’ve said, more precisely, “There is no legal justification for extending laws that protect legal persons to fetuses, because there is no logical reason why fetuses should be recognized as persons equal to you and me per secular philosophy.” Considering that women and African-Americans are recognized by secular philosophy as persons, the historical precedent for recognizing new rights-holders does not, by extension, extend past women and African-Americans to fetuses.
VS: If your moral code is shaped by logic, you will look for what it is that you actually value of life and be consistent by that. Is it DNA? Would you discriminate against aliens? Is it rationality? Is it the ability to feel pain? Or is it some combination of traits?
Very good posts, VS. I agree with almost all of what you say. In the end, it comes down to us as individuals saying, in effect, “There is a good enough reason” for a thing, or saying there’s not a good enough reason for it, regardless of any and all ascribing of our motives for it.
“There is no legal justification for extending laws that protect legal persons to fetuses, because there is no logical reason why fetuses should be recognized as persons equal to you and me per secular philosophy.”
VS, the statement is still false. As I said it was the humanity of women and the African-American that allowed them to be recognized as legal persons and not sentience. It was not interest theory that granted them their rights but their humanity. To say otherwise would be to re-write legal history. Since embryos (and fetuses) are part of humanity there is no legal reason to deny them legal personhood. I disagree that the interest theory based on the idea of “sentience” provides logical reasons to deny any human being their legal personhood status. You may feel that the interest theory is logical but I do not, although perhaps within its own axioms it is logical – but I deny those atheistic axioms are legit or provable). Also the law doesn’t form its decisions/new law based on secular philosophy but rather the law forms its decisions/new law on legal precedents. The legal precedents look good for granting embryos legal personhood. I would also argue that new law often takes into account our current scientific knowledge (i.e. DNA used to prove the innoncence of convicted criminals). This last fact also bodes well for embryos obtaining legal personhood.
Tyler: VS furthermore, if we continue the self-defense analogy, I think it is reasonable to argue that the embryo is trying to “flee” the Mother and in US self-defense law a person is not allowed to kill a criminal fleeing a crime.
VS, you should hang around in order to talk with Doug – he is our resident pro-choice legal expert.
Ha! Tyler, thanks (I think). ;)
I don’t know about the “self-defense” arguments. Wouldn’t that imply some conscious intent on the part of the unborn? It’s like with the “sentience” arguments where a comatose patient is brought up – there too, there’s no current action per the will of that patient. There’s of course other stuff there too – the already-enshrined-into-law rights of the patient, but at times it comes down to what other people think, the doctors, the closest family members, etc. And that’s the case with the unborn – it’s all us people saying what we think, what our valuation and estimation of the situation is. It’s nothing really coming from the unborn.
@VS: Okay then. :)
To go way back in the thread here.
“C: A zygote is a complete human organism. An ovum/sperm is not. This is not “my opinion.” It is a basic, set-into-stone fact of human biology.”
So what? Why does being a complete, if undeveloped, human organism give something value as opposed to being “merely” the vital seed of a human organism? Why consider a zygote to have a future worth preserving, but an egg to not have one?
Because it is impossible to assign humanity to something that is not a human. A zygote may be undeveloped, but they are a complete human being. A sperm/ovum is not. They’re just cells, and barring an event of conception, that’s all the future those cells will ever have. Once conception takes place, however, a new, unique, complete human being comes into existence and–assuming healthy gestation–that human being will continue to mature. That future is guaranteed…unless something or someone steps in to take it away.
As to the rest of your post here, you seem to have drawn the conclusion that because some people might have a given set of outcomes in their future (your high/low infant mortality rate argument, for example), then unless everyone has the same set waiting for them, the “Future Like Ours” argument falls apart. Also that the word “Ours” is as elastic or not as the speaker wants. Which is…not how that argument works. In this case the “Ours” that the argument refers to is the entire human species. No more, and most definitely no less. The reason I brought it up in the first place is not because it is necessarily the foundation for pro-life ethics, but because it is an easy way to apply pro-life ethics to your hypothetical aliens (I like TOS Spock, so I’m going to use Vulcans). In this specific case, the position is that we know humans are valuable, not because of any qualities they possess, but rather because of what they are (yes, I know you don’t agree with that bit, but stick with me). So, recognizing humans as valuable, how would we know whether or not to apply the same value to a group of Vulcans who come Earth after Zephram Cochran crash-lands a warp-capable ship? This being one possible answer. We know they are valuable because we know we are valuable. But it is from our knowledge of ourselves that we are able to assign this value to them, not our knowledge of them. They are, after all, aliens. They could be telepathic and have no emotions for all we know!
Now, your quibble has, to this point, been that you don’t see humans as valuable because of their humanness, but rather other characteristics that they possess. Let me take issue with one of the examples you used to make this case: the one of building (or tearing apart) a car. Humans do not develop the way that a car does–you start with a frame and tack on bits and pieces until you are finished (yes, admittedly it’s a slightly more complex process, but that’s close enough for our purposes). Once a human is conceived, all they need is nutrients and protection. But every part of the human body is not only produced from within the developing human (i.e., no one comes along and tacks on a liver and smushes in a few ribs and spins out the various nerves on a really tiny spinning wheel). While we might legitimately refer to our bodies as “biological machines,” we do not build them. We–we ourselves–develop them when we are really, really young. (Which is making me feel inordinately clever now that I write it down like that. ;) )
So, to go back to the intrinsic/instrumental value argument. You say that humans are valuable because of qualities we possess–the instrumental view–specifically the development of what we term “self-awareness,” in various places in the thread. However, early on, you were making a case for bodily autonomy (i.e., that abortion is justifiable because a woman has a right to withdraw her “consent to be pregnant,” so to speak, at any point). I find this curious since the second argument, while it doesn’t contradict it, does run a bit at odds with the first. Self-awareness, as it is measurable at the moment, doesn’t develop for several months–at least–after birth. So, if abortion is justifiable based on bodily autonomy but humans do not become valuable beings until between four and eighteen months of age (depending on which developmental psych person you like), do parents have an obligation to care for their young children during that limbo time? And, if so, why?
Aside from this point, there is the fact that development does not stop with self-awareness. You say that’s the important milestone, but why should I accept that as true? If development makes people more valuable, than if I find someone more developed than you–especially if they are smarter–does that make you less valuable than them. After all, their mental development is superior to yours? Why should self-awareness be the only criterion? What makes it such a big deal when there are hundreds of self-aware species on this planet, most of which can’t manage to do a basic geometry proof? For that matter, I’m good at geometry proofs. I love them. Why shouldn’t I be considered more valuable than a self-aware toddler?
“I don’t know about the “self-defense” arguments. Wouldn’t that imply some conscious intent on the part of the unborn? It’s like with the “sentience” arguments where a comatose patient is brought up – there too, there’s no current action per the will of that patient. There’s of course other stuff there too – the already-enshrined-into-law rights of the patient, but at times it comes down to what other people think, the doctors, the closest family members, etc. And that’s the case with the unborn – it’s all us people saying what we think, what our valuation and estimation of the situation is. It’s nothing really coming from the unborn.”
Doug, you have to ask what VS what she meant by using the self-defense argument. I was just continuing her argument. The embryo is “fleeing” the Mother in the same sense that VS said that embryo was “forcing/raping” the Mother.
VS: It is illegal for me to park my car in certain places, but it is not necessarily immoral to do so.
I started to disagree with that, VS, but I realize you said “not necessarily immoral,” but what is the difference, as long as the beholder sees it as “wrong”?
Hmm…. I guess you did say, “legality is not a base for morality,” and what you then said afterwards can’t be proven false.
Okay, so while there is no necessary connection between the two – there certainly could be, i.e. a thing is deemed illegal due to the opinion that it’s immoral, or in the absence of that opinion from a given observer. Or – a thing is considered right or wrong by the observer, regardless of its legality.
I would say it can still be immoral, whether or not it’s illegal. I’ve seen a 20 year old park a car with his grandmother’s disabled credentials hanging from the mirror in a Handicapped space at Walmart, then literally sprint into the store. ;)
This is a case where I’m presuming it is illegal for the 20 year old to park there, but I certainly feel it’s wrong, i.e. “Well you lazy so-and-so, you couldn’t walk (or run) the extra 29 feet from that open and legal spot right over there…?”
But maybe not – maybe the grandmother’s at home in terrible pain, and he’s getting something she needs ASAP. And, I didn’t need that parking spot anyway, I wasn’t going to use it and there are 19 other ones open right in that area, anyway…. :(
Hot day here in western Kansas today…makes one sort of giddy.
Tyler: Doug, you have to ask what VS what she meant by using the self-defense argument. I was just continuing her argument. The embryo is “fleeing” the Mother in the same sense that VS said that embryo was “forcing/raping” the Mother.
Tyler, maybe – that all sounds like quite a stretch, to me. In the end, we’re all individuals here, having our say. What greater truth is there than that?
Hi Alice
Great post above.
I got hooked into VS argument. I apologize for suggesting that you/we stop posting, and then getting hooked myself!!
I think all we need to say to VS is that we deny her atheistic and secular framework and we are done. Her whole argument rests on the premise that there is no God, and that the natural world doesn’t have a purpose. She can’t prove either one of these claims. They are her axioms.
If she wants to “believe” these axioms that is her perogative. She hasn’t denied that her “secular philosophy” is a belief system, which is a lot more honorable then many others who espouse the “sentience”/interest theory argument. Many will be hard pressed to acknowledge their axioms.
I am curious to know why no one, as far as I know, has tired to use DNA to prove that an embryo is a person and that the embryo should be treated as such in the courts. How can DNA be allowed as evidence that proves that a convicted criminal is innocent but not be allowed to prove that an embryo is a person?
Tyler, DNA court evidence proves that something did or did not happen, with material relevance to the case at hand, hopefully. It’s physical reality whether the thing occurred or not. Personhood is a different deal – it’s society deeming a status to be present.
@Tyler: Eh, I agree and I disagree. I mean, yes, I clearly take issue with VS’s particular philosophical framework, but I don’t think that that’s an indictment of secular philosophy as a whole. Look at Kelsey, for example. While yes, ultimately, I frame my worldview on the Bible (Protestant; if I get accused of being Catholic just because I’m pro-life one more time…), I don’t see any reason why either I or VS ought to be disallowed from making morality arguments with a view towards changing the laws whether our motives are secular or not.
…And I want to go a bit further with that last statement, because I think this is a point worth making. The idea of the separation of church and state was intended to prevent the state from interfering with the free expression of religion (which is why the First Amendment is phrased expressly to prevent that, rather than the other way around). Certainly it is reasonable to apply it in the inverse–preventing the church from forcing any particular action out of the government. As a Christian, I am perfectly happy that, say, Taoism isn’t the guiding principle on which our country runs. And I am certain any Taoists reading this are perfectly happy things don’t run the other way around. ;) However, what the separation of church and state does not do, should not do, and was certainly never intended to do was to prevent religious persons from participating in the government process even when their motivations for doing so are religious ones.
So. no, I don’t have any specific objections to VS arguing from a totally secular perspective. And I’m perfectly comfortable doing that myself, if only so that we’re on the same page in the debate. But I think it’s worth ninjaing any objections to religiously-founded arguments as unworthy of the public arena. Because that’s just nonsense. There is no reason, legally speaking, to object to religious persons participating in government. None at all.
Lyssie: While you might WANT to engage in sex for other purposes, you completely ignored the fact that sexual intercourse only HAS one purpose. The pleasure, bonding, etc, are all geared toward providing an environment most suitable for raising offspring. Sexual intercourse would not exist if biology had found an alternative method by which certain sexually reproducing organisms actually produced more of their own. The incentives for which most humans consent to sex (the pleasure, the bonding, etc) developed later, since the most procreatively successful humans (with more children) were the ones that derived the most pleasure from the act and actually stuck together after the children arrived (the bonding). You still have not shown that sex has any other PURPOSE, even if people decide they want to do it for other reasons. Biology doesn’t just LINK pregnancy and sex…one is the PURPOSE of the other. Of course people who engage in sex for the pleasure/bonding aspect don’t usually want unlimited children, but they can’t logically deny that the only reason sex exists is to create children in the first place. Whether you like it or not, engaging in the act carries with it the potential that a new human organism will be placed in a position of dependence on one of the engaging parties, who then should not have the right to abrogate the responsibility they caused by killing the dependent party.
Lyssie, from a biological and deterministic point of view, you’re right most of the way through, there, but then in that last sentence you make a 180 degree flip and insert your opinion, i.e. “they should take care of it…” Well hey – it’s really not the biological realities that are at issue here, it’s all our “shoulds” and “should nots,” in the first place. Other people are not “responsible” to what *you* want, in general.
Doug, my pro-life position doesn’t rest on some altered version of the self-defense argument – I was just showing that the self-defense argument is an insufficient pro-choice argument. My pro-life position rests on the fact that all human life is sacred, and that it has inherent worth. When we discover aliens humanity will have to decide then whether “humanity” for the purpose of granting legal rights includes aliens or if it doesn’t. Right now, I don’t have to worry about aliens, or mutants, or even highly intellignet non-human animals that live on the planet earth. For the non-human animals that live on this planet we have animal rights – which is separate from human rights.
Alice, as Christians we can use religious/faith/biblical based arguments for our laws, and all Western democracies have done so – even the founders of America were Deists. Just because VS and Doug et al want us to use secular philosophy doesn’t mean we have to. Don’t you think using secular philosophy is a losing proposition for a person of faith. Is the person of faith denying their own axioms?
Just because secularists want to force us out of philosophy doesn’t mean we have to leave philosophy or do it on their terms. For example, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (and even Aristotle – a pagan who believed in God) are still relevant today.
VS wants to accept that laws are based on secular philosophy but they just aren’t. In fact, simply by adding the adjective “secular” in front of the word “philosophy” she is framing the discussion. In fact there is no such thing as secular philosophy, only secularists who do philosophy. Similarly there is no theistic philosophy, only theists who do philosophy.
Paladin, if you are still around, were you able to see my posts on the other thread? i would still like to continue our conversation from that previous thread. I found it really helpful, and I really appreciated your posts, and insights.
“As a Christian, I am perfectly happy that, say, Taoism isn’t the guiding principle on which our country runs. And I am certain any Taoists reading this are perfectly happy things don’t run the other way around. ”
Alice, this is excellent and interesting point and it has been wieighing heavily on my mind. Here is my current thinking on this issue, (it is far from settled but i will discuss it as if it is settled):
IMO I think all Western Democracies, indeed the very concept of democracy is a Western/Christian notion derived from the Bilble. I think the US legal system is Christian and I think any Taoist will tell you it is. However, with that said, I do believe democracies do have a tendency to pull people away from God and Religion and subsitute, like de Tocqueville said, the tyranny of the majority for God. This tenedncy for Democracy to promote atheism needs to be checked and monitored by religion. The state actually should be promoting religion, and specifically Christian religion. It’s this function of religion that is the deeper and more fundamental reason for the first amendment. I don’t think the first amendment was intended at all to prevent religion from influencing government. Without religion and the freedom of conscience the tyranny of the majority will be the tyranny of the mind as de Tocqueville feared.
In short, America and Western Democracies don’t need less religion, they need more religion. The People need to have their minds elevated to things that are eternal, they need to get their minds off of their temporal needs and worries.
I think the Democratic idea of the equality of all people comes from the Christian idea of an egaltarian brotherhood and sisterhood before God. St. Paul said it best, as you know, in Galatians 3:8.
Alice I will think about your response some more. I admire your willingness and ability to engage VS on her own terms.
I am beginning to believe not all religions are equal; however, I think that the bickering about which religion is better, is better than bickering with a secularist as to whether there is any place for religion in the public square! At least one knows there is typically some common ground with a co-religionist but with a secularist there is no common ground, and wrose still the secularist often won’t tolerate the very existence of the religionist. The religionist’s desire for conversion seems more benign/tolerant than the secularist’s demand for submission. (No offense xalisae – so far you are the most tolerant secularist I have met and definitely the most tolerant secularist on this website. xalisae you give secularists a good name.)
Why is generalizing non-Christians fine, while generalizing Christians is unfair and bigoted, Tyler?
“The religionist’s desire for conversion seems more benign/tolerant than the secularist’s demand for submission.”
Sigh.
Actually Jack I would lump you in with xalisae – you are a fair-minded secularist.
I would like to include Doug – but he “tolerates” killing the unborn _ so I think that puts him out of the “secular” world into some kind of “pro-choice” anti-religious cult. IMO, secularism was always neutral and did advance religion or atheism – the new secularism seems to be the political arm of the atheist club.
“Why is generalizing non-Christians fine, while generalizing Christians is unfair and bigoted, Tyler?”
I am not sure I follow your question Jack – did I say generalizing non-Christians is fine? Or that generalizing Christians is unfair and bigoted?
In any event, I generalized because I felt there was a need. No one is above generalizing? However, if a secularist really finds fault with my generalizing they really aren’t secularists in the traditional sense of the word but rather they are advocates of atheism. (Darn, I generalized again, sorry Jack.)
Jack, actually there is a serious reason why it is ok to generalize about secularists and not Christians. Many if not all (generalizing again) secularists feel they have a right to be political but only a few secularist grant that same right to the Christian. The secularist is allowed, or at least perceives himself/herself to be allowed, to bring their atheism/agnosticism/skepticism into the political world while a religionist is not. Many secularists have taken this elitist position that the world of politics is reserved for them and them alone.
Furthermore, many secularist don’t even admit their atheistic or anti-religionist bias. Many pretend to be neutral but aren’t – they are anti-religion. Anti-religionists should self-identify so I don’t call them secularists because they aren’t secularists. When anti-religionists begin to self-identify, like they demand that Christians do, I won’t have to generalize about secularists (as much).
If the word “secular” applied equally to the religionist and the anti-religionist; the believer and the skeptic; the theist and atheist; then I wouldn’t have to generalize at all.
To me the word “secular” applies to everyone, to the whole world – anyone can and should be a secularist – but the term has been co-opted by leftists, skeptics, and anti-religionists in an effort to push religionists and righties out of the public square.
Jack if you really want to hear me generalize you should ask me to talk about liberal Catholics.
Tyler,
You seem to be confusing anti-theism with atheism, which are two entirely different beasts. In my opinion, anti-theists are intolerable, and if people were so secure in their own beliefs, they wouldn’t be railing against a non-entity they proclaim does not exist.
VS wrote, in reply to my comment:
Paladin. There are two separate arguments being made.
All right.
1) Legally, fetuses do not currently have rights or personhood, and therefore, lawmakers do not currently have legal grounds for making policies that impinge on a woman’s rights in favor of a fetus’s nonexistent legal rights.
And I reply that this is patently false; not only is your definition of “impinging on a woman’s rights” rather slippery (in the logical sense–no offense intended) and vague, but it is question-begging and self-sealing (the extent to which a woman’s–or anyone’s–choices are restricted by a duly enacted and validated law is the extent to which she does not HAVE rights, from a purely legal point of view), even to the point of being a raw tautology (i.e. law-makers have no legal grounds for making “abortion-restrictive laws” until they change the laws which restrict them). In other words: the extent to which abortions are restricted in the United States (and they are, in manifold ways, as even a brief legal search will reveal) is the extent to which “women’s rights” (whatever privatised meaning you might give that term) simply don’t exist in the eyes of the law.
There is no legal justification for extending laws that protect legal persons to those who are not legal persons.
Tyler addressed this already, but: surely you see that this is nonsense? However were blacks (who, as per Dred Scott v. Sanford, among other things, had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect”) granted legal protection in the first place, then? Surely you don’t think that the 14th Amendment was unconstitutional (which is logically absurd)? And surely you don’t deny that law-makers enacted that amendment?
And, 2) There is no logical reason why fetuses should be recognized as persons equal to you and me per secular philosophy,
Oh, come now! Unless you’re using an utterly restricted (to the point of being silly) definition of “secular philosophy”, this is either untrue (if “equal to you and me” refers to “having the same basic and unalienable rights and protections recognised by law”) or vacuous (if “equal to you and me” means “having every legal right that a non-felon adult in sufficient command of his faculties currently enjoys”; surely you don’t think that pro-lifers are demanding that unborn children be given the right to vote, and to drive vehicles?). In fact, you’ve assumed your own conclusion in trying to prove it, and that simply won’t do.
so they should not be recognized as such by law (in America, at least, where laws are not to establish the particular code or beliefs of any religion).
I’m afraid your understanding of the 1st Amendment is imperfect; it states that Congress shall make no laws establishing any religion, nor shall it prohibit the free exercise of the same (that latter phrase of which our current administration and Senate seems to have forgotten; but I digress). Nowhere does this guarantee that all laws must be scoured of every last maxim found in any religion, anywhere, or else legislation would become impossible!
Beyond this: you seem to be under the mistaken impression that the pro-life cause is inextricably linked with the creed of a given religion (I assume you have Christianity in mind); and that is not so. (Xalisae told you as much, and gave herself as a counter-example; and you’ve largely ignored that fact.) Pro-lifers are not seeking to protect unborn children from murder because their religions “say so”; rather, their religions “say to protect the unborn, etc.” because that principle is TRUE and GOOD. In other words: abortion is not wrong because religions/creeds of the world say so; the religions/creeds of the world say so because abortion is, in fact, WRONG. Do you see the difference, at least?
(And of course I don’t think fetuses should be recognized as legal persons anywhere in the world, but the pro-choice/pro-life debate in America is about American law, which is grounded in secular philsophy.)
Your opinion is duly noted and logged. If you could work in a demonstration of the TRUTH of that opinion, that would be helpful.
Oh, and if you really think I’ve ”no stated reason [against fetus personhood] beyond the fact that it ‘is law,’” you obviously haven’t read much of the thread. I’ve spent plenty of words stating my reasons, and they have nothing to do with the law. Please read before commenting.
I assure you, madam, I have. I remain perplexed, however:
1) On March 10, 2012 at 1:04 pm, you state that it is not DNA which “makes us worth protecting”, but rather the fact of our USA citizenship. Your subsequent statement about philosophy was so vague and indecisive as to make no solid claims at all (“on a more philosophical level, you may be conceived of having certain rights if you are self-aware, sentient, capable of feeling pain, and/or rational”), so your “legal” claim was the only one of substance; hence my comments. (I’d even object to your “philosophical” claim on its own merits, here, since it’s woefully incomplete and vague; but that’s a separate issue.)
Just to explain that last point: to say that “one may be conceived of having certain rights if [conditions x,y,z,…, are met]” is to say nothing of substance; one can “conceive” of anything which is not logically impossible (e.g. an earth where potatoes are the dominant life-form, a world in which water burns like fire, etc.), but that does not make it so… and you supply nothing of substance with which to back up your “conception” (pardon the pun). I can, for instance, “conceive” of a noisy next-door neighbour as a mere figment of my imagination; but that does not give me the right (either legally or morally) to kill him (for the sake of peace and quiet). Do you see?
2) Not only do you seem to suggest (as per my original quote of you) that you are NOT a moral relativist, but you never state the source of your own convictions (apart from your personal tastes). Doug, for example, is a self-proclaimed moral relativist, so it makes sense that he would regard abortion as being a “no absolutes” issue; but if you claim not to be a moral relativist, I admit to being fascinated at the prospect of hearing your description of your basis for your abortion-tolerant beliefs. Could you oblige? Specifically: could you show me why your views are, in fact, TRUE (and not simply “your opinion”, as any moral relativist could claim)?
Alice wrote:
For that matter, I’m good at geometry proofs. I love them.
:) I knew there were several things I liked about you…
Just in case this needs clarification:
[Paladin]
In other words: the extent to which abortions are restricted in the United States (and they are, in manifold ways, as even a brief legal search will reveal) is the extent to which “women’s rights” (whatever privatised meaning you might give that term) simply don’t exist in the eyes of the law.
Please do remember that I do not accept VS’s conceptualisation of “women’s rights” (which somehow include enough “autonomy” to dispose of her unborn child by any means necessary, simply because she wishes it), so I do not believe that anti-abortion laws restrict anyone’s true “rights”, since abortion is not, nor has it ever been, a “right” (though the USA legal system mistakenly thinks otherwise, at the moment… shades of Dred Scott v. Sanford).
VS: “And I’m sorry, but if your system of value comes from the Bible, I don’t have time to get into that tonight. Suffice to say, the Bible is not a basis for legislating in America.”
The Bible is great basis for legislating in America. Many Biblical truths are based on the Truths of Love of God and Love of Neighbour – even the more archaic and pendantic rules found in the Old Testament. Most of the Laws, Regulations, and Decrees found in the Old Testament were meant to serve the community at that time just like current laws serve the American People. Some laws in the Bible were based on Eternal Truths some were not as directly based on Eternal Truth. Furthermore, the belief in God, which the belief in the authority of the Bible entails, is a very rational belief. It seems to me more rational to believe in God creating the physical universe than to believe that universe just “came” into existence by pure chance. God is the light of rationality, how does one talk about human compassion without relying on God? If a person dismisses God and Religion outright and says that they can’t contribute to the making of the laws they themselves will live by you do not believe in democracy but in Country that is governed by the laws created by VS.
Doug: “In the end, we’re all individuals here, having our say.What greater truth is there than that?
There is Truth and Love. For example, the fact that there is a phyiscal world outside of us allows us to refer to something we share in common. We share a common language, that allows us to communicate, so that you Know I exist separately from yourself. My person stands as a greater truth to your own thoughts, and vice versa, you stand as a greater truth than my own thoughts. Descartes was wrong in his conclusion – he failed to note one other thing every person knows by reflecting on their own ability to think – that they did not create their own “self/mind” that thinks. Every human has an awareness of the Other and of God implicitly. Every human being knows in their bones that they did not create themselves, that they were created. Creation, itself, stands as a greater truth to ourselves. And as reasonable people we realize that what is created must have a Creator. And all of this makes sense only if one understands how love works. A reasonable person understands that a Creator creates from an overabundance of Love. The Love of a Mother or Father for their child(ren) stands as a greater Truth than the individiual. The Family, Neighbour, Community, Society stands as a greater Truth. The relationship an individual has with their Creator stands as a greater Truth than an individual’s opinions posted on a website.
Hi Paladin
How are you doing?
Do you feel like responding to the comments by VS and Doug that I just responded to. You could probably give better answers than I just did.
xalisae, thanks for your clarification. I definitely don’t want to confuse atheists and anti-theists. I just hope people don’t think “secular” means “atheist” or “atheistic”. I agree anti-theists are an entirely different beast.
Hello, Tyler!
I’m afraid I’m still rather ill, so I’m not following the thread with the energy that I might normally achieve. I’m awaiting an answer from VS on my own inquiry, and that good fellow Doug and I have already gone ’round-and-’round on the “moral relativism” topic, with little hope of resolution. :)
The simple rebuff to the sentience argument and that personhood is not simply an aspect of being a human being:
The interest theory of personhood argues that a human being is only a legal person when it can be said that they understand they have an interest to remain alive, and that they are able to perceive harm being done to themselves if they were killed. However, this argument is false for one simple reason: a dead person feels no harm, so that the fact that a “person” has sentience before their death and is aware of any harm that may befall him/her, it is not sufficient attribute to determine when personhood should be granted to a human being. In short, once a human being is killed their sentience ceases, so the whole discussion of their interests becomes moot. Furthermore, the ability to metabolize and later digest food is much more important for a human’s continued existence than their sentience. In fact if one really needs a ultitarian reason for grant human beings personhood they should simply use a human being’s ability to continue existing.
Let me start by saying that no single characteristic on my list defines personhood, by itself. Personhood results from a combination of traits. Of course, it’s a gray area as to which traits could be removed and something could still attain personhood, but if something has all these traits, it seems pretty clear that we can agree that it is a person, and if something has none of these traits, it seems pretty reasonable to agree that it is not.
Thank you for clarifying that for me. It helps to know where you’re coming from, so I know where I should direct my arguments.
My position is not that the unborn are “potential persons”, but that they are “persons with potential”. Alice brought up a point similar to what I’ll discuss, and I’d like to build on that. A person, from my understanding, is a certain type of being with the basic capacity to act as a rational moral agent. A person’s accidental attributes and physical appearance will change over time, but the basic type of thing it is stays the same. It is ontologically greater than the sum of its parts. Even if some (or all) of its functional characteristics that are generally considered personal qualities are currently absent, the overall identity is retained as long as a person exists. This would encompass an entire human lifetime, from conception until death. Those are the only two possible substantial changes that would distinguish a person from a non-person.
As to humans vs. aliens, I feel that it would be appropriate to step back and ask, “What is philosophy for?” One of the things philosophy is for is offering us moral guidelines to follow in morally ambiguous situations. Upon discovering an alien species, how would we possibly judge if they were “person-like” enough to grant them rights? If we fall back on rights-as-DNA, then we have nothing to judge the aliens with except for their DNA. What criteria do you propose we use to judge them to be persons or not-persons?
Regarding non-human species (dogs, cows, dolphins, elephants, great apes, hypothetical mutants and extra-terrestrials), there would be plenty of room for debate on what is needed to categorize something as a person (rational moral agent). We would likely observe them and compare them to ourselves to determine what type of beings they are. But what we do know is that humans are persons.
I brought up the hypothetical case of a reversibly comatose person to show that humans are valuable intrinsically, not instrumentally. I was referring someone that will be comatose for a long period of time (at least 9 months) and upon recovery will have to relearn everything. This is the position the fetus is in. I am also assuming that we have the resources to keep them alive. In the context of the real world healthcare system, there are all sorts of variables restricting medical treatment that don’t parallel pregnancy (ie costs, wait time, limited doctors and resources). For the argument’s sake, I am sacrificing some realism to make an effective analogy.
You stated that a comatose human’s status as a “former person” and a “potential person” is sufficient to grant it rights that someone who is merely a “potential person” would not. This is unconvincing for several reasons. Firstly, you said that someone who is irreversibly comatose would not have rights. This means that one’s past as a conscious human is irrelevant. Secondly, an “actual person” would still have stronger rights than someone that is only a “former person” and a “potential person”. If it would benefit an “actual person” in some way, competing rights would dictate that the “actual person” has the right to kill the reversibly comatose human.
Finally, we can easily modify the analogy ever so slightly. Suppose it were possible to alter a human embryo so that it will grow to maturity, but never become conscious. If this was done, it would be possible to create and mass produce comatose humans for use as realistic sex dolls or as target practice. Would this be morally permissible? After all, we grow and modify plants for our benefit all the time. We also make sex dolls and shooting gallery targets for our pleasure. Throughout its development, the human is no more sentient than a plant. At no point is a person satisfying your criteria violated in any way. So then, why is this morally wrong? The most reasonable explanation is that a human is a valuable person based on the type of being it is, not the way it functions. Your account of personhood doesn’t successfully account for human dignity or equality.
What obligations would we have towards comatose humans? Since they are equal to conscious people, I would say that we have the same obligations to them as we would any other human. In the case of a minor child, for example, the father would still have to pay child support (even if it meant working for longer in a dangerous or physically demanding job). I never argued that “we, as a society, are obligated to surrender whatever of our bodies is expendable to maintain each others’ lives”. One doesn’t have the same duties towards a stranger as they do to their child. But if it’s wrong to force someone to donate expendable parts of their body to save a stranger’s life, isn’t it even more wrong to force a child to donate his or her entire body (and life) in order to save his/her mother from the burdens of pregnancy and childbirth? Isn’t this fundamentally backwards? Perhaps you would have been fine with this if it was your life on the line, and it’s certainly noble that you’re willing to do such a thing for your mother. But it’s not right to make every child do the same thing if his/her mother is experiencing an unwanted pregnancy.
temporary is quite relative. If I were in a coma, for example, for nine months, I would not, upon awakening, say, “Nine months? Oh, just a temporary coma, then!” If I were told I would have to subsist on nothing but bread and water for nine months, I would not say, “Oh, just a temporary inconvenience.” Likewise, I do not consider the invasion of my body for nine months to be a temporary inconvenience.
If you were trapped in a prison, living only on bread and water for nine months, and the only way to immediately escape was killing an innocent person, would you be justified in doing so? Wouldn’t this be murder?
As to “safer,” I understand that as both “safer than it used to be” and “safer than certain other activities,” but “safer” does not mean “safe.” What level of riskiness do you set as your bar? If you acknowledge that risking your life for a fetus is not necessarily something we should demand as a given, then what level of risk would cause you to come down on the side of the woman? If she had a 20% chance of surviving, would you prohibit abortion? If she had an 90% chance of survival, would you prohibit abortion? What level of risk would you mandate that women accept?
Yes, “safe” is largely a relative term. Skydiving once a year is safer than driving a car for a year. Drinking contaminated water in a third world country is safer than not drinking at all, ever. I can see where you’re trying to go with this, and why it fails. You’re trying to show that since I (a strong opponent of legal abortion) cannot pinpoint exactly where the line should be drawn as to where the mother is in sufficient danger to allow her to end her pregnancy (but I would permit it in at least some cases), and since abortion is typically safer than childbirth, that we should always allow abortion.
This commits the fallacy of the beard. It’s a known fact that some men have beards, and some don’t. You can tell by looking at a man whether or not he has a beard. Yet it’s extremely difficult to pinpoint the critical length that his facial hair must have for it to be classified as a beard. Since nobody knows the answer to this problem, and since every man has at least some facial hair (even if he just shaved and only has stubble) then it follows that every man has a beard, or no man has a beard. This is of course absurd.
The fallacy of the beard could also be used to justify murder (or outlaw self defense). It’s legal and moral to kill an attacker if it’s necessary to save your own life. But how would we determine exactly what level of danger you have to be in for lethal force to be justified? What if they threaten you with a gun? A knife? A hammer? A nail file? A toothpick? No weapon at all? What if you were responding to repeated domestic violence instead of a credible death threat? What if they’re not directly threatening you, but they’re a bad driver so getting rid of them would improve your safety? Obviously, there is a huge difference between the first scenario and the last. Even if it’s difficult to be precise, courts can generally tell the difference between self-defense and first degree murder.
Or take the Province of Quebec for example. In Quebec, the constitution mandates you to rescue a stranger if you pass by them and see that their life is in peril. If it was a calm summer day and a skilled swimmer saw someone drowning in a river, he would obviously be required to jump in and pull them to shore. But there’s an exception to the law if the rescue would put his life in danger. If the temperature was -40, he would not be required to do so. But what if the temperature was -39? Just below freezing? 10 degrees? What’s the minimum water temperature you would force someone to brave? What about other continuous factors like undercurrent, victim weight, and swimmer ability? It’s always more dangerous to swim in a body of water than to watch someone drown, even if it’s Michael Phelps rescuing someone from a paddling pool. You might argue that you shouldn’t be forced to do these things for a stranger, but there are laws in place virtually everywhere mandating that swimmers would have to save their own children in a similar scenario.
As a mathematically inclined person, I sincerely wish I could provide more precise answers to all of these questions. Maybe someone with more expertise in these areas could do a better job. But it seems clear enough to me that the risks of pregnancy are small enough to ban abortion in almost every case:
1. As I mentioned before, driving a car for a year is safer than having a baby if modern medicine is available. Lethal force is not justified if your risk of dying is smaller than your risk of dying by doing something almost everyone does every day.
2. I would agree that chemical or surgical termination would be justified in the case of ectopic pregnancy. There is no chance that the baby can live, but the mother is likely to die if she isn’t treated.
3. Abortions done for the life or health of the mother account for a very small amount of abortions performed. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where to draw the line as to when abortions should be allowed, but the vast majority of cases would be non-controversial.
4. Other potentially dangerous conditions, including cancer, can often be managed by competent doctors. This article, written by the director of the biggest high risk pregnancy clinic in America, states that many doctors will recommend abortion for the life or health of the mother when there are other, better options that will protect both her and the child:
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9603/articles/goodwin.html
This really points to a much deeper problem. There is virtually no legal liability a doctor might face if he tells a pregnant woman to get an abortion that she does not actually need. So it becomes the safest, “default” treatment option that a doctor would choose to offer. But isn’t this antithetical to the practice of medicine? Shouldn’t a doctor always try to save both patients, and be held accountable if he fails to do so? Couldn’t the medical profession save more lives if there was more emphasis placed on high risk pregnancies and less on abortion?
But my #1 question in mentioning this assertion is the last bit you said, “Pregnancy…has some benefits.” What do you mean by that?
I must be doing very well if this is your biggest objection ;) There are indirect health benefits of pregnancy, as it gives a woman an incentive to practice healthier behaviour. For example, an unplanned pregnancy gave my friend a reason to quit smoking (she was 18 when she gave birth, by the way). She might live another 10 or 20 years just because of that. But there are other, more direct advantages of pregnancy. Here are some:
http://www.jillstanek.com/2012/03/study-pregnancy-may-reduce-chance-of-developing-multiple-sclerosis/
http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/six-surprising-benefits-of-pregnancy.htm
http://io9.com/5861990/fetuses-can-donate-their-stem-cells-to-help-heal-their-mothers-hearts