J-D

It's not just speculation, but it does depend on the specifics of the case. In some elections, it might be a reasonable judgement that it doesn't make so much difference. In others (say, for example, the German elections of 1932) the case is different.

long winded fool

They are the same as they were when slavery was legal. Some humans were harmed. Most were not. Many humans were upset. Many were not. But none of these consequences are relevant. The relevant consequence of putting some people who kill humans in prison and not others is legal precedent. Not all humans have rights. If you are okay with this, then there are no negative consequences to legal abortion for you. But the question to ask yourself is: Is it wiser to base law on what makes you comfortable, or what actually creates a consistent legal system? Because equal human rights and legal abortion (as it currently stands) equates to an inconsistent legal system by the same logic that legal slavery and equal human rights creates inconsistency. And remember that if not all humans have rights, then only the most powerful humans have rights. Therefore, "right" is solely determined by the power to enforce it. This is not "recognizing rights" at all by my definition, it is "taking license."



They are real threats, but are they direct enough to warrant justified homicide? The presence of a threat alone does not justify murder. Killing a human being is only justified if it is reasonable to assume that the death of another human would result if murder is not comitted. How many pregnancies honestly fall into this category? Well below 1%. How many teenagers honestly fall into this category? Probably a similar number. That is the reason for the comparison. That a certain human is certainly a direct potential threat to other humans is not enough to take away said human's right to exist.

You cannot reference the truth that fetuses kill women and conclude that all fetuses are a direct threat to the life of pregnant women. That is a categorical fallacy. My comparisons to the threats that teenagers pose to mothers and that black men pose to white men were meant to illustrate this. Because the parts of a whole have a certain property does not mean that the whole can be judged to have said property. What about the fetuses and mothers that every single competent consulted physician declares healthy? How are these fetuses a threat to the mother? Do we simply base our identification of a threat on the possibility? The fact that the physical relationship makes for a distinct potential of death? 200lb teenagers and invalid mothers makes for a similar possibility. What could she do if the teenager went berzerk? Because she could do nothing, do 200lb teenagers lose their right to be alive?

And in response to the notion that an invalid mother with an angry son has options and a pregnant woman doesn't, I simply reference the time factor. What if an invalid mother doesn't want to take the time and run the risk of dealing with her son in any way other than immediate murder? If you take away her right to exercise this option, you are making her suffer the risk of potential death at the hands of a man, rather than letting her eliminate this potential threat. You might say: "She can only kill him if he actually attempts to kill her. Before that, she must eliminate the threat without resorting to homicide." Whereby, I compare to pregnancy: All a pregnant woman has to do is wait nine months and the potential threat will go away. If the fetus attempts to kill her, i.e. there are serious life-threatening complications, she can justifiably kill it. Until this happens, however, waiting until she can safely get away from it is her only option, just like any other human.

Yahzi

But she can do something. Furthermore, if her teenager is violent and uncontrollable, she can ask the State to relieve her of that burden, and the State can do so without killing the teenager.

Once again, you seem totally incapable of acknowledging this basic fact of reality: teenagers can be relocated to state instituitions; fetuses cannot.

Why are you unable to acknowledge this basic fact of reality?

Or kill her. No one expects the invalid mother to respond to the threat simply by waiting; we only expect her to present valid evidence that there is a threat (i.e. violent behaviour). The fetus presents valid evidence that it is a threat simply by existing; by the changes it induces in the woman's body.

And again you simply ignore the entire argument. Why should a woman be forced to yield her property to a stranger for nine months? Would you do the same? Will you let me, a perfect stranger, live in your house and eat your food for the sole reason that if you do not, I will die? If you say yes, there are several million people in this world who will be moving into your house tomorrow. If you say no, we are right back to the beginning: you reserve for yourself rights you deny to people with wombs.

J-D

long winded fool (it just feels so wrong to address anybody that way! but what can I do?), I am completely comfortable with a legal system that adopts legal definitions of 'human rights' and 'human beings' that excludes fetuses from the category of 'human beings' to which 'human rights' apply. This doesn't mean that only some 'humans' have 'rights': it means that, by the definition adopted, all humans have rights but fetuses aren't humans. This is perfectly consistent (internally). And there is absolutely no empirical evidence that it has a necessary tendency to induce a slide towards your nightmare in which only the powerful have rights. Slavery wasn't wrong because it might have led to such a slide: in fact, there's no empirical evidence that it had a necessary tendency to induce a slide towards your nightmare, either. Slavery was wrong because of the unjustified harm to the people who were slaves, not because of the supposed potential to cause harm in the future to other people who weren't slaves.

The presence of a fetus in a woman's body is necessarily, in 100 per cent of cases, associated with two linked facts: a direct, unavoidable, and progressively increasing physiological burden on the woman's body; and a possibility, not high, but which cannot always be estimated in advance, that that burden will increase if unchecked to the point of fatality. The first of these is not present in the cases you present as supposed analogies. There is no necessary unavoidable physiological burden in having a teenager in the house. It is not adequate to say that you can wait to take action until the risk of fatality becomes evident: the burden increases all the time, as does the harm and cost associated with removing it, and if you wait till you know for sure that death is threatening it may be too late to act.

The magnitude of the problem is increased by another subsidiary point which you are missing. The law acknowledges justification for homicide where reasonable force is used in defence, not against the threat of being killed, but against the threat of being gravely injured. And the law is right.

long winded fool

But what then is the difference in defining slaves as "not humans?" If there is no difference, if "human" can be defined by 'us' (whatever we are) simply as "homo sapiens who also happen to have rights" then human rights are nothing more than Dr. Rick's tautology. The only things that have rights are humans who have rights. Your belief that slavery was wrong because it unjustly harmed people who were slaves is absolutely no different than the pro-life belief that abortion is wrong because it unjustly kills people who are fetuses. Then we get into endless arguments over definitions (which, unless we allow the pro-choice to come up with their own specialized, biased definitions based on nothing but their own moral beliefs and expect the pro-life to respect these definitions, ultimately wind up being clearly on the pro-lifer's side.)

I took the discussion down a road that I thought would avoid these typical abortion arguments. If we look at this law from a factual, legal perspective involving precedent and consistency, legal abortion is clearly a wrong law. "Pro-choice" is actually anti-human rights. If however we deliberately avoid the emotionless logic of legal precedent (due to the fact that it leads us to a conclusion we don't agree with) and focus solely on "what feels right" i.e. slavery harms people, abortion doesn't, then we are firmly in the realm of subjective opinion. I can find inconsistencies in your opinions, but that doesn't make them invalid opinions. I would rather stick with facts regarding legal precedent and the logical consistency of human rights vs. legal abortion, but am confident that I can also at least undermine any pro-choice opinion regarding legal abortion with personal inconsistencies as well.

I didn't miss this point. I took it into account. The simple fact is that a huge majority of fetuses are not direct threats to the woman in which they reside. To claim otherwise is logically no different than claiming that teenagers are a direct threat to their families. Some are. People do die because of fetuses and because of teenagers. This is fact. But "direct threat" implies that death or grave injury is imminent, and that is simply not the case with most fetuses and with most teenagers.

Would you agree with this statement?: "The presence of a teenager in a woman's household is necessarily, in 100 percent of cases, associated with a direct, unavoidable, and progressively increasing phychological and financial burden on the woman; and a possibility, not high, but which cannot always be estimated in advance, that that burden will increase if unchecked to the point of fatality."

IvanJames

To refer back to the original post, I feel that the analogy of the Inquisition v. abortion is not apt, for reasons that many of you have pointed out. However, a more frequent reference that pro-lifers make is one to the Holocaust. If being raised Jewish has taught me anything, it's these two things:

1: Don't compare anything to the Holocaust.
2: Don't call yourself a "survivor" unless something seriously, SEROUSLY bad has happened to you.

---Ivan James

J-D

The difference rests in the differences in characteristics between slaves and fetuses.If you recall my earlier explanation, I do not accept the position that rights are intrinsic properties of beings. In my view, it is a useful shorthand to attribute particular categories of rights to particular categories of beings. Why do you restrict those rights which we call 'human rights' to humans? Why should they not be extended, say, to apes? What rights should be attributed to any non-human animal? It is not the case that there is some intrinsically defined category of human rights in existence outside of our decision to attribute them. Your decision to attribute particular rights to every member of the human species (including the unborn) but not to anything outside that boundary is no less arbitrary than mine to distinguish, for the purpose of attributing rights, between the born and the unborn.It is the same only in form. It is different in content, the difference being partly the difference between the kinds of experience possible to a slave and the kinds of experience possible to a fetus, and partly to the difference between the effects of slavery on owners and the effects of abortion on pregnant women.Your specialised definition of humans as a category with special moral significance is just as biassed. It's based on your moral beliefs. What else could a definition of morally significant categories be based on?I dispute this. Which precedents? Consistency with what?It's only anti- your definition of human rights, based on your moral beliefs. Not mine.No doubt my opinions are inconsistent with yours. But you haven't shown any internal inconsistences within my beliefs.No. Isn't it obvious that I wouldn't? I deliberately and carefully framed my statement to establish what made the case of pregnancy different from your supposed analogy. How could you imagine that I would then turn round and accept a statement that made your supposed analogy no different from pregnancy?

Specifically: (1) having a teenager in the household is not necessarily a psychological burden; (2) any burden deriving from the presence of a teenager in the household does not necessarily increase over time; (3) in no case is the psychological or financial burden created by the presence of a teenager in the household directly fatal.

Dr Rick

You've only yourself to blame for believing that repeatedly re-asserting the same fallacious claims would somehow let you avoid seeing them repeatedly shredded.
Feel free to start anytime.
That’s not surprising: most delusions are held with a good deal of confidence.
Your equivocation fallacy doesn’t resolve the tautology, however. Simply shifting the definition of human doesn’t change the fact that human, like all words, must be defined, and only humans can define it.
Your absolutely wrong; in fact, your belief that pregnant women should be denied human rights is the one that has some similarities with a belief that slaves should be denied human rights.
That’s what can happen when you offer an argument that merely shifts definitions.Have you ever considered actually substantiating instead of just asserting your assertions?You'll no doubt be pleased to learn that your string of logical fallacies doesn't necessarily invalidate your opinion, either.

Dr Rick

By the way, J-D; even though it's salient points are certain to once again be ignored in the attempted rebuttal, your last post was excellent.

long winded fool

So then, would it be fair to say that you are against the "inalienable" aspect of human rights? That, regardless of what the majority democratically decide, there should never be any recognized intrinsic, default rights that cannot legally be taken away, or witheld based on certain criteria?

The reason human rights are different than animal rights is simply that, in a cooperating society of humans, animals are considered resources, other humans are not. We protect animals largely as resource management. Most social humans recognize and respect other humans as equals, and societies of humans pass laws enforcing this even when it is objectively not the case. Handicapped people are legally to be treated with the same amount of respect and the same amount of legal protection as non-handicapped people, even though they contribute less to society. Criminals cannot be treated harshly, except to preserve the rights of another human which the criminal is infringing on. To make an exception in human rights with non-humans makes sense. Non-humans are not equals, they are resources. Their only value beyond what we can use them for is human sentimentality, which is in itself a kind of resource. One might argue that other humans are solely resources as well, but this belief is anti-social and therefore detrimental to society. When society makes an exception to this rule of equality, then it is a rule no longer. And it is irrational for a society to pass a law that is detrimental to itself.

So it is different in irrelevant, or marginally relevant, things if human rights is the issue here. If human rights is the issue, then we can make no exceptions based on the "kind of life" one human leads compared to another. If we are talking about "human rights" and not just "women's rights" or "white man's rights" then it is obvious that any negative effects one human has upon the rights of another, regardless of race, gender, age, or creed, can only be reduced or eliminated with an appropriate level of rights infringement. I.E. if someone takes something that belongs to you, the authorities have the right to seize it and return it to you. If someone slaps you, you have the right to defend yourself, but not to commit murder. If someone attempts to murder you, then and only then do you have the right to prevent this murder with deadly force. The right to exist cannot be earned, it can only be abandoned, and it can only be abandoned by directly threatening someone else's right to exist.

The legal precedent that all humans, regardless of criteria, have the right to exist. (Keep in mind that the fact that this right can be protected with deadly force when absolutely necessary is not a contradiction. In fact, it could not exist if deadly force were not an option.) Legal abortion outside of a self-defense scenario is inconsistent with this if the things that are aborted are humans, and if the reason that they are aborted is not because another human's life is in immediate danger, but because of certain criteria that the aborted humans meet or fail to meet.

I would say that anyone who lives in a society and desires to do so and who also supports a law which is socially detrimental has inconsistent beliefs. Legal abortion is socially detrimental because a species which allows any kind of killing of its own members for reasons other than to save another life is a species which sees members of its own species as resources rather than as equals, and such behavior is competition, not cooperation. And, of course, society is based on cooperation, not competition.

It is the way I define "burden." It is impossible to live side by side with a pubescent human and not be burdened in some way. (Much in the same way that it is impossible to be pregnant and not be burdened in some way, even though some women disagree, based on their subjective definition of "burden.") What you mean is: "The 'burden' is not great enough to warrant homicide." Now you understand my position.