long winded fool

And you insist on trying to use the word "person." Since they are inalienable human rights, I don't see that you have an argument here.

Anything with such a brain I think should be treated as a person, not an animal. It would have all the rights and responsibilities of a person and would be subject to our laws. An animal, though, is not.

That's a nice opinion but it has no basis in the fact of the law. Applying your morality would create a need to change the UDHR. Applying my logical deduction based on the clearly expressed laws set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would change abortion laws.

We are saying that that which gets the rights are by definition people.

Ad hoc. You cannot judge who is or is not a person by whether or not they have rights by law. "Law" is not a conscious entity and cannot apply rights without human control, therefore the object to be given rights must first be identified as deserving of rights. According to the Universal Declaration of Rights, all objects that are members of the human family are entitled to the inalienable right to life.

LWF
"All are born free and equal in dignity and rights," does not necessarily preclude the unborn from having these rights.

LP
But it doesn't grant them, either.

Very true. "All members of the human family have inalienable human rights" does not preclude the unborn from having rights and also grants them rights. Therefore the article which states that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights cannot be used to determine whether or not the unborn have rights. The preamble CAN and SHOULD be used to determine whether or not the unborn have rights, since it is the defining statement which describes what the words "everyone" and "all" refer to in the articles.

The point is that personhood must lie in something we possess but the animals don't--otherwise they would be people. Thus we should look at those features possessed only by humans. The only big one is the brain.

Yet not all humans possess a brain. A zygote does not have a brain, yet it is a human being.

I'm saying the only difference is the complexity of the mind. Therefore that's where personhood lies.

I don't dispute your definition of person. I dispute your assertion that only persons are entitled to rights.

Fortunately, we do not have any marginal examples around.

Except for fetuses.

I didn't say cadaver. I said a person whose head was chopped off right there in front of a medical team.

Okay, a living human being without a head is a human being and not a person. Because it is not entitled to the right to life, does not mean that the absence of its personhood is what causes its rights to be revoked. If there is no hope of survival without artificial support and no way of communicating with said human being, its right to life can be revoked on the basis of conserving resources for a human being with the hope of surviving without artificial support. Since most fetuses are human beings which have much hope of awareness and survival without artificial support, they obviously do not fall into this category.

Then the doctors should try to save the headless body. Acting quickly they probably could--seal off the blood vessels and put in a ventalator. Feed via tube.
Yet you wouldn't see a doctor make the attempt. They would know it wasn't a person.

They don't try to save the body because the human being has no hope of consciousness or life away from artificial support. A fetus has both of these. Therefore a fetus should be saved.

long winded fool

Look up the definition of human being in the dictionary. If the UN didn't mean this definition and all it entails, they would not have used it. Laws are not haphazardly thrown together with no attention paid to their wording. Laws mean EXACTLY WHAT THEY SAY. If they don't, the law MUST be changed.

Dr Rick

lwf has not-so-subtlly shifted his postion through this thread from "the UDHR logically protects fetuses" to "it ought to protect fetuses."



It's doubtful that the UN cares what you think it means, either. That you have your own meanings and would like to see your definitions substituted by the bodies that actually write law is just an extension of your fallacious reasoning; your argument here is merely one of equivocation, not logic.

What the authors of the US Constituiton and the UN UDHR meant is of paramount importance in interpreting and administrating those documents; what lwf thinks they should mean and say is not.

Here's another body that lwf may not want to here from, the United States Government:

HR 2175, passed and signed into law, 8/5/02;...In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words `person', 'human being', `child', and `individual', shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development...Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being `born alive' as defined in this section.'



That's right, and that has been one of your problems all along; you assume the law means something it doesn't say. You insisted the law "logically" applies to fetuses when it doesn't say anything of the sort.

If you have a problem with the wording, then go ahead and try to change it; but don't argue that it means what you want it to mean when it doesn't.

Then stop doing it.

The articles clearly apply to everyone born, and do not cover fetuses. If they did, then The United Nations Human Rights Committee in its seventy-second session two years ago would not have demanded that Guatemala legalize abortion


Those people were born; the UN UDHR specifically applies to them because they were born.

Your argument is inconsistent with logic and the law. The law is not interpreted by either international or US courts based upon what lwf thinks it should mean.



There is no cause to reject your argument without logical reason when there are plenty of logical reasons to do so.



Your fallacious set of assertions based upon flawed premises may have be systematic, but it is systematically irrational.

Up until the time you finally responded to the post I made three times you were ignoring it; now your just trying to skate around it with declarations that you "don't care" what the UN means by what they write and practice. That is not a rational explanation when discussing the limits and scopes of UN documents.

Earlier you posted that you "don't care what the UN means;" now you're once again returning to the argument that its means something it does not. Laws do mean what they say, but they do not necessarily mean what lwf says they mean.

Rick

long winded fool

Dr. Rick I do not argue that abortion is illegal and I never have. My argument is that abortion is not logical. Pointing out the UDHR is my proof that it ought to be illegal but is not. HR 2175 proves that abortion is perfectly legal according to the UN, and I thank you for pointing it out. It illustrates the UN's logical contradiction. They have two different laws claiming two different things. They have declared that all human beings have inalienable human rights, and then passed a law excluding some human beings from the inalienable right to life. This is a contradiction.

I will say one final time so that you will hopefully refrain from falling back to this strawman argument you keep reiterating.

LEGAL ABORTION IS NOT LOGICAL. ALL LAWS SHOULD BE LOGICAL. THEREFORE ABORTION SHOULD BE ILLEGAL.

Do you realize that pointing out the legality of abortion does not refute this argument? Because it is legal does not mean that it must be logical. Though laws ought to be logical, this isn't always the case as HR 2175 now shows and laws allowing slavery once showed. While your refutation of an argument not connected with mine may be enough to convince any intellectually dishonest pro-choicers who may be following this thread that they hold a logical belief, (and that seems to be your motive,)* any logical person regardless of their political bent if exposed to this argument will clearly see that you have not refuted my argument and, unless they can see exactly where I am mistaken in my logic, that my argument is sound.

*"Laws do mean what they say, but they do not necessarily mean what lwf says they mean."

This is correct. They mean what they say regardless of what I say. And any individual can find out what they say and apply critical analysis and come to their own conclusion. I challenge you to do this Dr. Rick. Come at it from an objective point of view. Decide that you are neither pro-choice nor pro-life, examine the laws, and see what you come away with. It is my personal opinion, based on your argument, that you have not done this and that there is some personal agenda that motivates you to defend legal abortion rather than to simply search for objective truth. Bias is a crutch in the quest to understand reality. Critical and dispassionate self-analysis and honesty can represent difficult obstacles, but they must be faced in order breach any self-imposed barriers and to truly think critically.

Nickle

or therefore the wording of the preamble shouldn't say human beings. Then keep abortion legal and everything will be logical.

Either way, the actions or wording of the UN has no sway to why abortion is immoral or moral.

I repeat:

long winded fool

True. My argument cannot be used to determine whether legal abortion is moral or immoral, only logical or illogical. And if all human beings do not have equal and inalienable rights, then both legal abortion and legal slavery are both perfectly logical.

All humans have a right to life because that is (or was) the law of the country. Another law has arisen that counteracts this law. Yet this law of equal rights is still assumed to be in effect. Humans do not have the right to life because I say so, and they do not have the right to life because of "my version of how the laws read," whatever that means. They have the inalienable right to life by law. You can't pass another law that refutes this without eliminating the first law and expect the law to be rational. The UN has done this. All human beings have equal rights and are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Fetuses are human beings that are equal in neither dignity nor rights, and do not have the right to life, liberty, nor the pursuit of happiness. This is the textbook definition of a contradiction. The second completely disproves the first. And now based on this precedent it is just as arbitrary (and just as lawful,) to pass a law that says, "Slaves are not equal in dignity and rights because they lack the essential requirement of citizenship. They may be human beings, but they are not Caucasian, therefore they have no citizenship and no rights." If the UN passed this law, the pro-legal-slavery would argue that this is what the UN "meant to say" when they were drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Because they legalized slavery, that can be used to determine what they meant when they drafted the UDHR. This is not a rational assumption. The fact that abortion is legal does not exclude fetuses from the UDHR any more than legal slavery would exclude slaves.

rubbercok3000

I believe you can abort up to the age of 13 years of the child. Because that is when the child is really getting its concept of right and wrong. This will probably never happen but lethal injection would be very painless and fair for both parties involved.

the_cave

1. Indeed, a human being is not necessarily a person. Nevertheless, for the sake of our self-respect and dignity (honoring ourselves in virtue of what we are, that is, human beings), we must treat all human life with dignity and respect at a minimum.

2. What is a human being? A body related by causal connection to a particular DNA strand of the genus homo. A zygote is a human being, as much as an adult is. Any person without limbs is a human being. Someone with an artificial heart is also a human. An encephalitic infant is also human. So is a brain-dead individual kept alive by life support.

3. What does it mean to treat human beings with respect and dignity? It means a) to honor the integrity of their body by not inflicting horror upon it, and b) honoring their emotional relationships with other human beings. It is, for example, criminal to remove the life support of a brain-dead individual without permission of their closest kin. It would also, for example, be criminal to remove vital organs from such an individual before they were removed from life support, or to inflict abuse of any form upon the body of such an individual.

3. What makes a human being a person? A human mind, of any intelligence. It is human in light of being causally related to human DNA; it is a person, in virtue of posessing mental being ((a) a mental being is simply a mental structure with brain activity.)

4. When do we become a person? This is the issue at hand. I would say we become a person once we acquire mental being. Once we have a mental structure with brain activity, that is a human person.

5. This happens fairly early during pregnancy, though not right away. Generally, the brain plate (of cells which are destined to become brain cells) begins to form at about the third week of actual gestation (i.e. generally the 5th week of pregnancy (or somewhat more, or somewhat less), as measured by medicine). These cells begin to specialize into fore, mid, and aft secions around the 5th week of actual gestation (the 7th week of pregnancy.) Brain activity can be detected as early as the 8th week of pregnancy (the 6th week of actual gestation, shortly after the segmentation of the brain cells.)

6. To my lights, this means that there's a good case for restricting abortions after the 2nd month.

Now, the 2nd month is generally about the time that women discover they are pregnant...but let's say that generally speaking, suspicions are strong after perhaps six weeks...seven weeks at the outmost. Someone can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Leaving approximately one to two weeks to make a decision whether to terminate the fetus upon discovering whether one were pregnant or not (I should also note that such restrictions would perhaps even quicker and closer monitoring of the possibility of pregnancy once one's suspicions were aroused.)

Indeed, this is something of a successful compromise solution for all sides. Opinion polls indicate that most Americans favor abortion rights for the first trimester, but restrictions afterwards--which is indeed what is mostly in place now. My feeling is that general opinion would favor even stricter restrictions after the first trimester, but would keep the first trimester restriction-free. It seems to me that current laws are imprecise--a "trimester" being an arbitrary boundary--and that moving the restricted period up a couple of weeks would provide for a boundary attuned to an actual physical criteria; the possible cabability of the fetal brain to operate, at some level, however rudimentary.

Both sides would win--women would still be free to choose abortion, and abortion opponents would be satisfied that at least no fetuses with functioning minds were being terminated. They may still object on religious grounds that "souls" were being harmed, but there would to my lights not be any biological grounds for making this claim, and hence little legal basis for restricting rights further. The public would get its abortion restrictions, as well as maintain its freedoms on a slightly more restricted level.

Furthermore, it dovetails as well with not only the modern medical understanding of the development of an embryo into a fetus, but also the medieval understanding that an embryo did not acquire a soul until around the 40th day of gestation (both events occur around the 6th or 7th week of real gestation. Both conceptions highlight the resemblance a fetus begins to have with the human body, the medieval conception as I understand it being related to Aristotelian definitions of the relationship of soul to form.)

There would be exceptions after the 2nd month, of course; fetuses with no hope of developing functioning minds. These could, under this system, be aborted without restriction. However, this brings me to the most difficult part of the question, in my opinion; abortion as currently practiced is a somewhat horrific procedure at any point during a pregnancy, and generally violates the integrity of the human body in an unacceptible manner (remember what I said about respecting the dignity of the human person?) It's true that medical abortion provides an alternative, but this brings us to the other problem issue for abortion.

Again, we must treat the human body with dignity and respect. Using a pill to induce abortion (at any point during embryonic or fetal development) does not seem to honor that dignity in an appropriate manner. I don't know what the answer to that aesthetic is, but I suspect that's one for women to work out, without the contribution of men.

There is I admit a case for holding the 20-22 week period as the barrier between unrestricted abortion and restricted abortion--see this excellent New Republic article:

http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache...n&ie=UTF-8</a>

Anyway, there's one hypothetical system. Feel free to comment as you please.

Vorhis the Wolf

Abortion should always be legal up until birth because a fetus is a parasite. THe fetus is dependant on the host for nourishment and life, kind of like a tape worm. It exists soley to absorb and weaken the mother by takeing nutrients and minerals out of the blood stream. The body reacts to the fetus like a parasite by encapsulateing it in a fiberous sack, A.K.A. a placenta. Much like the reaction to a parasite the mother forms anti bodies in reaction to a fetus but a jacket of cells created by the fetus prevents the anti bodies from affecting it. A parasite associates with the host nonessential manner much like an embryo, as in you dont need to have kids to survive.

Once the fetus has been born and the cord cut it should have all the rights of a person. As long as it is depentant on the mother for its very existance then she should be allowed to do with it as she sees fit. Untill she is free of it , it is her property, like a kidney or a lung.

the_cave

But your genes do! And besides, we're more than biological beings. We're also ethical beings.

Unless, one could argue, she has already made the decision to accept the fetus, thus guaranteeing its rights (as a person, for example, based on my argument from brain activity above.) I would in fact argue this, myself. Besides, if a fetus is a person, it cannot be the property of another, based on US law, which outlawed slavery in the 13th amendment. There might be a case to be made for abortion rights all the way up until birth, but I am afraid this one (a fetus is a parasite) will not do.

Now I do actually think a case could be made for surrender of the fetus to the state--just as one can surrender one's children to the state. It might be the case that the state cannot ensure the fetus' survival--as indeed it cannot currently prior to about the 25th week of pregnancy. But if custody of a fetus can be surrendered, that wouldn't be the fault of the mother. I'm not arguing for this position, I'm just saying it's legally conceivable.