Jillian

I've often heard it said that every human being is a potential murderer - it just depends on whether or not one is put into the circumstances which inspire murder. I suppose then we should all be subject to the death penalty, as potential murderers who just haven't been pushed past the breaking point yet.

PEEDNAR

Obviously what other people do with their free will is not your choice. That defeates the concept of "being a living organism". If you aren't in a place to tell people what to do with their lives, then don't be surprised when you're burned at the stake when an inquisition comes around. It wouldn't be your place to tell people what to do with their lives right? :banghead:

Hawkpeter

Suggestion for a way around the idea that protecting human life revolves around the usefullness of the people killed and protecting that usefulness is what is in question.

Maybe murder is not 'wrong' at all, whether it be adult or foetus. Instead, its 'illegal' to kill an adult because it can lead to a never ending chain of retribution of eye for an eye killing that a stable society cannot bare. Incarceration in the face of murder subverts the retibution backlash towards a perpetrator and supports a more stable society. So not 'wrong' but 'illegal'. Killing a foetus is unlikely to result in retrabution so its more acceptable to society, perhaps thats why abortion conditions are what they are not really desirable for anyone but we'll bare it because the negative impact is restricted.


(Shouldn't have had the third glass of red)



The US has a 'Bill of Rights' yes? What do you have to be to gain these rights? Citizen, visitor, illegal alien, second trimester baby? What do you get in a 'Bill of Rights'. I've had discussions with legal friends of mine here in Oz who suggest that a Bill of Rights could be useful in Australian law.

godfree1

For myself, it would depend entirely on whose human life we're talking about and exactly what we mean by protection (and protection from what).

I don't consider a fetus to be a "pre-born" life. That aside, what do you mean by the "[usefulness] of the person"? A couple of desperate-to-breeders I know recently bore a child with a severe medical condition which they knew about early into the first trimester of the pregnancy. Incredulously (to me), they opted to let the fetus live to term and become a child born. Now what is the usefulness of this child? What is this child's usefulness to society? How will such usefulness diminish or augment itself over time, and how will our arguments and protections change with a change in a person's usefulness?

I'm not so sure that human reproduction shouldn't be regulated.

I agree: a (human) "right to life" is extended to all of us by sheer chance at the moment that a sperm cell invades an egg cell. I don't understand your "license to do something" analogy.

If this is true, then I think that "fundamental right" should be ruthlessly and relentlessly questioned.

I wholeheartedly disagree. Breeders categorically grant (human) life. If we don't breed one another, who on Earth does?

I personally believe that there are instances when, thankfully, we do have such a right. You see, I'm a member of a victim's family.

Hindsight is (supposed to be) "20/20". Abortion should be a non-issue for society at this late date. I'm frankly surprised that, even at the dawn of the twenty-first century, heterosexuals haven't figured out thousands of marvelously fantastic ways of having great sex without the worry of conception--and taught such ways to their ever-increasing broods.

You should have seen the ectopic monstrosity we excised from some breeder's uterus last Friday. It was basically a tooth and the remnants of a foot--with hair. It's too bad we haven't yet developed a way (payed by hard-working taxpayers, of course) to keep precious things like that alive into adulthood so that they can become useful members of society.

In my view, until a living fetal parasite is removed from the uterus, it is not a child born.

Though it will thankfully never personally concern me, (other than my assistance with a dilation and evacuation procedure in an operating room--abortion isn't "illicit" where I live, thank goodness) "a woman's right to choose" is a right I will fight for as long as I can draw a breath, and you can take that to the bank. As long as men and women fuck, we had better get used to having abortion around. We can either make it safe, legal and accessible, or we can leave women to reckon a way to excise and dispose of the fetal parasite(s) themselves. If we don't like abortion, we had better start liking vasectomies, tubal ligations, fellatio, cunnilingus, anal sex and masturbation. A fetus is not a child. A woman is not an incubator. Abortion is not murder. :banghead:



Keep abortion safe, legal and accessible, and thank you for not breeding.
--godfree1

Karalora

I feel for your past plight, Columbus, really I do. But you did not answer my basic question, which is:

Why, in your estimation, is human life worth protecting unconditionally while other forms of life are not?

Columbus

Tom wrote:
Since I have absolutely no empirical evidence for the value of human life I try to explain why I think that everyone's lives will be improved by subscribing to my moral principles. I am not especially interested in legislating them. Then they just become rules to break if you are sufficiently cunning, ruthless, rich, or otherwise above the law. "It is never OK to choose to destroy someone else's life." seems like a good rule. Sometimes we must choose between two people's lives, such as tubal pregnancy or self-defense. Sometimes accidents result in humans who cannot have a life, as in Godfree 1's examples of the deformed babies. There will still be gut-wrenching decisions to be made. But if everyone started from the position I describe I believe the world would be a vastly improved place in which to live. That is the basis of my belief that each and every human is life is valuable and deserves protection.

Tom

Columbus

[QUOTE]You've described several complex situations in your reply, without giving much information about them. Please forgive me if I seem to put words in your mouth. If I am mistaken about your meaning please clarify.

By protection I mean protection from the destruction of the life. Why does it matter whose life is being protected from destruction? Why do you think you have the capacity to identify who should live and who is expendable. Since you're gay, plenty of people think that you are expendable. What makes your opinion about whose life to protect and whose life not to protect any more supportable than theirs?


A fetus is by definition both alive and also pre-born. What is complicated about that?
Without knowing anything but what you've said, it sounds like the couple were behaving irresponsibly. But if they are willing to take on the burden of a disabled child I'm quite willing to help with my tax money.
My good friend Paul has been a quad since he was thirteen. He is, financially speaking, a huge burden on society. He could very easily spend his whole life on a couch drinking and whining about how rough his life is. What he does is get up and do what he is able to do. He is quite good at being Paul. Any able bodied person who gets to know him will learn things about themselves and the human situation that they just can't learn any other way. The technology, both medical and social, that keeps Paul alive is expensive. Well worth the investment.



If I knew of a way to regulate procreation that guaranteed every child a good family I'd do it in a heart beat. But I don't.



Maurile compared the right to live to the right to drive. Karalora compared it to the right to practice medicine. I was pointing out the difference between a license and a right.



I agree. But I don't think it has been. Most self-described "Right to Life" proponents support capital punishment and wars and other forms of the destruction of humans. Quite immoral and illogical if you ask me.



Breeders fuck. Whether or not a new life is created cannot be very well predicted. Although there are some nearly foolproof methods of preventing conception. Breeders do not grant life. They fuck and sometimes a new person is created. We are not in charge. We are only responsible for the decisions we make.



I don't know what tragedy occurred to you and your family. I am sure you have good reason for your anger. I have elderly parents living in a big city who are quite vulnerable to some psycho and I know how angry I'd be if someone trashed them. But another death doesn't fix anything. It's just another death.



:rolling: If everyone not willing and able to provide a good home for children knew what you and I know there wouldn't be a use for abortion now would there! :devil3:



We do have the technology to determine when something has gone so terribly wrong. We also have the moral obligation to use it.
By the way, the pregnant woman you refer to as "some breeder" has just had a terrible experience. I hope you were kinder to her in person than you were here. I'm sorry you had to work New Year's Eve, but she had a worse day over all.



Of course a fetus is not a child born. That isn't the question. "Is the fetus a human?" is the question.
Nor is a fetus a parasite. Being dependant upon a host is not the same as requiring a gestation. You also needed one once, but you are not a parasite.



Abortion will never directly concern me either. But illicit and illegal are not the same thing. It was once quite legal in my home state to kill black people and natives. And I agree that if heterosexual people are going to indulge in sex they ought to be responsible about it. Not taking advantage of the technology that exists for contraception is making a commitment to be responsible for the people you might be creating. All the parents are responsible for is a healthy gestation period and a good faith effort to find the child a home afterwards. (and I do mean both parents, the father owes the child helping to care for the mother!) But a fetus is a child, only his mother can provide the gestation, and most abortions are simply murder of the weak and voiceless.



I'm totally with you on the "thank you for not breeding" part. But abortion will never be safe, except for the parents. And they're the ones who chose the situation, and could have chosen differently.

Hugs,
Tom

long winded fool

But that is what humans do. That's all they do on a species wide level. Those things that are anything less than my absolute equal are subject to my decisions on how I think things should be. Pious Paige should not be allowed to squash Lying Linda because you and I are making the rules. We see Lying Lina as being worth less than Pious Paige, but being worth more than those that we feel deserve squashing, so we decide who gets to squash whom and when. We decide that Lying Linda does not deserve squashing, right? And if Pious Paige is a part of "we" then she agrees with us by definition. We include Pious Paige in our club of maximum human worth only so long as she agrees with us. As soon as she believes that Lying Linda is worth squashing, she becomes less than us, by whatever slight, insignificant fraction we arbitrarily decide to apply, and we maintain the ability to physically prevent her from this act, just as we maintain the ability to do as we please with any who are not worth as much as we, the decision makers, the power holders, are. Doing as we please does not mean no rights, it just means that we are in absolute control of those rights.

The point of all this is that we can do as we please with our lessers. Granting legal rights to "them" does not diminish "our" power in any way, it simply makes "them" feel secure in our hands, despite the numerous callouses and bloodstains. We can do anything we please no matter how different from or similar we are to our lessers. We just have to make sure that "we," meaning the powerful majority, all agree on what it is that "we please." If we the powerful majority decide that Pious Paige should have the right to squash Lying Linda, then Pious Paige now has that right.

Very true. Perhaps I should have said "legal worth." I.E. the worth that we look at when deciding who gets rights and who does not. This worth is fundamentally nothing more than power. Everyone who does not have rights does not have this special kind of worth, and this special kind of worth, as it has been for all of human history, is nothing more complex or abstract than pure power. The ability to force my own interpretation of reality into actual reality. We are very good at disguising this under terms like equality, inalienable rights, and moral worth, but it is still there right at the heart of everything we do. The only deciding factor in this society or any society is power. We don't like that idea because we are all secretly afraid that we might not actually be one of the "worthwhile" people who gets to make the rules, so we insist that we are, imitate the behavior of those we feel are worthwhile, and make sure we keep an eye on those other people who, like us say that they are too, but are somewhat different than us. If we are empathetic, we might band together with those people who are like us and help each other along in order to convince the powerful that we are powerful too. ("We" is constantly in motion.) And, of course, we use those who we all know are not among us people of worth to whatever ends we decide that they should be used. And we may even convince ourselves that, because of our empathy with those less fortunate humans who do not have our worth and our granting them the right to enjoy some of the things we enjoy, that we are not "doing as we please" with these people. We are simply letting them do as they please so long as it is also what we please. Right? This is why human societies are almost universally simultaneously against war and prepared for it. We as a species know of no other way, because, like all species, we know nothing more than our instincts to survive at all costs, and those instincts are the source of fear, doubt, relief, and agression. The cycle of power.

And because those few critically-thinking humans who are not slaves to instinct that seem to have popped up only very recently in our history of survival are in the vast minority, they are clearly not a part of "we" and are therefore of negligible consequence in the notion of who "we" are as human beings in the grand scheme of our species history. Ideals are only that. Reality is this

Karalora

Columbus (or Tom, although I'm not sure why you would choose a username and then not go by it):

Apparently you and I have very little to discuss, since we are approaching this problem in almost diametrically opposite fashions. I have solid reasons in my head to protect human lives (which you seem to be uninterested in--correct me if I'm wrong!), enabling me to look at any life form and say whether it deserves protection. You "just know" that all human life forms deserve protection, and that all other life forms do not.

But as to your claim that you think the world would be a better place if everyone followed your rule...I think you will find that history and comparative culture prove you wrong. Countries where abortion is legal tend to have a higher standard of living than those where it is illegal (all else being equal, of course).

Columbus

My name is Tom. That wasn't an option for my username, so I picked Columbus on a whim.

I am quite interested in why you want to protect human lives. I've tried to explain why I do. Perhaps you'll share your reasons.

I have deliberately avoided bringing non-humans into the discussion because I didn't want to muddy the water. I have reverence for them also. The difference is that I don't have the same reverence for each individual.

Post WWII America had the world's highest living standards, if you equate having lots of stuff with quality of life. Abortion was illegal until the mid-1960s. Post Roe-v-Wade America has seen some dreadful diminishment in quality of life standards. Some of them I attribute to a change in attitudes towards irresponsible sex. Some to the diminishing effects of the consumer culture itself. But legal license to kill your children is not responsible for a higher standard of living.

Back to my reason for responding. Why do you see any human life as worth protection?

Tom