yguy

Silly comparison. You can't demand my kidney because I didn't create your need for the kidney. Parents are solely responsible for creating the embryo's need for a womb

long winded fool

Logically the same place you would draw the line at acceptable damage to any other human being. Unless a human life is posing a threat to your life, you cannot legally kill it... unless, apparently, a certain minority of human beings, with no scientific knowlege or authority required, suddenly decide to define it as a non-person. (Which shouldn't logically be true anyway, since rights apply to humans and not persons.) Human rights can be legally taken away from a human being if and only if a woman (never a man) owns the human and decides that the human objectively is not a person. No knowledge of the other human is required, other than its existence. If a human being is causing a major inconvenience to a female human being responsible for its existence, it is legal for the female human to kill him or her if and only if he/she is in her womb. This is logically no different than applying rights to only humans who are not property. The difference is merely in appeals to consciousness, which is analogous to any other criteria which must be met for a human being to be considered worthy of life. Once you declare that all humans must meet certain criteria to have the right to life, you've embraced a philosophy of human subjugation and rule by power, however basic the criteria seems. This philosophy does not belong in a truly free and equal society, and a society which institutes it can be called neither free nor equal.

long winded fool

You do have those rights. You can impose on someone else any of the things a fetus imposes on its mother without facing execution. If you imposed these things unknowingly, you wouldn't even face punishment. If human rights were equal, the mother would have every right to prevent these things from being imposed on her, short of killing the human who is imposing them.

Salmon of Doubt

Ok, I guess I was asking for that one. I guess I'm just going to have to agree to disagree with you over whether a ball of cells constitutes a person or not. I guess I just don't like the idea of ruining one conscious person's life so that a ball of cells with no consciousness can live.

And a truly free and equal society depends on protecting the rights of people who are currently persons, not potential ones. If cloning became commonplace, any cell could end up being a potential person, but I doubt people would campaign about cells' rights taking priority over the person the cells came from.

long winded fool

Isn't a coma victim a mass of cells with no consciousness? Couldn't a sleeping human also fit this description? While neither are "balls" of cells, I don't think "ball" fits the description of a fetus entirely either, aside from references to the "fetal position" which any human can curl into. All humans are masses of cells. Do you think the shape of a human should constiute whether or not the human has rights?

Your argument depends on the definition of person. "Person" is a highly subjective and vague term, which can mean human being, or not. There is no formula for identifying who is and isn't a person, therefore, how can you pass a law making it legal to kill nonpersons and not persons? This is why the right to life applies to all members of the human family. A human is not a subjective and nebulous thing. It is a member of the family Hominidae and genus homo. All things which fit this description have the right to life, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1947. This was supposed to ensure that no human beings were discriminated against by any criteria. ("Personhood" being historically redefined constantly to exclude any humans which the majority found inconvenient to grant equal rights.) Legal abortion discriminates against humans inside the womb. Therefore human rights are not equal. The foundation of freedom is that all humans are equal. Not only men or only those we consider 'persons.' Popular opinion is that only persons have rights. This is false and for good reason. We as a free country had learned from our past mistakes. By legalizing abortion, we've taken the first step to repeating them.

yguy

Again, every human who has drawn breath to date has been the product of bisexual reproduction, so to call a clone a human being would be decidedly questionable, to say the least.

The Other Michael

Just as calling a fetus who has never drawn a breath a human being might be questionable?

cheers,
Michael

Alonzo Fyfe

To prevent unnecessary replication, a map of the terrain covered so far.

My initial statement, even if the fetus is a person, no person has the right to the use of another person's body without her consent.

Response 1: The mother consents. Objection: notion of consent is far too broad and would, for example, classify as "consent to sex" any act a woman may perform that increased the possibility of rape (e.g., either leaving her house or inviting another person in).

Counter 1a: The fetus has no choice. Objection: The mother's consent is a fact about the mother and any change in the status of any other person is irrelevant to the mother's consent.

Counter 1b: The fetus is nonculpable. Objection: Objection to Counter 1a still applies, plus nonculpability implies that the fetus did not exercise a choice, it does not imply that the mother consented.

Response 2: The mother's right to withhold consent can be withdrawn when there are other concerns at stake. Objection: Such a principle is nonuniversalizabile. If universalized, it would give any individual the right to demand by right the organs, tissue, or even the use of the body of another person without consent under similar circumstances so long as the individual drafted to provide this aid was not killed in the process.


Okay, these are the arguments that have already gone by. Now, the new argument.

Response 3: The mother performed an act that put the fetus in a worse state than it would have otherwise been, and is thus responsible for the damage.

Objection: The only applicable "prior act" that would qualify is having sex. However, if the mother had not had sex, the fetus would not have been conceived. Yet, there is no rational sense to be made of the claim that a fetus never conceived is better off than a fetus conceived and aborted. Such an argument would have to view the conception itself as a wrong -- with the conceived as the victim -- for which some compensation is due. But, again, if compenation were viewed as any act that placed the "victim" in at least the same state as he would have been in had the original "wrongful act" not occured, then abortion remains a perfectly fit option. It certainly restores the "victim" to the same state it would have been at if the "wrong" of conception had not happened.

Personally, I think it is absurd to think that my mother somehow wronged me by conceiving me and, as a result, owed me nine months of gestation as compensation for this wrong.

Rather, I had no right to demand the use of my mother's body for 9 months. It was a gift -- not a duty -- in the same sense that if I needed a kidney or bone marrow that her donation of such an organ or tissue would also be a gift -- not a duty -- not something that I had a right to force on her by law.

dk

In answer to 1 thru 5: A pregnant women can not divine the future. Absent any threat, and without foreknowledge of what the child brings into her life (or anyone else's life) she cannot assent or descent except in complete ignorance. When a pregnant women choses abortion, she does so in ignorance. I repeat, people don't participate in life by acting out of ignorance to destroy human life. All any women can know about the life she delivers into the world, is that her baby desperately needs his/her mother.

To 6) a pregnant women isn't damaged by giving birth, the very proposition labels all mothers as damaged goods.

long winded fool

You are correct. No one has the right to use another's body without their consent. Any who use another's body without their consent should be punished by law. Punishment for using another's body without their consent should not be execution, unless the other body is killed or in imminent danger of being killed. If a human has no possible way of knowing he or she is using another's body without their consent, then said human is absolved from responsibility and therefore from punishment. Conclusion: even if the fetus was knowingly violating the rights of its mother, it still could not be killed.