Dr. Retard

I meant "ad hoc" to be a bad thing. An exception with no basis. An unprincipled claim, contrived solely to yield a pre-set conclusion or to avoid a problem. Something "pulled out of your ass". That sort of thing. I assume you don't accept that your rape exception is like that.

Loren Pechtel

The reason for abortion only in the case of rape/incest is to punish women for unapproved sex. Makes perfectly good sense.

Loren Pechtel

But that doesn't make it legal. While you could argue that it's a lesser offense that's it. Besides, what difference should it make??

Loren Pechtel

Has nothing to do with the abortion. You aren't saying the rapist made her do it, are you?

yguy

Thanks to the rapist, we have two principles at apparent odds with each other:

1. Human beings, in utero or otherwise, have the inalienable right to life.

2. Women don't deserve to be pregnant with what to them may be worse than a malignant tumor.

In order to uphold the first principle at the expense of the second, I as a judge/juror would have to look the woman in the eye and tell her the life within her is something she should cherish. I haven't got the moral authority to make such pronouncement, as far as I know.

It may not be logical. It may not be consistent. I'm not God. I'm not even Solomon. Sue me.

Dr. Retard

OK, well how about the "better safe than sorry" pro-life argument? This one starts by admitting that it's hard to judge one way or the other whether fetuses have a full-blooded right to life. So, the argument goes, since there's a live chance that fetuses deserve legal protection, and that abortion indeed counts as murder, better be safe and outlaw abortion.

One problem is that you can run an equally persuasive "better safe than sorry" argument for the pro-choice side. Outlawing abortion definitely restricts women's liberties. It may in fact violate women's liberty rights, if fetuses turn out to be rightless. Keeping abortion legal, on the other hand, may violate the right to life of the fetus, depending on whether it has such a right. So you've got a known liberty-restriction and an unknown violation of a right to liberty versus an unknown violation of a right to life. So, the argument might go, better be safe and keep abortion legal. The government should favor citizens over quasi-citizens.

Another problem is that it seems implausible to say that we are obliged to respect the rights of everything that might have rights. For all we know, cucumbers have rights, so we'd better not eat them. Of course, there's a better case for fetuses as rightsholders than cucumbers as rightsholders. But what about other animals? Pigs seem to have just as impressive claim to rights as fetuses do. But, I think, it's OK to kill pigs. Simplifying somewhat, the pro-lifer can either show why fetuses deserve special treatment, or else join the ranks of the animal-rights / 'deep ecology' crowd in demanding respect for all forms of life.

As a footnote, I always find it remarkable that so many (ethically motivated) vegans and vegetarians are pro-choice, and that so many pro-lifers eat meat. What gives?

yguy

The right to life is not dependent on citizenship, as I'm sure anyone who murders an illegal alien will find out in short order.

As for the rest of it, the case for thinking that a fetus is a human being some time before birth is not credibly assailable, since it is obviously as human one day before birth as it is one day after. That being the case, we have no way to determine at what point it can reasonably be called a human life. The presence of brainwave activity won't cut it, because we cannot verify that it is a necessary sign of consciousness.

As far as I'm concerned, the burden of proof is on those who think animals which routinely deny that right to each other should have that right respected by humans.

Loren Pechtel

Then you do not consider the fetus to be a person. Therefore you have no valid reason to prohibit abortion, period.

Dr. Retard

Change "citizen" to "legal person" and I think it'll go through.



I think the issue is not whether the fetus is a human being, but whether it deserves legal rights to protection. It seems your conclusion here is that it's hard to tell whether fetuses have a full-blooded right to life. And I accepted that as a supposition from the start.

Quote:

As far as I'm concerned, the burden of proof is on those who think animals which routinely deny that right to each other should have that right respected by humans.

First, I don't think pigs routinely kill each other. Nor cows. That means your counter-argument doesn't touch them. Second, one can say that when you violate a right, it deprives you of your own rights, but only if you're a moral agent -- only if your decisions are worth something. It might be that animals deserve the respect of all moral agents, even if they're too dumb to respect each other. There's no contradiction there. And since hey, it might be true, then better safe than sorry, better not eat meat.

yguy

Balderdash. Nothing I've said supports that. I've said the penalty for killing that unborn person should be less when it is the product of rape.