Posted on 07/08/2005 6:06:03 PM PDT by wagglebee
I've saved this and the response to it for today, Open Line Friday, to share with you. This woman is a subscriber at RushLimbaugh.com. She said, "Rush..." Her name is Anita. "Rush, I'm a die-hard fan. Though I was raised to support a woman's right to choose, since becoming a mother and listening to you over these many years, I've come to strongly believe that abortion is wrong. But because I'm conservative and believe in property rights, I can't reconcile the government's involvement in the ultimate property right to your own body. Can you help me?"
So I thought about this, and I wrote her back. I said: Dear Anita, perhaps I can. Our Declaration of Independence states that as free human beings, we are entitled to LIFE," and I put that in all caps, "liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration also says that these rights are "inalienable" and "granted by our Creator," God. If our government does not stand for and protect these basic rights, which are the essence of our creation and humanity, then it will not protect any others. In our history, we've had human beings, members of the Supreme Court, give us the disastrous Dred Scott decision, which established that we as human beings could consider certain of our fellow human beings as our property.
Dred Scott permitted whites in this country to own black slaves and eventually this decision was struck down. So, Anita, your child is not your personal property. Your body may be, but your child isn't. Your child is a distinct and individual human being that you helped to create and produce -- and no one owns that child's rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So she wrote back and she thanked me, said she "hadn't looked at it that way;" she "appreciated that perspective." So I wanted to share that with you. One of the reasons why is because here we've had these Supreme Court decisions on property rights, private property rights, and you can see how some people interpret all of these, and extrapolate them to other issues in what may be the beginning of their education process. So I thought it was a great question that she asked and I was happy to be able to answer it for her.
Perfect!
Pro-life ping.
Choose what?
Bump. I heard this today.
I'm glad my kids didn't hear this. When they are disobedient I tell them that they've all been bought and paid for, I own them and they must do as I say.
Other than that, Rush has an excellent response to someone who was raised on liberal propaganda.
Life first, everything else second.
Not to mention that the body inside the woman is not actually her body. Therefore, as the child is merely within her temporarily and not part of her, she has no right to destroy it.
Excellent little piece. As much as we think these things are plain, to many folks they are not.
A child is not property. A child is a person. People are not things, or property.
But the problem starts with the idea that your body is your property. That's nonsense too. Your body is you. Every human being is a combination of body and soul. If you are a materialist and don't believe in souls, then all the more reason to say that your body is you.
Possessive individualism was a philosophical error that has led to a lot of trouble.
Inalienable or unalienable?
Outstanding!
Very succinctly put Rush!
Either Rush made a mistake or his webmaster did, "unalienable" is how it appears in the Declaration of Independence.
http://www.townhall.com/documents/declaration.html
There are some who would follow up with the question, "Well, granted that the baby is not part of my body, still my womb definitely is: so why can;t I ejecte an embryo or fetus from my womb, just as I would eject an invader from my property?"
And the answer is, the baby didn't "invade" you. You in effect invited the baby to come, by allowing somebody to deposit 100 million live sperm into your genital tract. (News Flash: Now known to be the leading cause of pregnancy.) Even if you tried contracpetion, you knew, or should hve known, the risk, and so there's strict liability here.
Getting an abortion would be the equivalent of inviting a child onto your property-- in fact, bringing him onto your property (since he does not even have the power of independent locomotion) --- and then saying he was a trespasser and shooting him.
Unless you are in the military or in prison. ;-)
"There are some who would follow up with the question, "Well, granted that the baby is not part of my body, still my womb definitely is: so why can;t I ejecte an embryo or fetus from my womb, just as I would eject an invader from my property?"
You know, I've never heard it phrased like this before. Are there really people who think along these lines?
Correct. DNA evidence is now well established in criminal courts. DNA analysis of any fetus would qualify it in a court as a different person than the woman carrying it. So the determinants about what make it a separate person under the law are time and position. If the baby's head clears the vaginal walls, it becomes a person. Could we therefore pass a law that says that people are only people when they are on the first floor of their house but not the second? Could we also say that we can legally kill someone before noon, but not after?
Nicely put!
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