Posted on 03/11/2002 12:20:49 PM PST by Quester
Is a baby (fetus) truly an intuder in the womb or is he/she an invited guest?
Hasn't the host acted to send out an invitation?
Would not it be the height of irresponsibility (or worse) for a host to send out invitations, but to hope that nobody shows up ... or even worse, to determine to evict any who respond to the invitation and show up, knowing that such an eviction means certain death for your guest(s)?
Place yourself as a non-Jew in Nazi occupied Europe. You know that the Jews are being hounded and herded by the Nazis, ultimately, to the death. You hear, through the grapevine, that some, in your community, have determined to discretely put the word out on the streets that their homes are available for use as sanctuaries to hide Jews from the Nazis. Those that have done this are quietly being considered 'heroes' in your community. You determine that you would like to be held in such high honor as these, and so, you let it be known that you are willing to take in Jews, as well. But, secretly, you have absolutely no intention of hiding any Jews ... after all, in reality, it would put you in danger and, infringe upon your societal freedoms (after all, Jews in hiding will have needs that only you will have the ability to meet). You hope that no one takes you up on your offer. But, your backup plan is that, if anyone does accept your invitation, you will, at your earliest convenience, discretely contact the Nazis and turn your 'guest(s)' over to them to be taken away to death. Once freed from your emcumbrance, you will put your 'invitation' (to death) back out on the street again.
Is this not immoral behaviour?
I must admit that you pose an interesting twist on my favorite quote, "give me liberty or give me death." However, I think the logic of you point only works if we are talking about the same person, that is, your life vs your liberty. When we are talking about other peoples life vs your liberty, I don't think it stands on such firm ground. In fact, your liberty to play your stereo loud after 10:00 pm is valued less than your neighbors right to peace and quiet after hours. I know that my liberty to shoot my gun randomly in the air does not equal the right to life of the person whos head it comes down on, extinguishing their life. I will be imprisoned, and I should be.
I do understand your argument, Don, but I think it falls short when applied practically.
Try a little harder. It seems pretty obvious and straightforward to me. You think if you pass a phony law and get the sheriff to do your dirty work, that you aren't morally responsible for the results?
...
Gotta go for sure now.
The mother has the same rights respecting such a thing as she does having a wart excised. If allowed to persist, the wart will do her harm. If an outside agent forcefully prevents her from removing the wart, that outside agent is doing tort harm. Your claim, like all such claims, is based on the implied sacredness of fetuses, as opposed to warts. This is undemonstrated--it is simply a religious claim, and it only has force for those who believe in it, it a a primary assumption, not a logical deduction.
First of all, I cannot believe you are comparing a fetus to a wart. That shows your depth of humanity.
Second of all, I'll give you a scientific reason why a fetus and a wart are not one and the same, or worthwhile of your pathetic argument: a wart does NOT have it's own, independent heartbeat when it is severed from a human's body. A fetus does.And that, my friend, is a "logical deduction."
Law - If a pregnant woman is murdered, does the murderer bear the burden of a double homicide? Yes, even if the woman was planning on aborting the child. So it would seem that the law has a double standard.
Medicine – If it were known that a patient on life support would recover in nine months could a doctor in good conscience pull the life support plug? No, it would go against his/her oath.
Here we go:
Do you, or do you not, believe that a fetus is a living thing? If not, what is your proof?
This will make for a good discussion of the true merits of our debate.
If a stranger did to a woman what a baby does, it would be considered a horribly intrusive crime akin to kidnapping, slavery, rape, battery, maiming, and theft of service.
... what a baby does (to a woman)!
What does a baby do to a pregnant woman?
The answer is ... NOTHING! The woman's body does it all ... in response to the baby's presence.
It is, quite simply, the difference between having someone coming into your home and helping themselves to your comforts, conveniences, and provisions and an invited guest coming into your home, who, in response to their presence, YOU SERVE with your comforts, conveniences, and provisions.
The baby TAKES NOTHING! The mother's body, of it's OWN VOLITION, GIVES whatever is needed for the baby's comfort, nourishment, shelter, and development. Her body does exactly what it has been designed to do.
Ditto!
One thing I like to do is explore the consequences of a proposed system of ethics using real-life situations. This concept of earning one's rights, or earning one's citizenship which entitles you to rights (presumably including the right not to be killed by another) is an approach that I have not encountered before. It would be interesting to see where this concept leads us in various situations.
First, let me say that the examples I will present are based on personal experience. I share information of this kind not to gain sympathy or approbation, but to short-circuit any accusations of setting up and knocking down strawmen. With that in mind, lets begin with:
Case 1: Infancy
I, like many others here, have had the experience of fathering and raising a child. There is a period of time, for average children, ranging between birth and somewhere between a year or two old, wherein the child's interactions are essentially needs-driven. While the child is capable of appropriate responses and interaction, it is clear that the development of the individual is insufficient to formulate and exercise moral judgements. IOW, by the standards you discuss, this individual has not earned any rights. But, the child is undeniably human, fully formed for its normal stage of development, individuated, and present before your eyes. Now, because this person is not a citizen, that is, hasn't shown the capacity to exercsie moral judgements, does it have a right to not be killed by another?
Lets put all the rights on the table and weigh them. The child is innocent of any serious moral wrongdoing. Sure, it has needs and wants, but this is nothing extraordinary given the state of its natural development. However, to its parents, it may be a burden. Perhaps the mother (who seems to have absolute power in the pre-birth stage, so why not afterwards?) has changed her mind. She doesn't like waking up at 2 a.m. for feedings, perhaps is sick of dirty diapers, and just wants to get out more. The child is impeding her pursuit of happiness. Now, can she call in an abortionist and burn the skin off that kid until it dies? Why or why not? Remember, this is not a full citizen because it hasn't earned it by exercising any moral competance.
I should point out that, in some ways, we have already seen this kind of behavior as a consequence of the pro-abortion, morally relativistic society we seem to be drifting into. You hear horror stories all the time of mothers giving birth to children and stuffing them in a dumpster, or flushing them down a toilet and heading back out to the dance, or maybe drowning them one by one in a bathtub. Most of us with any shred of decency and civilized thought find such acts damnable and repugnant in the extreme.
Case 2: The Handicapped Child
One of the children of one of my cousins was born with a profound mental developmental delay. She is blind, and has the mind of a child of about one year of age, although she is now just over 20 years old, and is otherwise healthy. She will likely live a normal lifespan. As in the case of the infant, this individual is able to express needs-based responses, and limited interactions with others, but shows no clear sign, after all this time, of any ability to exercise moral competancy. IOW, this person has not earned any rights, by your standrds, and evidently is not a "citizen". Now, as such, may this person be proactively killed by another? She has done nothing to "earn" anything, and one might argue is certainly a burden on her parents and perhaps society at large. Putting those rights out on the table, there is clearly a conflict. Can we resolve it on the basis of the non-citizen argument, and simply do away with the inconvenient person? If we did so, would we be exempt from any legal or moral consequences?
Case 3: The Aged Parent
I was my mother's legal guardian and caregiver in her later years when she was stricken with Alzheimer's Disease. As anyone who has dealt with this illness in a loved one will attest, as the illness progresses, the victim is less able to process or recall information, make sense of their situation and surroundings, and certainly reaches a point of not being able to excercise any modicum of moral competance. Has this person then lost some or all of their rights? Have they lost their "citizenship"? If so, are they fair game for a late-life abortion? Again, put the rights on the table and weigh them. By the standards you seem to espouse, they have no rights, perhaps not even a right to live? Can I take out a .38 pistol and end their misery (or is it my misery I'm ending by killing them)? What gives me the moral authority to do so? Certainly the individual is a burden and perhaps impeding my pursuit of happiness. Does that trump whatever the other individual might have to counter my right to take action (kill them) to restore my pursuit of happiness? After all, I'm paying $4000 a month for her care, and visit her every day on my lunch hour and over the weekends. Surely the authorities will not charge me with murder if I quietly, in secret where no one will see or hear any screams, in the most private of all places I can find in my home, place a pillow over her nose and mouth and proactively end her life?
No, I don't think so. While you can argue that maybe I willingly undertook the burden of care (which I did, out of love and loyalty to my parent), that is insufficent to deny that the individual is viewed, in the eyes of the law and any kind of enlightened ethical system, as an entity that is permitted to exist, as its natural development and circumstance allows, in peace, without threat of being murdered by another based on whatever motives or perceived rights they may assert they have. IOW, the operable factor is something inherent in the individual, not granted by government or any other human agency, that allows them to exist with the life they are endowed with.
And these examples illustrate well the danger inherent in vesting the right to live, one's personhood, or humanity, or whatever you choose to call it, in an agency other than the individual him/herself, encompassing the broadest sweep of the continuum that is human life. For, if we insist on imposing narrow definitions of one sort or another, the result can only be measureless destruction.
An aids vector TAKES NOTHING! The infected persons cells do exactly what they were designed to do when utilized by the AID's virus. The infected person's reticulum does exactly what it was designed to do of it's OWN VOLITION.
It is not when a woman's body does something that a moral crime is committed; it is when someone tries to interfere by force of arms under the color of law with a woman's attempt to do something about the behavior of her body that her rights are denied, and if the law is wrong, that is the tort violation of her rights against which she should have been defended. You do not address the issue with this line of argument, popular as it is. Your case, whether you wish to acknowledge it or not, rests on your Sacred knowledge that the fetus is a citizen with full rights. Lacking anything further, Sacred knowledge will not hold up in moral court.
Of course it's a living thing. So is my ear. Or, more germainly, so is my sperm. Doesn't my sperm have a sacred right to procreate? If not, why not? Why should there be rape laws? Every deferred rape should be treated is a homicide, don't you think? What proof do you present to the court that sacred life with sacred rights starts at conception? Why not when the sperm is formulated?
I'd appreciate it if at least one person could get this argument stright. The fetus does not commit a criminal act. It is when you attempt to restrain the woman from doing something about her own bodies' behavior using guns and jails and hired thugs under the color of law, that the morally criminal act is committed. The committer of said act, if it were properly illegal to do so, as it now is, is liable for what the subsequent unwanted pregnanacy does to the mother.
Nope. Because there's a big difference between enslavement and biological reproduction.
Proof by denial, we used to call this in school. Of course you would be put in jail for unwillingly inflicting on a woman what a pregnancy does to her. It is quite obviously battery. To achieve the same ends, you would have to invade her womb with a blunt instrument and inflict severe damage, maim her to the point of impared mobility, and steal about 140,000 dollars from her, over the next 18 years.
That's one opinion. Others might suppose that you wish to substitute sacred knowledge for genuine moral behavior, which, in my humble opinion, recognizes the diminished nature of the moral claims of fetuses, compared to mothers, who happen to be fully vested citizens, not potential citizens after someone invests 1/3 of a lifetime in them.
Piffle. You'd inflict an unwanted pregnancy on a 13 year old rape victim. I don't consider you qualified to judge this contest.
Second of all, I'll give you a scientific reason why a fetus and a wart are not one and the same, or worthwhile of your pathetic argument: a wart does NOT have it's own, independent heartbeat when it is severed from a human's body. A fetus does.And that, my friend, is a "logical deduction."
Which demonstrates several things.
1) The disutility of logic, when you are free of the restraints of specifying the formal domain of discourse. Fetus and warts are one and the same under the following domains of discourse: are they biological entities? Do they inhabit woman's bodies? Do they grow? Are they excisable? What is in contention is: the domain of things a woman has a right to deal with free of state coersion. You have demonstrated that they are different under a particular domain of discourse, and implied that they are therefore different under the just-mentioned domain: a case you have not made, but merely assumed, and hoped no one would notice. This is another case of proof without evidence, or any particular reverence for the details of what logic is good for. If you had laid out this as a formal logical demonstration, the able student could have explained to you that you have committed the ancient fallacy called Fallacy of the Excluded Middle, or, as we used to call it, Bait and Switch.
2) At any rate, even if I let all that slide--the fetus has a heartbeat only after it has a heart, which required differentiated cells. At conception, there is one cell. How can one cell have a heartbeat? (Or a brainwave, to respond to an earlier poster on a similar subject.) So is it now your contention that the fetus suddenly has sacred rights only after it's heart begins to beat? Why? Why shouldn't I regard this as just another arbitrary distinction of little meaning? Other, of course, than because of Sacred Knowledge.
So...are you conceding that the fetus is part of the woman's body? Not a "different" organism?
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