Posted on 08/05/2002 5:30:51 PM PDT by jwalsh07
AMENDMENT 14
SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Zon, nothing personal, but I destroyed your argument with science.
You made some valid scientific identifications. I have no argument with them. My argument has always been that of a property rights issue. The fetus appendage is the woman's property. Baring medical intervention when the woman dies the fetus always dies with her. It's a cause and effect relationship that cannot be refuted. On the other hand when the fetus dies the woman seldom dies.
You feel that a baby is an appendage.
I don't feel my way through life; I use reason.
To recap, the baby has its own unique genetic code, its own blood and it builds its own placental barrier to separate it from Mom. The baby decides when the water breaks and when it will be born, not Mom.
All valid scientific facts that make for the identification of a unique appendage. When a woman commits suicide her fetus appendage has no choice because the woman de3cides when she will die.
If thats not enough to convince you that a baby and an appendix are indeed two different things, then I can't help you. I'm sorry you feel that way, but comforted to know that not many folk would agree with you.
I know full well that they are two different appendages with distinct identifiable characteristics. If you fell or think you need straw man arguments to "support" your argument so be it.
Gentle is good. It is the obtuse part I'm having trouble with.
The purpose of the census is not the point. The point is, the Constitution, in that sentence, contained a pretty handy legal definition of the word "person".
Blacks were only three fifiths of a person...
No, blacks (slaves, actually. There was a difference) were counted at a 3/5 rate, but the sentence I quoted makes it quite clear that the Constitution considered slaves to be persons under the law.
...and there were laws against abortion as early as 1800, none of which were found to be unconstitutional.
Here, you're countering an argument that I did not make. I would never try to argue that the Constitution protects abortion, because that is absolutely not true. But be that as it is, it does not follow that the Constitution actually prohibits it, which I think was the point you were trying to make in starting this thread.
By the way, I did like the chart you made out linking the Roe vs. Wade mentality with the Dred Scott mentality. I thought it was very clever indeed (in a good way). But it didn't counter the point I was making.
That which you call an "appendage" meets the medical definition of a human life in the early stages of its own development, despite your personal assertion. Most others do not recognize human beings as property.
Your philosophical "appendage" argument ignores the fact that this "appendage" grows to live a life of its own, independent of a "host." Appendages don't do that. It also commits a truly sophomoric falacy in which the existence of parallels between two things is sufficient to establish that they are the same. It's like noting that cats have fur, four legs, and live with humans as pets - and therefore are dogs.
Baring medical intervention when the woman dies the fetus always dies with her.
Now you recognize the survivability of the fetus with medical intervention. Please also recognize the case of an invalid being supported by a nurse. He also dies when she does, barring medical intervention.
If that works for great philosohoical thought in your world, I am indeed stumped.
Not philosophical. It is an identification of the facts. A fetus is every bit an appendage as a person's intestines are an appendage. They are both the property of the woman. All appendages have unique identifiable characteristics that differentiate it from all other appendages. Likewise, many appendages have some similarities. jwalsh07 noted some of the characteristics that uniquely differentiate the fetus appendage from other appendages. A definitive characteristic of all human appendages is that -- baring medical intervention -- when the person dies so do all their appendages always die with the person. Yet when an appendage dies the person sometimes dies. An appendage is the property of the person that grew the appendage.
Yes, I understand that is the argument you are trying to make. And, it would even be a valid argument if we were speaking of something that actually was an appendage of the woman. But, we're not. We're speaking of a unique human being that happens to be in the developmental phase which has it residing within the mother's womb. A human life is ONLY the property of the human to which it exists. The child's life is not the mother's property to use and/or dispose of. It's life belongs to itself.
We both know that an appendage can be anything from teeth to warts to cancer/tumor to limbs, brain etc.
We also both know that when we are speaking of a unique living human being, we have gone far beyond the realm of mere appendage. You could argue that the placenta is an appendage, but the child is a unique living human being.
I made no discernment (quality distinction) of what is a beneficial appendage and what is negative appendage. I made no assertion that any appendage should or should not be removed nor did I put forth any reason for an appendage to be maintained or removed. What I did do was identify that a woman's fetus is her appendage/property and not the other way around.
And I refuse to accept the assertion. It is patently false, and makes for a poor diversion from the reality of what abortion is -- premeditated murder.
You're kicking the stuffing out of your straw man. The appendage argument is your straw man, not mine. I made no comment about the abortion issue. My argument has been a private-property rights issue of the most fundamental nature.
Sure, let's hide from the reality of abortion and speak only in euphemisms. On second thought, let's not.
A fetus is the appendage of a woman. When the woman dies her already born child will live on. When the woman dies her fetus appendage dies with her.
The appendage argument is a red-herring intended to distract discussion away from the central issue. Nevertheless, your assertion is false at any rate. The mother can die without the child dying. It can be delivered and survive. And, as the artificial womb development continues to advance, your position continues to erode.
A born child does have all the rights that an adult has. A person has rights. Society doesn't have rights nor does an appendage have rights, not even when that appendage is a fetus.
The difference between a "born" child and a child in the womb is arbitrary. It is only a question of maturity or position on a developmental scale. It is still the same fundamental creature after birth as it was prior. It is living in the womb by all scientific criteria.
Not word games. Just the opposite. I identified an observation that is a blatant obvious fact.
Trying to undermine the fact that the child is a living human being by using the euphemism of "appendage" is most certainly a word game.
The premise holds valid. The fetus appendage is the woman's private property. I expected you to be your usual rational self. You disappointed me. No biggie.
I am being entirely consistent -- both with my own historical position, and with the facts of reality. The life of one human is never the property of another. The life belongs to the individual human who is living. The child lives. The child is a human. It owns its own life.
Refute what?
It is an identification of the facts. A fetus is every bit an appendage as a person's intestines are an appendage. They are both the property of the woman. All appendages have unique identifiable characteristics that differentiate one appendage from all other appendages. Likewise, many appendages have some similarities. jwalsh07 noted some of the characteristics that uniquely differentiate the fetus appendage from other appendages. A definitive characteristic of all human appendages is that -- baring medical intervention -- when the person dies so do all their appendages always die with the person. Yet when an appendage dies the person sometimes dies. An appendage is the property of the person that grew the appendage.
appendage:
1 : an adjunct to something larger or more important
2 : a subordinate or derivative body part; especially : a limb or analogous part (as a seta)
You left out number three Zon and I think I and everybody else knows why. You ready.......................
Number Three:A dependent or subordinate PERSON
I'll be danged. LOL.
I fear you truly believe it rather than employ it as a debating game.
It is not a debating game; it's a fact.
I might as well point out it isn't true... Dying and dead women have had living "fetuses" delivered from them who have lived
That is why the first sentence of mine from the post you responded to began with this: "Baring medial intervention when the woman dies her fetus appendage always dies with her."337 Your attempt at supposedly identifying something that you claim I missed is either you intent to deceive or your poor reading comprehension. I suspect your intent was to deceive the reader.
You can't be pro-life and believe in a "woman's right to choose" at the same time. If you believe in allowing others to decide for themselves, even if you are pro-life where you yourself are concerned, you ARE pro-choice. Period. "Choice" is precisely what defines the concept.
That's not exactly the point I was making. What I'm saying is that there was, at the time the Constitution was passed, a legal understanding of the word "person". I then noted that the Constitution contained a provision that enabled us to see how that definition was understood by the people who wrote it. By noting a requirement to count "Persons", and then seeing what the founding generation actually went out and counted, we can have a pretty good idea of what they considered that word to entail. I'm sorry if I came across to you the wrong way.
Absolutely. Otherwise, the convention would have had no need to explicitly exclude them from the census.
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