Posted on 12/10/2001 4:53:45 PM PST by Mighty Pen
Since when does analogy require equality?
The idea that parents have the right to kill their children (how they are dealt with, as you put it) is absurd from any perspective. Certainly it is not a libertarian perspective.
The idea that the government shouldn't have the power to defend individual rights and allowing them that power will lead to the government forcing people to kill their children is one of the most absurd statements I have ever heard.
Not anit-abortionists, (I am anti-abortion), but pro-government-enforcement of anti-abortion morality folks really do not care what happens after the baby is born. They are not really concerned if the baby will be beaten or abused, if it will become the next Charles Manson, or serial killer, or simply die of neglect because the mother hates the baby she was forced to bear.
You seem to be treading close to a logical fallacy here (affirming the consequent). Even if your premise is true (which I do not admit), it does not undermine the pro-life position. Basing the “right” to abortion on demand upon an unproven premise is insufficient. Whether or not a child will come to harm or grow up to do evil cannot be shown a priori in particular cases, and thus cannot be extended to provide a moral foundation for a general practice that we as a people are asked to sanction. Further, even if a person or group is shown “not to care” about a postulated future event or happenstance, it is insufficient moral justification for the proactive killing of innocent persons. It might be proven that I don’t care whether or not my neighbor’s kids may starve next week, but that does not invalidate my stand against some else coming in to murder them today.
A child is the "property" of its parents until such time it is capable of exsting on its own. (This only means it is the property of the parents, rather than the state. This does not mean the parents may treat children as if they were not human beings, and, morally, parents are obligated to do everything in their power to nurture and support their children.) It is not the business of the state to interfere in the relationship between parent and child. Christians who seek the state's interference in this relationship will ultimately see it used against them.
You talk a lot about “property” here, but flinch a little bit further down by hedging your bets, talking about obligation to nurture and support them, and to treat them as human beings. Well, if we take your hedging statements literally, would we include under the umbrella of treating them as human beings the obligation not to tear them limb from limb when in their mother’s womb, or not burn their skin off with a concentrated salt solution? Further, nurture and support would also likely include avoiding infliction of intentional harm, such as those actions noted above.
But, if we are truly talking about only “property” here, why should there be any such restrictions? Why not let anything go? If the kids are inconvenient, just get rid of them like you would any other property? Sadly, we are seeing today the fruits of such thinking, with young parents throwing their newborns in dumpsters, or flushing them down toilets, then heading back to the prom to dance the night away. Is that the kind of “property rights” society we want? Note: the “pain and suffereing” argument has already been invalidated by your coma argument further up. Parents can still do away with their kids and not inflict pain, just knock them out first, or kill them while they are asleep.
There is legal precedent for regarding children as more than “property”. Courts have established that children do have inalienable rights of their own, by virtue of their being individuated persons. They may not have all the privileges of adulthood until certain milestones are reached, but basic rights and protections under the law have always been recognized in modern legal theory.
Finally, I will disagree with your first comment about birth as being the point in time where the “wad of cells” attains personhood, or humanity, or whatever you want to call it. Birth certainly is a significant event in the continuum of life, but hardly the defining one. Here is a concrete example (not a strawman). I was privileged to attend the birth of my son via c-section. As he was removed from his mother’s body, I was able to see him as he was, before and after delivery. Clearly, nothing intrinsic about the child had changed, just his location. He was still the same individual from moment to moment, just his physical circumstance had changed.
In the end, it isn’t a question of where you are or what you look like, but what you are. He question is not what you look like, or where you happen to be living, or if you have some attachments of tissue to your body or not, but what is your essence. In this case, a human being, before and after being born.
Hank,
What is it about birth that makes the child a person, and can you state your answer in such a way to protect all individual persons from being at risk of losing their personhood?
The argument that if government can stop abortion, it can force abortion is not upheld by the laws that allow government to stop murder of post-natal humans or slavery of post-natal humans.
Children, like other humans, are not the property of any other human in our country. Parents can not legally conspire with others to intentionally and electively kill their born children. Parents do have the responsibility to protect and raise their children, however, and have certain rights to control the child in order to carry out their responsibility. I think you should read the history of philosophy concerning the special relationship between parents and their children.
Thats boloney. The governments objective as far as abortion goes should be protecting life. Thats it. How you contrive giving our government the power to defend life into some delusional nightmare of Chinese forced abortion in America is beyond me.
Some of us stand reasoning behind our beliefs. Yours don't wash.
I suppose your a libertarian? (I say this because your posts seem to be both anti- government and morally bankrupt.) You may have covered this in a previous post but what do you think of the USSS overturning Roe V. Wade?
You, "Christians," have no power today becasue you have swapped the power of your God and prayer for the power of guns and government. You have made the wrong choice, and will pay for it.
Swapped the power of your G-d for the power of GUNS and government?
Maybe your not a libertarian.
Birth.
This is obviously not a scientific or medical statement. Most doctors will agree that the causes triggering labor are not very well known, but that the labor does not change the physiological or biological makeup of the child in any way. One could argue that the as yet undiscovered change in the child that transforms it from a blob of tissue into a human being causes the mother to go into labor, but it makes no sense whatsoever to argue that the mother going into labor causes this as yet undiscovered change.
If this answer falls apart for no other reason, it falls apart for the reason that babies are born at vastly different gestational ages. In some circumstances, abortion even results in a living child. Would you amend your answer to say 'birth and abortion'? Good luck with that one.
Shalom.
Just so, and the power in question here is the power of men to enslave women as objects of sexual self-satisfaction. The most amazing part of this whole abortion thing is that it exists so men can have their way with women without the entanglement of fatherhood, yet it has been sold to the women as a right they must defend at all costs. If I understood how this sick notion has been sold to women I would work on convincing Bill Gates that it is his constitutional right to give his entire fortune to me and that he should do everything in his power to stop people from infringing on that right.
Shalom.
Just to emphasize the point of the motives of the two camps (pro-abortion and anti-abortion), has anyone ever gone into Planned Parenthood and asked for help in having a baby? Will they even refer you to a fertility clinic? Will they even help you get medical care for the mother and child? Will they do anything other than laugh you out of the place?
On the other hand, most people who go into a CareNet or BirthRight center who announce they are abortion minded get all the love and assistance they could ask for - except a referral to an abortionist. They can even return after an abortion for help in dealing with the result if they so desire. If she decides against the abortion they will be with her until long after the child is born, making sure she has everything she needs.
Shalom.
I will answer if you will answer this. Suppose you met a five-year-old child on the street that you know would become the next Hitler or Charles Manson. Wouldn't you insist on him not being shot in the head on sight - even knowing that?
I would insist that the child not be aborted - even if I believed the child would grow up to rape and murder my daughter.
Shalom.
This is a very good point and I have often thought about it, and would like to see it brought out more often in the abortion debate, particularly where men are vehemently arguing the pro-abortion side. Women have been royally bamboozled on this aspect of the issue.
As anecdotal evidence, I recall one of our students was kind of a feminist and pro-abortion. She knew I was pro-life and we had any number of discussions about this. She mentioned another student (male) who was fully supportive of her pro-abortion position and of how wonderful that was. I managed to engage him on this topic and near the end of the discussion he made a comment about how he was in favor of abortion because if he ever got a woman pregnant it was "easier" for him to pay for her abortion than to take care of her and "her kid". I mentioned this to the lady the next time the opportunity presented itself. Her reactions were many and varied, but supportive of the guy who made the remark was not among them.
Questioning/attacking motives is not generally a sufficient refutation of an argument and I do not offer it here as such. But, it is sometimes interesting (and illuminating) to consider them as an aside.
If I may, I'd like to offer a suggestion on how you can bring it up without having to know a pro-abortion man to discuss this with.
Ask the woman how she feels about a male abortion. She will ask you what that is. Tell her that you think it's unfair that only the woman's reproductive freedom is considered in the current abortion environment, but not the man's. Assure her that you don't want to force abortion on women, but that men who don't want to be fathers should have that choice. Tell her of a law to allow a man to file a paper with the local government that makes the child aborted in his eyes. For him, the child was aborted and does not exist. He renounces all rights of paternity, such as visitation or asking the kid to take care of him in his old age. But he also renounces any responsibility. No child support, no college shakedown, etc. He can file that paper at any time when it would be legal for the woman to get an abortion. Make sure she knows that he isn't actually killing the child, just removing it from his life.
You'd be amazed at how pro-life a woman's arguments become when she tries to convince you that idea is unfair.
Shalom.
---a reference to the Holocaust by Franz Stangl, Nazi commandant of extermination camps in Sobibor (March, 1942 -September, 1942) and Treblinka (September, 1942 - August, 1943).
Interviewed by Gitta Sereny in 1970, Stangl's comments later appeared in the book Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience (1983).
I'm in favor of a post-Roe Human Life Amendment. En route to that, there will need to be incremental measures put into place by law. A ban on partial-birth abortion, parental consent for minors, defunding Planned Parenthood, keeping the proposed "clinics" out of public schools...and V4F.
V4F is, in tandem with science and sympathy in favor of the prenatal baby. V4F offers a visible protagonist (the father), who is closely connected to the situation at hand.
It obliterates the "every child a wanted child" argument. Under V4F, every child is wanted, and supported, by the father.
It blows the myth of abortion being a "woman's issue". So long as pro-lifers are silent on V4F, abortion will be considered by the public-at-large a "woman's issue". As such, on some level, people will say, "Well, so long as abortions aren't forced..."
Many, many women subscribe to the NIMBY principle, saying that they would not personally have an abortion, but wouldn't stop others...V4F exposes the gyncentricity of this position.
I would pose to pro-lifers the following: the pro-life movement has failed in the courts and legislatures for 30 years. They have failed to endorse or even acknowledge the V4F position for 30 years. Society has paid the price for this twinned set of failures, and they are twinned. Abortion will never end, and a Human Life Amendment will never come about, until V4F is endorsed by the pro-life movement. It takes two to make a baby, but so long as pro-lifers are silent about one of those two, the father, it will appear that only one person was involved in conception, and that therefor the product of conception is the province of one person only. Keeping fathers/V4F out of the picture undermines the personhood of the prenatal baby for these reasons. It is not baby's rights vs. father's rights. It is that after 30 years of colossal failure by the pro-life movement's no-father approach, the baby's personhood needs to be endorsed by a visible, immediately involved protagonist: the father.
Pro-lifers refuse to engage this issue. All manner of red herrings are thrown out: well, the father was probably some irresponsible jerk, or somehow V4F would lead to C4M (when actually they are opposites), etc. etc.
Pro-lifers refuse to wake-up and endorse this issue.
And this is why we fail.
Sign me up.
But, if a father signs the veto, the paperwork must make it very clear what his parental responsibilities are. He must understand that he's allowing the mother to completely drop out of the child's life and he will bear the entire burden himself.
I would sign such a declaration in a heartbeat if I were ever in that situation.
Shalom.
God Bless.
Merry Christmas!
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