[Hajman]

Suppose a rich person in a coma is discovered to be kept alive only if he can have a constant supply of a rare blood factor only you can supply. Now suppose the relatives of the rich person arrange to have him attached by a blood exchange imbellical to you, and ask for a court order to restrain you from removing the embellical. Is this morally justified? Is it murder if you choose not to spend the next 20 years tied to this person in a coma?

I know this question wasn't directed at me, but I feel like jumping in today. The person isn't your child. You hold no assumed, personally required, or socially required responsability for that person. However, if you chose to hook up to this person, then it would be wrong if you then chose later to break away, since that person is your responsability, by choice. A simular event would be some form of organ transplant.

-The Hajman-

[donh]

However, if you chose to hook up to this person, then it would be wrong if you then chose later to break away, since that person is your responsability, by choice

Suppose a woman chooses, because of her reduced circumstance, to live in a high crime neighborhood, and chooses to leave the doors open while cleaning house, and is subesquently raped. Does that make the rape and subsequent issue her fault? Or does it put the unwanted child in exactly the same situation as the person in my thought-experiment who was attached by his relatives to me?

...and, assuming you think rape victims are entitled to abort...how does that situation play against the idea that the fetus being related to you gives it the rights of a citizen to be defended against murder? I assert it does not. A fetus may be "human" or "aware" or "viable" or "natural" or anything else you care to conjure up in the rights game, but it is clearly NOT a full citizen, and not necessarily entitled to a citizen's full gamut of rights, unlike the mother. When was the last time a fetus was issued a driver's license?