Hey great. You're sounding more conservative by the minute. So, I suppose you're against gay marriage and bigamy, right? And abortion?
"There are some Truths that have become self-evident facts over time, in the sense that today it would be perverse to withhold assent: The right of free speech, the right of an individual to self-defense, the right of a massive group to self-defense against the government itself (i.e. secession), the right to contract, the prohibition against slavery (including slavery to enforce a contract), a representative form of government, etc."Hey great. You're sounding more conservative by the minute. So, I suppose you're against gay marriage and bigamy, right? And abortion?
Gay marriage, no: What harm is there in a gay marriage, either to the participants' individual rights or to the health of society at large?
Bigamy: Likewise, what harm is there in a bigamist marriage, either to the participants' individual rights or to the health of society at large?
Abortion: This is a special case of a more general question: "Do helpless people have rights?" If I say "no" in an easy case (like an unseen, undeveloped fetus), then there's no logical barrier to prevent it from applying to a newborn baby, an old person on life support, a colicky 1-year old, or even myself vs. any stronger person. Morality is nothing if not applied consistently. So abortion is wrong.
However I don't think an embryo deserves to be called a "living human being" until their brain starts functioning, for the same reason most people accept brain death as the ultimate determinant of whether someone has died or not. One's definition of "living human being" has to be internally consistent too!