I would hope that your value for the fetus is not a mere product of consciousness or response to pain. Not unless you are a vegetarian. Humans are different from other animals in many ways, but in those two regards, they are the same.
This is an argument for legalizing infanticide...legalization of the killing of the unconscious.
My point was simple. The murder of an adult human is worse than the murder of a fetus. Perhaps this could, with a few additional assumptions, be construed to mean that an adult with no hope of future consciousness has less value than a conscious adult. In fact, this latter argument appears to be a societal norm. 'Pulling-the-plug' is often legal. My points did not stop at the primitive animal traits of consciousness or response to pain. I would not degrade humans by reducing them to the level of a swamp rat. My points did have to do with those qualities that cause me to value another creature as human--not to ignore those traits that make rights relevant. A creature with the ability to make judgements and act upon them is directly relevent to rights. A creature with the knowledge of its own existence can suffer with the anticipation of ending its existence--a suffering that perhaps no other animal can grasp. And a personality and history of choices allows me a personal valuation for another human.
All of these things a fetus never had. It has yet to define a character. It is not worthless. It is not okay to destroy them. However, they cannot be equated with a living adult that brings with him his whole character-defining history and the awareness of his mortality.
You may consider me tasteless for ranking the relative tragedy of elective abortion and adult murder, but those who *equate* the two are engageing in the same unpalatable practice.
Unconscious adults are not self aware, they are not moral beings while unconscious, they exhibit no character, they do not experience pain and they are completely unaware of their future whether positive or negative.
Of course a person's history of choices, his waking desire to remain alive and agreement to not violate other's rights do not go away because of any temporary sleep state.
Regarding the tabula rosa idea, it has been largely discredited by modern psychology. Much of who we are personality wise is determined by genetics. Yes we still make choices and are influenced by our environment, but a significant part of who a zygote will become is determined by its unigue genetics, which consequently have potential to add something very unique to society.
Tabula rasa has not been discredited. Furthermore, DNA molecules do not have personality. The result of mental development and capacities are *affected* by genetics, not implanted by them.
This is obviously, the same distinction between a plague we are unable to stop
Most spontaneous abortions, particularly of embryos, go unnoticed. You say we are unable to stop this? Show me how we have even tried. Look at all the money spent on cancer and HIV research. Aside perhaps from fertility treatments in the developed world (the motive for which is not to save lives, merely to induce pregnancy), I don't know of any ongoing reseach to stop the death of the hundreds of millions of embryos each year. No one is trying despite it being one of the leading causes of human death. I assume that is because no one cares.
Parents often risk their life for their children, and sometimes voluntarily give up their own life to save a child. To some this seems unnatural, but other call it unselfish love.
The LAW is not about people making these decisions for themselves. The law would force this decision on the unwilling. It would *require* the mother rather than the fetus die in those cases where a choice is available.
If we can agree, that 3rd trimester abortions are essentially wrong and equivalent to murdering an infant, then abortion since Roe vs Wade is comparable to the Holocaust.
We cannot agree. It denigrates not only the infinitely greater suffering of the holocaust but also all those qualities that distinguish humans from other creatures.
Your wife has an incurable liver disease...so she decides to get pregnant so she can bear a child that will be a liver donor to her. Is it moral? Surely her life is more valuable than the baby's, at least in your reasoning.
You are right about the small frequency of life-of-the-mother situations in the developed world. But hypotheticals, that are possible, are extremely important in understanding an idea.
Your hypothetical goes beyond my point. Yes, my wife means more to me. It is a worse tragedy for my wife to die than for her newborn to die. Now, you ask if I would *intentionally create* a lesser tragedy to alleviate a greater one. The act of creating a tragedy adds to the tragedy itself. The combination of the two would create a personally paralizing situation for me. However, I would not stand in the way of my wife choosing to save her own life.
Yes, I do value human life based on consciousness and the ability to feel pain among other things. Animals appear to share these minimal qualities with humans, and it is those minimal qualities, that I believe make it immoral to treat animals inhumanely. I am not a vegetarian, because humans are omnivores. I have no problem, killing animals for food after they have lived a good life and are killed with the minimal of suffering as possible. If only fetuses were granted the same rights as animals in our society. Further a human fetus if nurtured will develop into an adult, with the qualities you cherish that animals do not share. If it is morally allowable to take the life of a fetus, because it has not yet acquired these higher qualities, then it should also be morally allowable to kill infants and children, since they have not yet developed those traits. You have not stated your position on the morality of infanticide. What is your position?
My point was simple. The murder of an adult human is worse than the murder of a fetus.
Even if I were to grant you this point, which I won't, the murder of a fetus is still murder and is still a gross injustice.
You may consider me tasteless for ranking the relative tragedy of elective abortion and adult murder, but those who *equate* the two are engageing in the same unpalatable practice.
Once again, even if you are correct, defending the practise of abortion by saying, "Well it isn't the Holocaust", is not much of an argument. If you feel that it denegrates the memory of the victims of the Holocaust by comparing abortion to the Holocaust, then go ahead and be offended, but surely such a denegration (not the actual Holocaust) pales in comparison to the actual ongoing slaughter of unborn children. Or more simply, if comparing abortion to the Holocaust offends or disgusts you, then you should be outraged by the millions of needless abortions each year. Little in your posts would suggest such outrage.
Of course a person's history of choices, his waking desire to remain alive and agreement to not violate other's rights do not go away because of any temporary sleep state.
What does the direction of the arrow of time have to do with the intrinsic value of a human being? A fetus if allowed to be born, will surely in the future have a will to live. Why does a will to live have to proceed any right to live? Seems artificial to me. Also your premise that fetuses do not have a will to live is questionable. They at a minimum have a survival instinct, like animals. A more sophisticated will to live develops after birth, so your argument for abortion from a lack of a sophisticated will to live also applies to infanticide.
I don't know of any ongoing reseach to stop the death of the hundreds of millions of embryos each year. No one is trying despite it being one of the leading causes of human death. I assume that is because no one cares.
I suspect although, I don't know for sure, that there is a great deal of research into reducing miscarrages for women who have had multiple ones. Since the failure of the zygote to implant, in the lining of the uterus is a major cause of infertility, it would be foolish not to do research of this type, even if the motivation is for increasing fertility and not to save the life of the zygote. Also there are millions being spent on ways to keep 3rd trimester fetuses alive. Those techniques are directly aimed at saving a life, not at increasing fertility. As our medical technology increases it will be possible to push this back to the 2nd and 1st trimester.
We cannot agree. It denigrates not only the infinitely greater suffering of the holocaust but also all those qualities that distinguish humans from other creatures.
If you don't want to agree with me on that, then at the least fight with us pro-lifers against, infanticide, partial birth abortion, banning third trimester abortion, second trimester abortions, all abortions except when the life of the mother is at stake. Draw the line somewhere and start fighting at least some of the needless abortions each year. You can also join us in the fight to stop the current Holocaust (your definition, i.e. adults) that is going on as we speak, which is the mass killing of Christians in the southern Sudan. Anyone who feels as strongly as you do about the Holocaust, should also take up the cause of the persecuted Sudanese Christians.
The act of creating a tragedy adds to the tragedy itself. The combination of the two would create a personally paralizing situation for me. However, I would not stand in the way of my wife choosing to save her own life.
By having sex with your wife, unless one of you has been sterilized, involves potentially creating such a tradgedy. For women in the third world, but more importantly for us, women in our ancestry, the risk of death in pregnancy and child birth was substantial, but they still chose to take the risk. If women had not been willing in the past to take this risk, then the human race may have gone extinct. If you think this is a remote possibility consider that most developed countires are experiencing births rates lower than 2.1, the rate which is required to sustain a population. China's one child policy, (which in practise means one boy policy) is going to result in the collapse of China's population in the next 50 years. We all have responsibilities in this world and giving birth and the risks and burdens that go with it happen to fall to women. If they choose collectively to not fulfill their responsibility, then mankind will go extinct.