Topher wrote:I guess there are some super conservatives that would oppose abortion and morning after pills for rape victims, but I can't see how it's justified.
Zuruck wrote:who has the right to tell another person what to do with their body, not I and definitely not the US govt. Outlaw abortion and you're going to see a lot more dead girls from botched surgerys in alleys, babies in dumpsters, and all of the above.
One of the major problems with the pro-choice pro-life debate is that both sides are talking about different things.
The pro-choice side, with a very few exceptions, simply ASSUMES that a fetus isn't a person, therefore it doesn't have any rights. SO, of course its the womans choice, and of course a rape/incest victim should be able to abort.
The pro-life side ASSUMES that the fetus IS a person, and therefore it IS protected by the constitution.
To illustrate this, lets just move both arguments a little later in time. And we'll take it even further than CUDA did.
A woman who has been raped has a 6 month old baby. Every time she looks at it, it reminds her of the horrible thing that happened. It even has it's fathers face. So she kills it. Is it murder?
The pro-life side says, "DUH, of course."
the pro-choice side says (usually), "well yes, but what has that got to do with abortion?"
Do you understand the problem here? To the pro-lifer, the fetus has just as much right to be protected from murder at 3 months of development as it does at 3 years. To the pro-choicer, the baby is a person, the fetus is not.
Lets go directly to Zuruck's statement. How would it sound if it went like this:
"Assassination is going to happen anyway, people WILL insist on knocking off other people who get in their way. That's their choice, not ours. But what happens when you make Assassination illegal is that it becomes dangerous. You have to go to dangerous places and talk to dangerous people who are likely to kill you if you don't pay your bill on time. We should legalize assassination so that it is safer to hire an assassin."
The pro-lifer says, "yes, thats the same issue as abortion."
The pro-choicer says, "what has it got to do with abortion?"
We can argue about legal semantics all day, but until we deal with the REAL issue, what is the definition of "human" and when do you become a citizen with full rights under the constitution, we will NEVER get ANYWHERE on this issue.
Now my party, the Libertarians, have an inconsistent position on the Abortion issue. They want to keep the government out of it. I find that view ridiculous. One of the VERY FEW areas where the government has every right to stick their nose in, is the issue of citizenship. WHO is a citizen, and who isn't? Who gets protected by the constitution, who doesn't? A lump of cancer cells is NOT a citizen, it has no rights and it's not murder to kill it. A baby after birth IS a citizen, kill it in Texas and we will fire up old sparky for you. BUT, there is this entire vague area between fertilization and birth where we have simply avoided making a legal line. WHAT makes you human and gives you human rights?
Many possible methods of defining personhood have been suggested.
1: To be a person, you have to be able to support life on your own.
This view is terrifying because its logical extension makes everyone on a life support machine a non-person with no rights.
2: To be a person, you must be "viable".
Meaning, you can be kept alive with machines, but do not require the DIRECT support of another persons metabolism. This could have some strange implications for organ transplant recipients, but my main objection to it is that technology keeps pushing the "viability" point of a fetus back further and further. We have every reason to believe that eventually a fertilized egg will be able to be brought to full maturity within the laboratory. How can our definition of personhood be dependent upon our level of technology? How can you say that a fetus in America is really a person with rights at one point, but a fetus in Africa of the same age is NOT a person. Of course, you could adjust Africa's standard of personhood to match OUR technological level, a level that is NOT available to them. But then what is the ethical difference between that and adjusting our standard of personhood by the technology we PROJECT we will have 20 years from now?
3: To be a person you must have taken your first breath.
If I understand correctly, this is the current standard in China. You can kill the kid 10 seconds before birth and its just a medical procedure, 10 seconds after it's murder. I find this view just too silly for serious consideration. How can you define personhood by breathing? It doesn't have anything to do with anything we normally connect to personhood. AND, it seems totally arbitrary. If you were going to pick breath, why not pick heartbeat, or walking, or defecation.
4: To be a person you only need to have the potential to be human.
By this standard the thousands and thousands of frozen fertilized ovum stored in medical facilities around the globe are all persons with full rights being imprisoned unjustly. Since the majority of impregnations miscarry without even the knowledge of the mother, the VAST majority of all USA citizens would have died a within just a few weeks of their existence. And stretch this just a TINY bit further and it becomes a crime to not fertilize an ovum. After all, put a sperm and an ovum into a test tube and you have a POTENTIAL human, even before they join. Or for another frightening interpretation, what about identical twins? During the early stages of cell division in an ovum, physical separation of the cells will result in multiple individuals. An 8 cell embryo is potentially 8 human beings. Are we murdering 7 unique individuals if we don't physically intervene and separate those cells?
This option ALSO runs into a difficulty in that it is inevitably linked to having a "Human" genetic code. In the past humanity has often excused slavery, genocide, etc. on the basis that some other race wasn't really "Human". What will we do with the genetic chimeras that are just around the corner. Geneticists have proven that "Gene therapy" is possible, that you can actually modify an adult humans genetic makeup in order to cure certain inherited diseases. Give it a few years to improve the technique and you will be hearing about athletes who are undergoing gene therapy in order to improve their performance. And there is NOTHING that says these modifications have to be adding new HUMAN DNA. Much (if not most) of the genetic engineering going on right now in plants and animals involves cross species transfer. Nothing but ethics stops similar experiments from being done with humans. And if you think ethics will stop us for long, check the news. Scientist in Feb 2001 managed to get human stem cells to implant themselves within a mouse brain. Let me repeat that, they created a mouse who's brain has several human brain cells in its matrix. They have long range plans to create a mouse with ONLY human brain cells (although they admit that will have to pass the ethics board). Now, of course, a mouse with human brain cells would probably NOT exhibit human intelligence, but what about the reverse? Its obviously not just a science fiction concept to imagine a human whose genetic makeup includes much DNA gathered from animals. So, if we define humanity as having our genetic code, is the mouse with the human brain a citizen, and is the athlete with horse muscle genes a piece of property owned by the company that made him?
5:To be a person you must have a soul
Interesting, but until we have a soul detector, not of much use to a government. Christians don't even agree among themselves about souls and when (or if) they are acquired.
6:To be a person you must have quality of life
In which case, why not round up all the disadvantaged children right now and shoot them. While there are people who will argue for this, it is so ethically reprehensible that I don't see how we can take it seriously. Back up a few hundred years and almost none of our ancestors had any quality of life (by our standards) at all.
There are, of course, other definitions, but almost all fall just as short and bring up just as many problems. And we really don't need to fuss over them, because
WE ALREADY HAVE A LEGAL DEFINITION OF LIFE, PERSONHOOD, AND CITIZENSHIP.
Yes, plain and simple, proven, and in law. You are alive, a person, a human, and a protected citizen when you have a brain wave. If the brain wave stops, even if the body is still running, the law stops recognizing you as a person. It's pefectly legal at that point for the doctors to cut up your body for spare parts.
And this standard should be easy to apply to the other end of life. When a fetus develops a brain wave, it's a human, a person with rights and citizenship. A person who is protected from being murdered, except when it is directly endangering the life of another.
The fetus develops a brain wave at about 40 days. That's a number which doesn't make EITHER side happy, which is a good indication to me that it might be the right place to go.
life is about choices, we make hundrededs everyday, most of them do not effect other people, but some do. the CHOICE of unprotected sex can have a huge effect on many people. not to mention the loss life of the unborn child, who by the way is the only one in this whole debate who did NOT have a choice in the matter.