**This is sort of key, woontcha say? Regardless of what right you feel justifies your killing another entity, if I kill you before you exercise that right (and let’s assume I’m killing you for something other than a life-threatening situation for me), have I not rendered that right moot? Yes, you’ve conceded that, I believe. Have I not attacked a more fundamental right for you–i.e., the right to live? Whatever right you’re exercising, it must be a lesser right than your right to live, correct?
**This is sort of key, woontcha say? Regardless of what right you feel justifies your killing another entity, if I kill you before you exercise that right (and let’s assume I’m killing you for something other than a life-threatening situation for me), have I not rendered that right moot? Yes, you’ve conceded that, I believe. Have I not attacked a more fundamental right for you–i.e., the right to live? Whatever right you’re exercising, it must be a lesser right than your right to live, correct? **
[/QUOTE]
I don’t consider my right to live to be my greatest right, no.
For example, I think it worse to imprison and torture someone than to murder them.
Julie
Not greatest, which is open to a great deal of interpretation, just the most fundamental. Your right to live free from torture does not exist without the right to simply live. Right?
My right to live is unimportant without the right to live free from torture. I think that’s pretty fundamental.
If everyone at birth were stuffed into a box and stayed there until death, I think we’d quickly realize that it isn’t “life” that’s the most fundamental right.
To go back a step:
My rights cease if I’m dead, yes. That doesn’t mean that me not being dead must be your goal, (or even mine).
My right to be alive doesn’t always win. I can’t take your kidney if I need one. I can’t take your food if I’m starving. I can’t take your house if I’m freezing.
Your ideals may force you to offer me a kidney, or your burrito, or your guest bedroom. That you may feel obligated by your own standards doesn’t mean that I get to take these things from you.
I can’t think of a right that can’t be trumped by someone else’s right. Usually the better claim is the prior one–who was there first?
(As an additional clarification to an implied point: A fetus is alive and it is human. I do not necessarily agree that it has rights. It can’t have the rights of an American citizen since it isn’t one. Being conceived on US soil doesn’t make one a citizen. If I were pregnant, the fetus would be a citizen of the United State of Julie.)
Julie
Whew, so many points…
Disclaimer: I cut and rearranged the quotes to save space and link my answers to the proper comments. Please reread Bob’s original post for accuracy.
This is the same principle that allows abortion. Of course a person has the right to expel my body from their house or body. That right even extends to women.
**
I agree that any restrictions on * what you do with your own body* are wrong. That’s why restrictions on women’s bodies are wrong.
There is no perfect way to guarantee all rights. The touchstone is the List of Rights set forth in the Declaration of Independence. The best answer is emacknights thread: How do we come to a compromise.
**
I was difining limits on those “inviolable” rights and trying to show that unalienable rights are the rights relevant to this discussion. Sometimes a slight semantical difference can help clarify a concept.
**
I strongly disagree. No one, not even an innocent has the right to alienate the rights of another. The mother of all rights is that no one has the moral or legal right to tell you what you can or cannot do with your own body.
**
You are required by law and morality to use the minimal amount of force necessary to evict that person. In certain situations you have the legal right to kill an intruder.
The following quote is out of sequence:
**
I took the above quote out of sequence because the reason the analogy fails is the very reasoning that many pro life people fail to connect to abortion. The question is not whether you must kill her, the question is whether she will die because you refuse to share your shelter, food, water, medicine, body. The moral answer is not the same as the legal answer. The moral answer is between you and your God, not the government.
No, please answer the question I’m raising. I’ll alter it to address your last post. Your right to live freely (not stuffed against your will into a box) does not exist without the right to simply live, correct? Please, you can answer this, I know it.
It is a metaphor!
If the condition were something else than fetushood, the answer is usually no, you cannot borrow my kidney!
But some pro lifers want to give special rights to fetuses.
These two statements are contradictory.
**Surely you can see the contradiction here, in your own words, right?
**I agree completely. The right of the unborn to live cannot be morally alienated by another.
This is my cue to smile a wry smile and go get a beer. 
Yes, it is a clumsy metaphor that demonizes both a belief system and a blameless human being. Why do you keep repeating this as if it weren’t clear? The question is why you continue to do it, if there’s any reason other than pandering to those who want to believe the basest motives for any pro-life belief.
No they are not contradictory. In the first “I” am the fetus. I am not expelling myself, she has the right to expel me. (“Of course a person has the right to expel my body from their house or body. That right even extends to women.”). In the second, I am taking that right to expel an unwanted body. (“I agree that any restrictions on what you do with your own body are wrong. That’s why restrictions on women’s bodies are wrong.”) The fact that you see this as a contradiction certainly explains the contradictions I see in your arguments.
**
No one, not even the unborn has the right to live at the expense of another.
Have a beer for me.
I’ve already answered it. If you aren’t alive you have no rights. None.
I already agreed with this point.
Julie
An interesting thing about metaphors is that they often tell as much about the interpreter as the writer. * Clumsy? * I can accept criticism. Demonizing? Pandering to those who want to believe the basest motives?
This definately says more about you than about me. I am guessing that you think the metaphor is clumsy because you find the answers to the questions show your position to be clumsy.
Because I’ve never had anyone object to the terms “anti-abortion” and “pro-abortion rights” while I’ve had lots and lots of objections to every other terminology I’ve ever attempted.
Julie
jsgoddess,
I personally have no problems with the terms you propose. Except that they are longer and harder to type. I think they are more accurate than ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’
If you believe my point is that dead people have no rights, fine, we can stop right here. No point wasting any more time.
I know your views are life at any cost, even under suffering, but I don’t entirely agree with that.
I come from the only state in the union that legally allows people to take their own lives under certain circumstances. In my State, people can validly choose death rather than go on suffering, provided they have an illness that will kill them within 6 months.
Of course, these two issues are apples and oranges, But I think it shows how different our views are as to what makes life sacred.
And the right of the mother to self-determination about her body cannot be morally alienated by another. Since a fetus has no moral claim on nutrients, womb space, etc, and needs them to live, than it’s moral right to live only lasts as long as the mother is willing to shell out said thingies.
I think I finally do get your point. Forgive me. I’m trying to stop drinking Coca Cola and the lack of caffeine is making my brain stall. 
Because you had said a couple of times that you killing me before I had a chance to exercise my rights would render my rights moot, I thought you were asking that question again. I see now that you’re asking something else.
So, for my answer:
I’m not sure that I do believe in a “right to life” that doesn’t have attached to it as a necessary qualifier “in freedom.”
Having the right to be born and stuffed in a box isn’t what I would consider a right. But a right to “life,” is simply that. Life. What’s important about life if it doesn’t have freedom attached to it? To me, nothing.
I don’t see “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” as three distinct rights. I see it as one big right.
So, to (I think) answer your question:
No. I don’t think that a right to live in freedom is a subset of a right to live at all. If the freedom isn’t in the right, the right is meaningless.
Er, is that answering?
Julie
Live Free Or Die, I read that somewhere, can’t remember where.
Julie is right, life is meaningless without the perks. Please refer to the “Matrix” for an example of how there can be life but NO other rights.
If you are going to use the “killing a trespasser” analogy, you really should include the following lines:
If there is a trespasser, on my property, infringing on my rights, I can legally, and morally, kill that person. But NOT if I invited that person KNOWING exactly what that person was going to do once arriving.
“well officer, after having unprotected sex with my boyfriend during the fertile time of my cycle, I invited the intruder onto my property, let him hang out for a while, then killed him.”
So in summary, let’s be careful with our choice of analogies. I wish there was a rule, like Godwin’s, about attacking someone’s analogy. Can we make the MacKnight rule: attacking someone’s metaphor, no matter how pitiful it was, means that you’ve lost the argument. If you don’t like it, come up with your own. MacKnights Rule!
We have a situation where the fetus should have the right to life, but not at the expense of the mother’s right to freedom, but not at the expense of the fetus’ life. That is why there has to be compromise, some women should be freed from tyranny, and some fetus’ should get to fully suffer along with the rest of us. Could we develop an official right to something coin? Before each abortion flip the coin? Heads you get to grow a head inside you that will eventually pass threw your pelvis, tails you get to kill it while it still has a tail.
As for labels, I think I’m going to call pro-lifers flat-world-believers, and pro-choice people flat-world-believers.
There may be some sarcasm littered threw this post, at this point though I’m not sure where…
END ABORTION, LEGALIZE PHARMACEUTICAL MISCARRAIGE!