Seems to me there’s a big gaping hole in the brain dead coma patient analogy. The brain dead coma patient that might recover is being kept alive by a machine that does not suffer in the least from being used in this manner. The fetus that may someday gain brain activity is being kept alive by a living, breathing woman with a will of her own, who, unlike the machine, may be affected quite negatively by being forced to keep the fetus alive for 9 months.
The coma patient’s potential consciousness can be gained at no cost to another conscious person. The fetus’s potential consciousness cannot. If bringing that coma patient back to life required that we connect all of his organs to yours and have you carry him around on a cart strapped to you for 9 months, the comparison might carry a little more weight. But I’d say that any rational person would hold that it should be up to you if you want to hook up your organ’s to a coma patient and cart him around for 9 months, and not a decision that anyone who’s organ’s and cart hauling are not going to be used has any right to make.
The difference with the coma patient is that they DID have interests at some point, interests which presumably included expectations about what should be done if they fall into a coma, and so on. Conceptuses, or whatever, have yet to come into existence so as to be able to have any such interests or expectations about how they should be treated.
Seems to me you’re missing the point of what was being debated. Someone specifically indicated that brain activity is the attribute that gives one “existence,” that marks the line where one can be described as having rights.
You are making another argument entirely, which is that the presence or absence of brain activity is irrelevant if the mother decides she doesn’t want to keep the fetus alive. That’s not what Joe Random was asserting, so it’s not surprising that my counter argument didn’t address it.
To you I would suggest that the right to live is the most fundamental right that exists, so fundamental that no other right is meaningful if this primary right is absent. The mother’s right to autonomous control over her body, for example, is not a meaningful right if she does not also have the right to live. All other rights are necessarily subjugated by the right of an innocent to live. Do you disagree?
Sounds like you’re volunteering to strap that coma pateint up and cart him around, and have no problem with being forced to do so? At the very least, I hope you’re not planning to keep that extra kidney that you do not need to live, but some one else does. Otherwise you might be a hypocrite, and it’d be shame for that to finally happen to a pro-lifer.
But the brain-dead patient, while brain activity has ceased, has no such expectations. None whatsoever. He has no awareness of his surroundings, no beliefs or desires or thoughts of any kind. As far as brain activity defines the circumstance, he is simply a cluster of non-sentient cells, no different in that sense than a tumor. Why can’t we kill him?
Because he was once conscious? Then would you prolong the life of a brain-dead patient who had no hope of recovering brain activity? Would you have extraordinary means put into place to keep his heart beating?
Unless you feel that the pregnant woman’s “rights” always trump the “z/e/f”'s “rights” your point is moot. Most of the debate here is about when the rights of the z/e/f (for lack of a better term) “trump” those of the woman. If you think the answer is never than this thread probably isn’t the best one for you. (since that is not the particular pro choice point being advanced here)
Rather, the argument has been made here (and in countless other threads) that “brain activity” of some sort is the magical trumping card. It’s fair of Bob Cos and others to examine that “magical” line of demarcation.
On preview it seems like Bob already covered this…sorry Bob.
Ouch! Boy, you really got me there. I better move on, since you’re clearly too much for me. Seriously, thanks for not waiting too long to show that your real interest is to spout pandering, bullshit rhetoric as opposed to engaging in honest debate. Sometimes that’s not clear until a lot of time and energy has been wasted. :rolleyes:
Apos
If I randomly decide not to lay my wife one night (full well knowing that I could be defeating a possible fetus), are you saying that that is the same exact thing as killing a fetus via abortion, morally speaking? If you are saying this, then there is nowhere else we can go with this debate because we are too far off in terms of frame of reference.
Like I said before (the computer chip comment), if you are bound to logic too often, you lose the ability to analyze unquantifiable, grey area situations such as this one. Not saying this is you, but don’t let this happen.
You’ve forgotten the context of this statement. The context was that we are first assuming that what is wrong about killing a fetus is NOT that it itself has moral interests, but that we are preventing from coming to be, and that is somehow wrong. We were examing THAT claim (the one implied by your OP), not the general claim of whether killing a fetus is wrong in and of itself.
Logic is just as important in grey areas as it is everywhere else. Logic is simply about making sure you know what you’re talking about: that you’re clear about what you mean. So I’m not sure what you are holding forth as an alternative to being logical in our arguments: that we try to be illogicl and irrational?
Ah, comparing demanding that a woman use her body to support another life, and demanding that you use your body to support another life is pandering rhetoric, and safely brushed off.
And comparing a fetus to a coma patient is…
You are right that my initial point is not in line with what’s being debated here though, so I withdraw it from this thread. No sense getting in the way with a new issue when Apos arguing the old one so well.
**Is there really no distinction for you, none whatsoever, between refusing to donate a kidney and actively choosing to kill another entity? If I don’t sell my house to fund life-saving surgery for the indigent, it’s no different than deciding to dismember an unborn child who would have otherwise lived, right? These are equivalent moral choices for you, eh? Am I understanding you correctly? If so, again, your rhetorical skills are just too much for me.
I anxiously await the violinist analogy. Please, don’t keep us waiting.
Apos: Yes, before the life is created (conception), it is morally ok to interrupt it as long as your motivations are not preverted in some way. After the life has begun, that’s immoral territory, because the life is there to be physically lost, IMO.
Notice the use of “life” instead of “living organism”. There is a difference, IMO.
Yes, he has ceased to exist. However, if the cessation of brain activity is temporary, then the person who existed before their brain stopped still has certain rights that carry over into the non-brain-activity phase.
Basically, only sentient people have rights, but those rights should span any temporary non-sentience.
No. Unless there is a living will. See below.
Since the sentience is permanently erased, it no longer has any bearing on anything. However, if the person had a living will, I would probably comply with it. This is only for my own emotional benefit (as well as being the legal thing to do), though, and really has nothing to do with the argument at hand.
Not quite. The key is “does this unique, formerly or currently sentient person have a future?” If a particular sentience does not exist, than its possible future is only of concern to the sentient people involved, and is of no importance to the non-sentient lifeform.
But the fetus was never sentient. It was never a “person”. It’s future is irrelevant to it, because it had no sentient past, and has no sentient present.
The deciding factor in all of this is that what the person doing the abortion (or unplugging of the brain-dead person) wants is superceeded by what the entity being terminated wants. However, the fetus wants nothing, and has never wanted anything, because it has never been sentient. Thus, the decisions fall back onto what the sentient people involved want.
What a brain-dead person wants is really only relevant as long as that person will eventually come back (ignoring the legal aspects of things like living wills).
Be wary of this slippery slope, as it leads to equating contraception with murder.
Pretty much.
Nope. The fetus does not exist as a person. There is no “they” to steal a future from.
But the sleeping child has an active interest in living. The fetus does not, and, in fact, cannot, as it has never even had any coherent brain activity**[sup][/sup]**.
**[sup][/sup]** Note that I am using “fetus” to refer to a pre-brain-activity fetus, which is the only type that I feel can be aborted for any reason whatsoever (or no reason at all). Things become much stickier once the fetus becomes sentient.
Is there a distinction between refusing to donate a kidney and refusing to donate a womb? Does abortion become acceptable to you if they just remove the fetus and let it die of natural causes (since most of the pro-choicers here are fine with not allowing abortions in the case of the unborn who -can- survive outside the womb)?
If you believe that both a fetus and some one needing a kidney transplant are people with the same right to life, I fail to see where the distinction lies. Both are then innocent lives ended because another person chose not to provide the use of their own bodies to support the life of another. If it is wrong to not let your body be used to support a fetus, why is it acceptable to refuse a kidney to a dying person who needs it? Both are risky to the health of the one giving up their body, but both are temporary inconviences, in a sense.
You’re going to have to use something other than contempt to convince me that these things are not morally equiviliant. If you don’t feel like offering anything other than contempt, I request that you just ignore my post and carry on with the other ideas in the thread.
What does ones motivation have to do with anything? It seems to me that it is okay to interrupt a life before conception for any reason whatsoever. Of course, you should not be able to interfere with the rights of people who already exist in doing so, but that’s another story altogether.
What difference is there? The difference between humans and other organisms is nothing more than our level of sentience. How is a human without sentience any different from any other non-sentient organism?
**The act of removing the fetus would be an active step whose only outcome could be the destruction of the unborn child. This is no different than dismembering the fetus in utero, wouldn’t you agree?
**The distinction is one I have already pointed out. Would you actually argue that morality is defined purely by outcome, that circumstance has no bearing?
It’s the same difference between me not donating everything I own to pay for surgery for the indigent and me running over a homeless person I see in the crosswalk. Both potentially have the same outcome, but there’s an important distinction between a passive decision that may or may not have a particular outcome (e.g., someone else could pay for the surgery) and an active decision to conduct an acitivity that will kill someone. One can never, ever do enough to eradicate suffering in the world. But to choose not to do more good is VASTLY different than deciding to do a specific harm. You really see no distinction?
I was not the one who introduced contempt into this thread, sparky. Go back and read that jewel you tossed up.
Joe Random, I’ll respond to your post later. Thanks.
When dealing with morality, motivation has a lot to do with everything.
Nope. Let’s say you are in a tribe of 200 people, men and women. You don’t want the tribe to grow any more (reason following). You go around to all the new couples who are about to have kids and you persuade those 13 couples to not have kids, and your only motivation to do this is because you don’t want to have to work harder to find food for these new kids that might be here soon. Now, IMO, that’s sick and pretty much the same thing morally as destroying those would-be fetuses in the womb.
A human without sentience (fetus) is still sacred, because it will very likely have sentience soon. I don’t want to be bound by time, because that seems to be a weak line of thinking. If it will be something, it’s assumed it is something for morality purposes. This is the proper, sensible way to look at it, rather than brute force logic, IMHO.
You don’t have to agree, but you should definately see the relevance of this line of thinking, just like I see the relevance of your side of the argument (If you read back, I said that neither side is wrong).
**Joe, you’re contradicting what you said earlier in the thread. Heck, you’re contradicting yourself within the same sentence. Are you allowing that a non-sentient person can be said to have rights (“rights should span any temporary non-sentience”), or do you still hold that without sentience there are no rights (“only sentient people have rights”). These are mutually exclusive. Can’t be both.
You previously stated:
**…and…
**…and…
**A person without brain activity has no active interest in anything, even if he will regain consciousness. At that moment, he has no awareness or thoughts of any kind. He is simply a mass of tissue, as it far as his brain activity defines the circumstance. This is inarguable. If the existence of brain activity is the “distinguishing characteristic between ‘lump of tissue’ and ‘precious human life’,” then the brain-dead patient is clearly on one side of that boundary.
Then why can’t we kill him? You seem to want very much to give this person rights. If you answer again that it is because he once had sentience, then you must admit that you are disavowing your prior contention that sentience must be present for someone to have rights. There’s no other way to interpret this. Stated positively, you will effectively be admitting that there are circumstances where one can have rights even if one does not have sentience. That’s OK; I happen to agree with that.
But that also leads to another question. Can you explain why you think prior consciousness is an important qualifier? On the surface, it seems to be an arbitrary distinction that serves no other purpose than to permit abortion where a consistent belief system would preclude it.
Again, the brain-dead person, at that moment, has no awareness, no beliefs, no desires, no thoughts of any kind. In that regard he is identical to a fetus. Perhaps you can tie this all up for me and show me what I’m misunderstanding. Right now your “sentience defines rights” argument seems a bit disjointed. Frankly, it seems to have become a series of exceptions/qualifiers that has no real meaning other than it conveniently permits abortions.
If the life’s there to be physically lost (not before conception but after), then motivation is not an issue, because killing a would-be sentient human is wrong in any case of motivation, IMO. But before conception, motivation for the interruption should be weighed in.
