Who should decide what an “adult” is? Should politicians do it? Should it be embedded in legislation?
Th answer is, of course it should. Legislation in these cases isn’t about deciding absolute truth but deciding what is most pragamatic. There is no magical moment when a child turns into an adult, yet there is no question that a legal bright line must be drawn legislatively.
The philosophical debate over whether a zygote or an embryo is a “life” or a “person” is unimportant and irrelevant to deciding what kind of legislation is most pragmatic in preserving the rights of individuals and protecting the stability of society.
I believe that the real question is not whether an embryo is a person, but what legislation will cause the least human suffering.
You can also put me down as another one who thinks that women have the right to trade sex for money if that is their wish.
I agree with you, actually. I think laws outlawing prostitution are even more repugnant than anti-abortion laws. At least the latter is motivated by a perceived desire to protect an innocent person (supposing that a fetus is a person).
Prostitution laws are motivated by a paternalistic desire to lock up women (and occasionally men) “for their own good” who rent out their bodies to other people.
The connection in my mind is that if a woman is forced by society to bear a child that she cannot support,financially, physically,emotionlly etc than the persons who forced her to carry it to term have a responsibility to support it and her. There are some women who are already burdened with more children than they can care for, and in some cases the woman is acting in a form of self defense.
The people who refer to them selves as Pro-life seem to use the argument that life begins at conception. My point is that life began thousands of years ago. It is a passed on thing and being pro-choice one can also be pro-life.
Cool! So if I, say, give you a deep wound that turns gangrenous, that’s being pro-life too, at least from the point of view of the anaerobic bacteria who’re getting a free feed?
Point taken. But in the case of abortion, people really ARE zooming in on a particular issue, a la pro-or-anti suicide. It’s not a more general worldview like libertarianism versus authoritarianism. It’s a specific medical practice.
But to decide what will cause the least human suffering, you first need to decide which of the suffering parties in question is human. So the abortion debate all gets back to that anyway.
Well, first you need to decide which entities are suffering at all. If an entity is incapable of suffering then it’s irrelevant if it’s a “human.”
I don’t thing the “personhood” question in regards to fetuses can ever be objectively answered, so it comes down to a discussion of to what degree the state may compel an entity of undisputed personhood to suffer for the sake of an entity for whom personhood exists only subjectively (often as a purely religious belief) and who is incapable of suffering.
Interesting way of looking at it. Two questions, then, and I hope this doesn’t constitute a hijack of this thread:
Do you then consider death to not be, in and of itself, a form of suffering? I realize that there are ways that a person can die that are not suffering in the sense of “painful”, but it still represents the deprivation, to the affected party, of something of value (see next question) he/she/it once had.
Do you think the right to life (assuming no due-process capital convictions) which is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution is wrong for treating life itself as having intrinsic value, without considering pain or suffering experienced therein? Because even if I were to grant your point that the purpose of legislation should be to minimize human suffering, legislation must still be consitutional in order to hold up, and that would limit lawmakers’ ability to ameliorate suffering to only those measures that do not deprive individuals of life. And that, in turn, leads back to the question of whether or not the fetus is human - no matter who’s suffering, if it has a right to life, nothing (again, barring due-process capital conviction) can be put ahead of that.
I’ll make it simple, a human who has no capacity to suffer has no inherent right to life, HOWEVER, the decision about whether to keep such quasi “persons” alive should not be left to the state but to that person’s next of kin or legal guardian.
Right. To me, no one gets to use my body parts unless I say so, even if it means they will die from lack of them. But that’s outside of the purview of this thread.
I thought the point being made was that “pro-abortion” people are not actually pro-abortion, in the sense that they are for abortion and want lots of it. I’ve never come across a pro-choice person who doesn’t think abortion is pretty much a bad situation for all concerned (though they may disagree on who is included in “all”).
As a libertarian you could be said to be “pro-suicide” (as per LHoD’s example; you might not be). Does this mean that you want there to be lots of suicides? That you would like the suicide rate to go up? No (again, I assume and in this case hope ;)); it just means you want the right to commit suicide to be avaliable. It doesn’t mean you think suicide is a good thing in and of itself, it’s just the ability to take that option that you’re for. IOW, you’re not pro-suicide, you’re pro-suicide-rights; it’s rights you want, not suicide itself. Likewise, pro-choice people aren’t pro-abortion; they’re pro-abortion rights, a much better term.
Planned Parenthood always points out that they’d like to make abortions safe, legal and rare, though I do think some ‘pro-abortionists’ feel they have to play down their openness to the procedure just so it’s not used as fodder. For example, some people complain that abortions are being used as ‘birth control.’ I think that’s great. I think if a woman can’t prevent a dozen pregnancies, she shouldn’t be having a dozen kids. But I know expressing that opinion at, say, a charity benefit wouldn’t go down too well.
As I think i mentioned earlier, one problem with the term ‘pro-abortion’ is that it ignores the fact that most pro-choice activists are also against forced abortion.
I consider your reply to be a foolish one. If you are doing harm to a person then you are in a sense not acting as one who respects life in the sense that most pro-lifers think of as pro-life. I refer to human life, we do not call killing a fly murder, nor bacteria.