No. Even if you think you’re a vampire so you drain a huge amount of my blood and leave me to die, I don’t get your blood.
Even if you’re a serial killer who rampages around stealing and eating my kidneys and leaving me to die, I don’t get your kidneys.
Even if you are a Tylenol poisoner who gives me something that destroys my liver, I don’t get a piece of yours.
Even when a full-fledged, innocent, established, living, breathing, suffering, born, walking, aware, human as all get out person needs you and only you because of something you did, even then, no.
That’s OK, monavis, I consider most of your replies to be foolish ones. You have chosen to come up with an arbitrary definition of “pro-life”; I just twiddled it a bit further until the knob fell off. Why you think your definition less foolish than mine - since you can call killing pro-life by your definition simply because “life” in general will continue - quite escapes me.
jsgoddess, you’re still not dependent on me, nor have I set out to make you so. I also strongly dispute that the demands of pregnancy are, in general, in any way comparable to forcible exsanguination or organ-harvesting.
The fact is, we don’t have any laws that say I have to give of my body to make amends for anything I do to you. I don’t have to give even a pint of blood–something that has no lasting impact on my body–not even to save your life. Not even if you need my blood because of something I’ve done.
We don’t make parents donate bone marrow, not even to save a child’s life, not even if they are the only match.
Nothing you ever do, ever, requires that you give up a body part for someone else. Nothing. Ever. No matter how depraved you are. No matter what your intentions are. No matter if quality of life or life itself hangs in the balance. No matter how much responsibility there is. No matter how innocent someone is. No matter how painless you consider pregnancy to be. No matter how minor you consider the forced donation.
If you want to talk further on this topic (though I have no idea how in the world I could possibly be more clear about my opinion), create a new thread since it’s off-topic for this one.
I would refine that statement to say that suffering cannot exist without sentience and that self-awareness/sentience are necessary conditions for personhood.
I would say that this position is at least Constitutionally amendable if not yet explicit.
How certain are we that fetuses in the womb (I’m not talking about blastocysts, but legally abortable, late 1st-2nd trimester fetuses) don’t have a sense of suffering, at least as much so as a newborn baby’s? I’m not talking about “The Silent Scream” here, but about the kind of fetus that can be seen sucking its thumb, playing with its placenta, and similar stuff?
Well, sure, but so is ANYTHING, including amending the constitution to say that lfe begins at conception. I assumed that our discussion was within the framework of the current constitution, since you spoke of the point of legislation, which needs to work within that framework.
Are they really any more sentient than chickens or cows, though? Their brains are not sufficiently devloped (especilaly in the 1st trimester where 90% of abortions occur) that I would call it “human” awareness. Plus, their hypothetical capacity has to be weighed against the righsts of the entity which is indisputably a person and who can indisputably suffer.
I don’t think the Constitution currently defines a person. Current jurisprudence does distinguish between a “person” as a legal entity (which includes corporations) and a “natural person”, which is leaglly defined as a “human being perceptable to the senses,” but since it doesn’t (as far as i can tell) define “human being,” then it’s kind of just begging the question.
I guess the answer to your question is that my position is “Constitutionally defensible” only in the sense that it is not contradicted by anything in the Constitution.
I don’t know that I can agree with that. If they have awareness at all, then it’s got to be human awareness. The fetus isn’t some non-human species. Immature, yes, but absolutely a member of Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
True enough. However, if they do have “human life” status, then their right to life is as inviolable as anyone else’s who hasn’t been convicted of a capital crime. It’s not weighable against the mother’s right to privacy any more than you’re allowed to kill a peeping tom. That’s why, in my mind, the issue of whether or not the fetus is a human being has to be at the heart of any abortion-related legislation. You can’t hand-wave away the possibility of the right to life of one just because of the certainty of rights of the other.
However, I certainly can’t fault you for thoughtfulness and a well-considered position. Dio, as long as I steer clear of anything directly related to George W. Bush, you’re probably my favorite Doper for an intelligent debate.
Revenant, as promised, I’ve given your post considerable thought.
You’re certainly right that pro-X can easily be interpreted as wanting lots of X. What bothered me, though, was the idea of attaching “rights”, as in pro-abortion rights and anti-abortion rights. As a liberal, I have a fundamentally different viewpoint on rights than most people here. So for me, the question of whether the fetus is a human being again is paramount because no person has any rights over another person. If the fetus is a mere thing, then your recommended nomenclature makes sense. But otherwise, the ethical dilemma is resolved for me, and I would have to come down against it.
I can’t agree with **Diogenes ** in allowing human being to be defined by government. It would be like allowing a compulsive eater to decide for himself what constitutes healthy food. For me personally, there needs to be a scientific answer. Until then, it remains ethically unclear.
My point is that the term Pro-Life is mis-leading as it is only used in the pre-birth sense. Pro-Life should mean if just used in the human sense as caring for all human beings, even the ready born women, and the born children who are dying of starvation in many places on earth. One could consider if they found it better to take a morning after pill instead of taking a chance that the chance of conception should take place and another human would slowly starve to death. In some cases there are several young children starving because the mother was either raped or was unable to get birth control, such is the case in several places in Africa,and other countries. It would mean even not taking a chance on accidentally killing innocent people (and even unborn) in a war. Such as our “Pro-Life” president took the chance by going into Iraq. It is impossible to fight a war with out innocent people getting killed.
Just a data point - I’m “pro-abortion” and I do believe in encouraging them. No beef with Planned Parenthood, but I’ve got no problem whatsoever with the idea of abortion as contraception, other than the (I assume) increased health risk over other methods. Just remember that there are probably other folks like me when making the generalisations about what “pro-abortionists” believe.
But shouldn’t the same be said of Pro-Choice? If Pro-Life must extend to life in general, shouldn’t Pro-Choice extend to choice in general? Shouldn’t a Pro-Choice person, in that case, advocate a right to secede, for example, and choose some other government?
I am not sure I understand your point,but yes, I believe a person has the right now to change Governments. There are personal things that do not affect society and I believe in the case of a woman wanting to carry or not carry a fertile egg to completion it should be her choice, if she waits until a fertilized egg can be said to be a person, then the choice would be only to save her life.
I would like very much to see the need for abortions ended as it is also a danger in many times for the woman. I personally do not know what another person can bear in their own body,and I do not consider myself to be able to determine what another can do unless the law is such. I do not think Religion should make the choice for someone else. Perhaps if a woman had morning after pills with her then she woudn’t risk her life or the risk of an unwanted pregnancy.
The only proper descriptions to use are anti-abortion and pro-choice. The “pro-life” side is simply “anti-abortion” but they go ballistic if you use that term because “it’s negative.” However, they use the term “pro-abortion,” refusing to accept that the “pro-choice” side is not “for abortion.” I think abortion should be the last choice, but I recognize that it should be a legal choice.
People giving my posts considerable thought makes me nervous.
I did have a few other ideas, but I think there are more flaws with them. I thought maybe instead of focusing on the abortion sides, we could focus on the fetus-quality sides. Going from your ideas, maybe “pro-Comparable rights” as the pro-life analogue, “anti-Comparable rights” as the pro-choice one?
I do have points against this, but I think they’re more an argument against libertarianism than being on point, and i’ve been trying to cut down on my hijackings lately.
Except, for some of us, we think the fetus can have exactly the same rights as anyone else but abortion is still fine. Because no one else has a right to your body parts, either.
No, I’d say the closest to antiseptic, unbiased names are “pro-abortion rights” and “anti-abortion rights,” though there are issues with those too. How about “pro-abortion rights” and “pro-unborn rights”?
Every term will have ambiguities associated with it; every term will be suggestive of something beyond the “factual” description it provides. But to take issue with “pro-life” but find “pro-choice” the “only proper description” just shows which axe you have to grind, IMO.
And would the pro-choice side not go ballistic if one were to ask if the advocate the choice of rape, or stealing, or murdering pro-choicers? That sounds awfully negative to me.
I do think that pro-choice implies being for having the right to choose to have an abortion and anti-abortion implies being anti the above statement. To put it another way, anti-abortion is against anyone having an abortion, and pro-choice is pro letting other people choose for themselves whether to have a legal abortion or not.
Pro-choice implies more than that, just as pro-life implies more. Both are okay, ISTM, out of courtesy if nothing else, or neither are. I love these threads where people torture logic in explaining why one self-chosen name is logical and clear, while the other is a politically motivated deception (or some variation on this theme). Both names were selected because they imply good things. Both.
