Sure. So if I can step in and take a stab at it, the crucial difference is that you owe no duty that society is prepared to recognize to the violinist. If you saw the violinist wandering dazed in the street (due to the buildup of toxins from his ailment, perhaps) you are free to disregard him and go about your business, and society does not impose any particular duty to assist him.
But if your infant child were wandering about the street, it would be a criminal violation to fail to assist your child.
Why the difference? Because society is willing to impose, upon the biological parent, duties that do not inure to the random passerby.
Your arm is unambiguously yours, with a genetic makeup that is, uniquely, you. (Although I would point that society is actually prepared to step in and prevent you from chopping off your arm, so even this example fails).
The fetus is not. The fetus is, genetically, a separate human being.
Unless you have mastered self-reproduction via parthenogenesis[sup]*[/sup]… but I can’t say that here, lest I violate the rule concerning a mention of other posters going to fuck themselves.
Yes, I know, not a precisely accurate summary of parthenogenesis. I went for the humor. Sue me.
They’re both human beings. Killing the prisoner won’t being back his victims or save any more lives. Killing the prisoner is vengeance, bloodlust, and nothing more. It’s not an effort to save a life - at most, it’s an effort to save money. I would argue that an abortion procured as a result of legitimate fear of medical complications in the pregnancy makes MORE sense than killing a prisoner on death row.
And when you add in the depressing fact that at least eighteen cases we know of involving a prisoner on death row actually involved a person wrongly convicted and later exonerated via DNA testing, it’s pretty clear that the mere appelation of “prisoner on death row” is absolutely insufficient to allow anyone to conclude that we’re talking about a human being that deserves to die.
We kill prisoners on death row because we allow ourselves to disregard the value of human life. Period.
Thank you. And I hope, in some future discussion, you won’t paint pro-lifers as being universally inconsistent on these points. Some are. Not all of us.
I daresay the best argument agasint arbitrary hoop-jumps is that there’s no end to them. Once it becomes okay to impose a useless time-wasting task in order to discourage something (because the political will to simply outlaw it is lacking), it’s okay to add another, and another, and then it becomes a competition as to who can be the most righteous, with anyone who thinks things have gone too far dismissed as a backslider or traitor or such.
[ul]
[li]Arbitrary task #1 added.[/li]
[li]The disliked behaviour drops slightly, does not stop.[/li]
[li]Arbitrary task #2 added, since #1 obviously didn’t get the point across.[/li]
[li]The disliked behaviour drops slightly more, does not stop, because it turns out to many people, the behaviour is very important to them.[/li]
[li]Arbitrary task #3 added. *That’ll *show them![/li]
[li]The disliked behaviour drops more, but does not stop, and by now workarounds have been found for Tasks #1 and #2, because (still) it turns out to many people, the behaviour is very important to them.[/li]
[li]Arbitrary task #4 added, with the intent of being particularly onerous.[/li]
[li]People who supported (or were at least willing to tolerate) Tasks #1 and #2 express concerns about the impositions of #4 and the costs of enforcing it. Accusations begin within the group of lack of resolve. People who supported #2, once thought of as extreme, are now relative moderates because they don’t support #4. Phrases like TINO (Tasker In Name Only) are coined and thrown around. People who don’t support more regulation get accused of loving the disliked behaviour, of secretly practicing it themselves. A few Taskers get embroiled in scandals, uncovered by the gossip-hungry press, who just love stories of hypocrisy.[/li]
[li]Social costs of enforcing #1 through #4 increase. People who were once honest are now criminals. More law-enforcement resources are diverted. Someone charismatic is arrested or killed, gets public sympathy. Officials are corrupted into selectively applying the laws (or not applying them at all). The laws are increasingly seen as a burden and nuisance (which was the intent) and ignored (which was not).[/li][/ul]
I suggest that someone who thinks adding an arbitrary regulation is an okay means to get a desired end consider the people who would love to add a thousand arbitrary regulations of increasing harshness for the same goal. It’s tempting to put barriers in the paths of your opponents, but consider what *your own side *might do, if there were no barriers to putting barriers.
Most of the pro-choice crowd (from what I can tell) don’t believe that this WI law will reduce the number of abortions due to the mother seeing an ultrasound, but because some women will not be able get an ultrasound due to travel/expense/other difficulties. So most of us see this as a blatant, cynical end-run around the system.
On what basis do you (if indeed you share this belief) conclude that the major effect of the law will be inability to get an ultrasound? The women are given a free ultrasound; what expense is involved?
Your Google fu has failed you, that experiment involved oocytes not zygotes, so cite?
Or, at this point, you could admit that your definition of personhood includes an unknown, undetectable entity you would call a soul. It would be the honest approach.
Functioning brains are what make people, well, people. It is what we value most in people is it not? Legs, arms, kidneys even hearts can be replaced but brains? No brains make people, without one you are not a person.
Can you show where the women are getting a free ultrasound? The law mandates that a list of places that offer a free ultrasound be provided but does not mandate that such places exist or are located in every location.
In the various threads about the prosecution of George Zimmerman for shooting and killing Teryvon Martin, several posters have expressed sentiments similar to the following:
This seems to embody the same sort of attitude: I don’t care what the actual law says; because I am convinced of the wrongness of Zimmerman’s actions, I am willing to see the law ignored to impose some consequence on him, even acknowledging that the consequence is not mandated by the law.
Well, it’s costing somebody something. If the woman isn’t charged directly, doesn’t the clinic have to pay for it, which they pass onto patients in higher bills generally? Is there a provision in the law allowing the clinic to bill Medicare for pre-abortion ultrasounds, or would that be government funding of abortion?
Further, I trust getting an ultrasound is not an instant process. The woman’s time is being wasted, as well as that of whoever is operating the ultrasound machine.
I suggest that if this is important to pro-life groups, let them pay for it and offer it as a free service to pregnant women.
Because many women don’t live nearby these free ultrasound locations, and many other day-to-day difficulties can pop up making it difficult for some women to get an extra, unnecessary medical procedure, even a free one.
And I tried to supply a “well-crafted argument” against arbitrary procedural barriers in post #305, albeit as a general comment and not specific to abortion.
