Fair enough, and I see the ambiguity in what I posted. You may well be right that pro-lifers would require organ donations under those conditions, although I’ve never heard any doing so.
FWIW, I don’t accept the train switch ethic choice (i.e., that not touching a train switch and thereby killing ten people is better than touching the train switch and killing one, because inaction removes ethical responsibility). It certainly seems, from all the times that pro-lifers bring up the “without interference” bit, that pro-lifers tend to accept the train switch ethic choice. They’ll have to clarify, though :).
Because it is. The reason why you can’t kill someone instead of kicking them out of your house is because there is no certainty that they will die if they leave. There is no non-lethal means of ejecting a pre-viability fetus.
Using an analogy past the breaking point is a fallacy.
No, that is not the reason. See the cite to maritime law, one of the very few occasions where if you kick someone out, they’ll certainly die. And see my several examples earlier.
Or, try this town. January 6, nasty cold night, temperatures in the minus twenties Fahrenheit, blizzard, phone lines down, power down.
Mary, sick of hearing her six-month-old crying and crying, puts the swaddled baby out behind her house.
Bob, exhausted with taking wiping the butt of his crotchedy feeble stroke-stricken grandfather, wheels the old man out into the street and leaves him there.
Stella, pissed off at her boyfriend for passing out drunk one too many times, heaves his sorry unconscious ass out onto the porch.
Come morning, which of these three do you think the police are coming for? Will they agree that lethality is not important? Will they agree that you were just kicking them out of your house? Or will they read the thread and notice that you can’t even use force to kick trespassers out of your house?
I think your statue analogy is interesting; I agree with you that an analogy doesn’t have to be realistic to be useful. The problem I have with the statue scenario (and others like it) is the implicit assertion that conception just kind of happens without any kind of choice involved, like, “Well, I wasn’t even there, and this guy just came and dropped a statue in my living room - whoa!” Also, a statue isn’t alive. So let’s tweak it a little…
Let’s say you’re surfing the web and come across an ad for a magic goldfish that turns into a person after 3 months. Let’s say you order one, just as a lark. Why not? There’s nothing wrong with having fun, and they’re out of stock over 99% of the time anyway.
But then the company actually comes through and the delivery guy hands you the magic goldfish. I think you could reasonably be surprised - and not necessarily in a good way - but could you throw it out on the street to die? I think there’s something wrong with that.
The “pro-life” movement doesn’t want to put women who have abortions into prison so much as they want to harass them. The whole “abortion causes breast cancer” hypothesis has been totally disproven, yet they still use it. There’s even an anti-abortion tract that says men who cause a woman to have an abortion might “experiment with homosexuality.” If that’s not appealing to the fear factor what is?
And like I said, if the fetus is a person, while not prosecute women who have miscarriages? They should be held responsible for murder.
Yeah, I know you’ve said that often. And it’s a stupid argument every time you say it. We don’t prosecute women for murder when their children die of natural causes, either. Why do you think that is?
A miscarriage can be natural. But what if the woman did something that caused it? Wouldn’t that be murder.
Before abortion was legal, the emergency room doctor who treated any woman for a miscarriage had to find fetal tissue or turn her over to the police. Read Doctor X’s Intern and Paul Sloan’s Choices for more details.
Sloan was an ER doctor who decided to perform illegal abortions after seeing some of the lengths woman went to to cause a miscarriage.
Ok, I can work with that analogy. I believe that it is ok to kill the goldfish. It really is just a fish, and killing a fish is not an immoral act, if you have a valid reason for it. Not wanting to assume the responsibility for a person (which would happen if you do not kill the goldfish) is a valid reason in my book.
What I would have a problem with is, if you choose to let the goldfish turn into a person and then decide to kill the person. A person has rights, and you could have avoided the situation by killing the goldfish.
So my problem with the pro-life side is that they will not allow me to kill the goldfish, because it is magic. And my problem with (parts of) the pro-choice side is that they say it makes no difference whether I kill the goldfish or the person as long as it is in my house.
Side note: I have a small issue with the goldfish analogy. People who have sex do not necessarily do it for the purpose of initiating a pregnancy. In that sense they do not “order” the goldfish. You may say that they know there is a chance the goldfish gets dropped into their hands, but that is as far as it goes. There is that idea that if a women accidentally gets pregnant it is somehow “her own fault because she had sex”. I believe that to be highly inappropriate.
In addition, there are two arbitrary determinations involved:
We decided that what the goldfish turn into is a person.
We decided that this happens at a particular time, i.e. three months after delivery.
It’s easy to say “it’s a magic goldfish, that’s what it does, don’t fight the hypothetical.” But if this is considered analogous to abortion, aren’t the equivalent atbitrary determinations:
We decided that what the fetus turn into is a person.
We decided that this happens at a particular time, i.e. three months after conception.
Why? It’s a fetus, that’s what it does, don’t fight the hypothetical, apparantly.
Apparently you consider everything that you do not agree to as “arbitrary”.
Yes, my position is that in the course of pregnancy (and before birth) the embryo turns into a person. I have quite at length provided my reasoning for that. You do not have to agree with it, but it sure is not arbitrary.
What is your position? The fetus is not a person until the moment of birth? Is there a reason for selecting that very moment, or is it an arbitrary choice of yours?
Yes it probably would, but it would be hard to find evidence for and hard to prosecute, but it should definitely be treated as murder. All of this is logical if you consider a fetus a human being with human rights.
The analogy is bad because it doesn’t cover the instances of rape. Or maybe you could say that the goldfish found its way into your possession against your will and you can’t get rid of it without it dying. But then it makes the analogy even more unrealistic.
And on your side note, it really doesn’t matter what the purpose of having sex is. All that matters is that the woman knows it’s always possible to end up pregnant by having sex. It really is her own fault if she does get pregnant from consensual sex, even accidentally, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t be.
This is easily demonstrated incorrect. Could the fetus/goldfish become a person at four months instead of three? At two months instead of three? If changing this detail doesn’t affect the premise, it is clearly arbitrary.
The arbitrariness of “person” is a bit more subtle, but I note that in practice, the main reason anyone even considers applying that label to a fetus is as an intermediate step to restricting abortion, as opposed to giving fetuses the vote or letting them own property and sign contracts. If calling a fetus a “groo” had similar effect, pro-lifers would be calling them groo.
No, but I’m glad you asked instead of just declaring what my position was. My position is that the personhood of a fetus is irrelevant. My concerns are with the rights of the pregnant woman. The fetus can become a person upon birth which I admit is arbitrary but it is certainly carries a significant distinction from its state before birth. If anyone wants to call it a person before birth, let them. Heck, call it a person before conception, if you like.
The analogy truthseeker3 suggested was - at least as I understand it - intended to describe a normal pregnancy, i.e. one that is not the result of a rape. It does what it is intended to do. Why do you feel that it needs to cover rape too?
“Having sex for a purpose other than procreation is inherently sinful. If a woman does it and ind the process gets pregnant against her wishes it only serves her right.” That position - which may or may not be yours - has been around for centuries. Women see it as an attempt to deny them the same sexual freedom that men enjoy, and they believe that to be unfair. I agree with them.
If a woman has sex and gets pregnant against her wishes, it is not her “fault”, because she has done nothing wrong. If I drive down the road in my car and hit a person that stumbles into the road, then it is not my fault, even though my driving down the road was a necessary precondition for the accident. But driving down the road is not doing anything wrong. And neither is having sex.
If changing this detail does not affect the premise, it is also not relevant. So why do you feel that you need to attack it?
For what it’s worth, I have earlier in this thread provided my position regarding when the “goldfish” turns into a person. As you may remember it involves a time interval rather than a precise moment. It would have been possible to work that into the analogy, and if you feel that it would help matters, I will do so. But since the analogy was not mine in the first place, I did not want to inflate it.
When you say “pro-lifers” do you mean me? Because I do not consider myself one, and I am sure **nate **and **Terr **would call me pro-choice (or a less flattering variant thereof).
You are suggesting my motive for applying that “label” to a fetus, and you are mistaken. I am not looking for a step to restrict abortion. It is more like the other way round: I would like to allow abortion, but the more mature the fetus becomes the more I feel that I cannot justify it.
I believe the twins example I provided earlier is a good illustration of why I believe that a fetus achieves personhood before birth.
If you say that the personhood of a fetus is irrelevant, what follows is that you consider your position to be valid, even if the fetus is indeed a person.
Would you agree that if it is a person, that it also has the basic rights of a person? Or would you call it a “person without rights”?
In case you say the person has rights, why do you believe that the rights of the mother outweigh those rights?
In your theory, at the moment of conception women stop being people, with say over their futures and their health options, and simply turn into incubators for the state.
Pardon me for saying so, but your theory reeks of misogyny and Christian punishment for sin.
How about this? You don’t agree with abortion, don’t have one. And go ahead and feel free to stick your busybody nose into other people’s most intimate decisions as you wish, I’m sure you’ll win many friends. But change the law? Sorry but this is the twenty first century and women aren’t going back. Period.
Because you’re using it as a premise in an argument that concludes that abortion should be restricted. Whether or not it’s relevant to ME, I assume it’s relevant to YOU as well as anyone who might be convinced by such an argument. Hence I point out what I perceive as flaws in your premise in order to undermine your conclusion, which I oppose.
I use “pro-life” to describe those who seek to restrict abortion access. It’s not intended to be derisive or pejorative, but just the label preferred (as is my understanding) by people who hold such views.
That said, there are certainly degrees of opposition. Some who call themselves “pro-life” (or pro-choice, for that matter) could easily say to someone else who uses the same label that they’re not REALLY pro-life (or pro-choice) because they’re not strident enough about it.
If you don’t consider pro-life (or -choice) as descriptive of your views, you could always find or create a new label, or not bother with labels at all.
For me, I just use “pro-life” and “pro-choice” for convenience. I’d say “Camp A” and “Camp B” if those were the labels generally used.
If it’s a matter of personal misgivings or discomfort, fine. My concern is this morphing into support for legislation, though I’d argue the issue anyway just for fun.
I suggest it might a good illustration, but of a meaningless point.
Well, the primary reason is that if I was that mother and I didn’t want to be pregnant, I would want the option of terminating that pregnancy. It certainly wouldn’t be an arbitrary issue in my life, like deciding what color socks to wear.
But even without an empathy argument, though at the risk of being accused of using arbitrary bases, in general terms the mother is “established” - she survived childhood, she has been educated, she has formed bonds within her society. The fetus has only the POTENTIAL for any of this, and I tend to side with reality over potential.