Cite that murder is illegal because it’s “immoral?”
Abortion laws already are made at the state level.
I disagree that the process is subjective, at least not to the same abstract degree that the “personhood” of a blastocyst" is argued.
There are some factors regarding the line between childhood and adulthood which are purely objective-- physical maturity being the most obvious example. Other factors are more variable but – in GENERAL – still follow a predictable rate of maturity. Brain development, cognitive maturity, etc.
The difference between childhood and adulthood may be ambiguous but it still objectively exists and it doesn’t take a philosopher or a theologian to draw a pragmatic line.
Cite that it’s not.
But are completely hampered by Roe v. Wade
You made the assertion. You have the burden of proof.
Which is really only another way of saying they have to adhere to the Constitution.
If a fetus is a person, it’s pretty irresponsible to make choices that create it and then kill it because you don’t want to carry it around for 9 months.
The way I see it, if fetuses are people, then the pregnant woman is in the same moral boat as the father of an infant. You have played your part in creating a human being, you can’t just back out now and let it suffer/die. You are responsible for the well being of that young human, whether it be for a 9mo pregnancy or an 18+ year financial commitment.
Sarahfeena, I’m on your side here but you’re not going to win the argument like that. Whether murder is moral or immoral is completely beside the point. You could argue from a Libertarian standpoint that everyone has a right to be alive. It is not immoral to deprive someone of their right to life, it is unjust. Not the same thing.
Besides, you made the assertion that murder was illegal because it is immoral, so it is up to you to provide the cite.
So it’s subjectively not subjective? Pffft. As I said: you are accelerating into the realms of sophistry with gay abandon. And I am not arguing that a blastocyst is a person. I believe that that position lies at one extreme of a subjective scale, and is a position with which I do not agree; you, on the other hand, are denying that that scale even exists, and that your position represents objective truth.
Wow! Almost like the way at one end of a foetus’ development we just have a bunch of cells, and at the other we have a person, and we have to make some sort of subjective judgment of when to balance the harm of destroying the foetus with the harm of infringing the mother’s rights. Crazy, innit.
And it’s funny; when you’re talking about brain development and cognitive maturity, you might almost be talking about a foetus, except I know you’re not because you’ve objectively proved that what matters with foetuses is travelling through a birth canal, a contention with which no-one could possibly argue because it’s “pragmatic”, not “subjective”. Or something.
Bah. For “…and that your position represents…” in my first paragraph, read “…and are claiming that your position represents…”.
If you don’t THINK it’s a person, then it’s NOT a person. Like I keep saying, that determination is purely subjective.
Do you think that a zygote can suffer? Do you think it’s a person?
No matter, if a woman with an unwanted pregnancy doesn’t think it’s a person, and doesn’t want it to BECOME a person, then the most morally responsible thing she can do is terminate the pregnancy. You can’t call somebody irresponsible simply because they don’t share your religious faith that an egg with some jizz on it is exactly the same a full-term baby.
I think we’re talking at cross purposes. I think the same pragmatism can be drwan with regard to fetal development as with childhood/adulthod. The pragmatic line is birth.
The pragmatism – the OBJECTIVITY-- in drawing the line at birth is that it is the line at which the fetus is no longer inside another person’s body. The CONFLICT of perceived rights ceases at that moment. It’s not a subjective determination about the baby but an objective observation that there is no more conflict of rights with the woman.
I agree with this (hell, it’s the entirety of my point), but still think that you are trying to draw a meaningless distinction between “pragmatic” and “subjective”, in order to further your ludicrously absolutist opinion. Here you seem to acknowledge the existence of the very trade-off people have been trying to get you to recognise, but then blurt out as if gospel:
This is a subjective statement, and I am trying to get you to admit this. I’m not arguing that it is wrong (although I believe that it is); I’m arguing against your utterly typical declaration that anyone in opposition to your own personal opinion is simply off the reservation and is irrelevant. I realise that you believe that birth is the only point after which a foetus deserves any protection whatsoever; I am trying to get you to acknowledge that it is a position with as much objective validity as any other: i.e., pretty much none. Cognitively speaking, the process of birth has absolutely no effect on the foetus; it is still the same being that it was 30 minutes ago. You believe that this 12 inch journey is crucial; others do not, and with no less validity than your own sacred opinion.
Note that at no point have I shared my opinion on the rights and wrongs of abortion because I believe them to be irrelevant to the question of the nature of the debate. You seem to think that your opinion is all that anyone could possibly want to consider, and it is this bizarre insistence with which I am taking issue.
Oh, so that’s how it works. :dubious:
But it is your subjective opinion that this is the only factor which matters. It simply defies belief that you can’t see this crucial distinction.
I know…horrible argument. Having trouble working up the motivation to get embroiled in yet another right-to-life debate (which clearly shows in my argument here). It doesn’t matter anyway, because that is a total hijack of the thread, and we shouldn’t go there.
The point is, that Diogenes makes sweeping statements based on his own opinion, and these statements are designed to shut down debate. The cite that Excalibre gave way back in the thread is an example. No matter what Diogenes says, the personhood of the fetus IS part of the debate. The cite that I gave about the right to own handguns is another example. Where has he given evidence that his MO does not involve “making declarations of correctness by fiat,” as John Corrado put it?
Yep. He’s doing it over and over in this thread. It’s not worth trying to argue things like this with him. He’s got a simple-minded, black-and-white view of the issue (and, frankly, most issues) and he’s simply unwilling to even acknowledge the fact that other, also logically valid viewpoints exist. At least that’s what I’ve seen.
Lord Ashtar, I was not necessarily directing that last question at you…I know you said that you agree with me. Just trying to get my part of the discussion back on track. Diogenes takes his own subjective opinion and states it as though it was objective fact. He knows he does this, he does it on purpose, and in post after post here he uses the same technique to defend the technique. No wonder this is going around in circles.
I think you may be onto something here. He must not understand the difference between what is “valid” and what is “true.”
Look, let’s keep these arguments straight. I jumped in when you said “even a full grown adult doesn’t have the right, blah blah”. Your claim is that even if a fetus is a full person, the woman still has the right to abort. You can’t go back now and just claim it’s not a person.
Let’s try again:
If a fetus is a person, it’s pretty irresponsible to make choices that create it and then kill it because you don’t want to carry it around for 9 months.
The way I see it, if fetuses are people, then the pregnant woman is in the same moral boat as the father of an infant. You have played your part in creating a human being, you can’t just back out now and let it suffer/die. You are responsible for the well being of that young human, whether it be for a 9mo pregnancy or an 18+ year financial commitment.
But they’re not legally “tissue” either, which is the whole point. Rather than talking about a line, we should be talking about the grey zone between tissuehood and personhood.
But that’s not what we do.
Once again, it isn’t that cut and dry. There is a strong element in the pro-choice movement that resists any resistrctions on abortion at an time.
Which proves the point I just made above.
Not really. We are still hashing out things like how threateing to the health of hte mother a continued preganacy has to be before we allow a viable fetus to be aborted, or just how “damaged” the fetus has to be. And the way we “decided” the abortion issue is not a very stable matter since it relied on the judgement of a handful of people. A simple change of 1 or 2 people, and we will “decide” the issue differently.
The only reason to harp on the issue as having been “decided” is to cut off debate. Most people aren’t buying that rhetorical device.