I don’t think it logically CAN be part of the legal debate because it’s too subjective to be resolved. How would it be possible to arrive at a legislative or judicial answer to an abstract, philosophical question which HAS no objective answer?
Nope. I’ve never said that and wouldn’t support it. Try again.
Apparently the difference between a debate about what the law is and what the law should be eludes you, but I have no idea why this continues to surprise me. Your dishonesty abounds. Good night.
If you support minimum wage laws, what is the basis for making it illegal to hire someone for less than $5.15/hr (or whatever the MW is at the time)?
Well I call bullshit on that and as a matter of fact, I’m holding a baby on my lap as I type this.
And that “if” can never be anything more than a subjective personal opinion with no more inherent objective “truth” value than the opinion that it is not. The driving legal issue in the abortion debate is whether the state can show a compelling interest in restricting a preexisting right. No argument from personal and subjective moral perception can ever rise to the level of a compelling state interest because it can never be called “true” by the state.
The economic stability of the state.
I forgot the Diogenes the Cynic second line of defense, which is merely to lie thru your teeth.
:shrugs;
I suppose I should act surprised, but I can’t bother.
Regards,
Shodan
The state was economically stable before MW laws went into effect. If that’s you’re reason, then it’s a bogus one.
Your linked post does not support your assertion. For the record, I have NEVER said that homeschools should not be allowed to teach creationism, what I have said is that they should ALSO have to teach evolutionary theory. I’ve said they should not have to teach it as fact or say they believe it, only that they should teach what it IS and that the student should have to be able to answer some questions about it. I’ve never said that parents should be disallowed from teaching any religious doctrine at all. I’m pretty sure I have made that point explicit every time I’ve talked about it. You are wrong.
Irrelevent. My point is that calling abortion the responsible thing to do says that people would rather be dead than “unwanted”, and you’re more than happy to help them. This then gives visions of doctors whistling as they merrily perform abortions, thinking about how helpful they’re being, with as much regard as if they were freezing off warts. This image drives the other side crazy.
I’m not sure what the pre-existing right is here, but I assume you mean the right to an abortion. This has not to my knowledge been a widely existing right, historically. And leaving that aside, you seem to be adamant in missing the point that the pro-life lobby’s point is that of all pre-existing rights, the one the is the most fundamental and pre-existing is the right to live. If the fetus is a person, then abortion is violating its most basic right imaginable. Chanting that it can’t be proven to be a person doesn’t change the fact that this issue is at the center of the debate.
And you know what, my concern for your opinion is unfortunately gone to the point where I don’t care to bang my head against this particular wall any more. I said I don’t debate this any more, and here I am debating it. I didn’t expect to have to argue what the issue even is, though.
This kind of thinking makes an assumption that people who support abortion rights view abortion as “killing people.” They don’t. I don’t. I see it as responsibly undergoing a procedure will will prevent a person from ever being produced. You can’t kill a person who never existed. This view of abortion may “drive the other side crazy” but it’s a view which is not invalidated just because of that. Some people are also driven crazy by the thought of gay sex. Who cares?
No, I’m talking about the Right to Privacy which was decided in Griswold Vs Connecticut and which was the basis for the Roe decision. The ruling in Roe said that the state could not show a compelling interest in abridging a woman’s right to privacy via abortion bans (in the first two trimesters) and that the “moral” argument over “when life begins” was a philosphical question which could not be resolved by the Court and which therefore did not need to be considered.
And again, the problem with this approach is that if you can never prove a fetus is a person (which you can’t) then you can never prove it has any rights which could supercede a woman’s right to privacy and bodily autonomy. Saying that “if it’s a person, it has rights” is a non-starter because the first part of that formulation can never be objectively settled.
I’m not going to respond, as you seem to deliberately not address what’s being said so much of the time. Bye.
[quote=Diogenes the Cynic]
I don’t get this. All of a sudden we’re not talking about the law, we’re talking about “objective moral truth?” [//quote]
I don’t know how relevant my original OP in GD is to this discussion, but since this seems to be, at least ostensibly, an extension of that thread, I’ll offer this: in case it wasn’t painfully clear, my OP was discussing the moral issues at hand, not the correct interpretation of the current law as it stands. Frankly, it absolutely boggles my mind that you’re either incompetent enough to not recognize that or disingenuous enough to carry on for pages a self-righteous, myopic argument that nobody else is debating.
The so-called “moral issues” are only relevant in respect to how they might possibly affect the law. In the case of the abortion issue, the perceived “moral value” of a fetus has no ABILITY to affect the law- or at least no ability to override existing the Constitutional rights of women - so any special pleading about is a waste of time and amounts to nothing more than a substantively vacant, sanctimonious jerk-off.
I am both pro-choice and anti-abortion. I arrived at both places on moral grounds.
Diogenes, I think that you have defended your position well in this thread. You have been clear and consistent.
When you have reached your decision, be sure to let the pregnant women and their doctors know what you think is best.
And you’re the man who wants me to quit using cocksucker as a putdown?
Woody Allen said that it’s the only place you can get a good steak.
Well, that was a statement of fact. Perhaps it’s not a fact that you like, but it’s a fact none the less.
It sure is easy to say this if you refuse to assign any moral value to the fetus when debating the issue. You have failed to show how a woman’s right trumps the fetus’s right when the fetus has high “moral value”. You haven’t even attempted to show this, which is a clear extension of your above statement. Every time you’re pressed on it you just state that moral value is irrelevant cuz the SCOTUS says so, or you say it’s impossible to assign moral value because it’s subjective.
We assign moral value to things all the time, and write laws that reflect it. Pets have higher value than livestock. In India, cows have higher value than pigs. Dolphins have higher value than tuna. Why should it be so difficult to treat an unborn human like a born human instead of like a random group of cells?
You failed to show that the fetus has “moral value.” That’s basically a meaningless staement anyway. opinions about the “moral value” of a fetus have no more objective significance and are no more debatable than opinions on flavors of Doritos. “A fetus is a person” is an equivalent statement to “Nacho Cheese Doritos are delicious.” It’s not a subject which has any debatable content. It’s purely a question of peception and it’s not possible for anyone to be right or wrong.
Both of those things are true. As far as I’m concerned, a fetus has exactly as much moral value as the woman who has it inside her wants to afford it. No more, no less, and no oe else’s opinion means shit.
Why don’t we let the person who has the entity inside her own body decide how to treat it. Since all opinions on this are equally subjective and equally valid, then the woman is the only person whose opinion would seem to have any clear value.
Everything has a moral value, the question is where on the continuum of values does it reside. A pebble is pretty low, a magnificent oak tree somewhat higher, a pet dog higher still, etc.
The best part about this whole argument is that only one person in this entire thread is claiming fetal status is undebatable. I see a whole lot of grist for that mill.
What about the opinion of the fetus? Just because it can’t talk doesn’t mean it doesn’t want to survive, we can presume that it wants to live just as we do with infants. As you start telling me that fetuses don’t “have” opinions, riddle me this. Why does an 8mo fetus have no opinion on living or dying, when a baby born a month early does?
But that spectrum varies with each individual. There is no objective moral spectrum for anything. Morality is only a personal aestheic, like a taste in beer. Opinions on moral value are objectively no more meaningful than opinions on “beauty.” There is no such thing as objective moral truth. It’s all just personal perception and taste.
It’s debatable in the sense that people can argue about if they want to, and try to change each other’s minds. but it’s not resolvable and it’s certainly not something that can be resolved by the state.
I don’t believe a newborn baby has an opinion on dying either and the “8 month old fetus” argument is a tired, anti-abortion red herring, since that does not represent the reality of elective abortion. The vast majority (90%) of abortions are performed in the first trimester when the fetus or embryo or blastocyst is incapable of any thought at all.
If you’re only talking about some kind of survival instinct as opposed to literal cognitive “opinions” on the parts of fetuses, then maybe they do have some kind of low level instinct of that sort but that doesn’t make them “people” who are entitled to rights which should supercede the right of a woman not to be pregenant. An ant has a survival instinct too.