Stratocaster, if you close your eyes, are you blind?
There is a distinct difference between a temporary disruption of brain function and a permanent one.
Not if you’re a person who assign rights only to those who possess a certain level of brain function. Perhaps you’re not one of those people. If you are, then the existence of “mental state A” (however you define it) is either a requirement for “personhood” and rights or it’s not.
I’d disagree that what you’ve got there is a person, plus i’d disagree that one example is enough to create a reasonable assumption. Especially compared to the many more examples of us reserving potential and actuality - as far as a base assumption goes, i’d really have to say the base assumption should be of a lack of rights. You make your assumptions based on the likeliest, common options, not the outliers.
How exactly is your analogy relevant then?
Seems to me to be a sliding scale, rather than a set of axiomatic presumptions. A sperm and an egg have “potentiality”, but the potential is not manifest and so the amount of rights we should invest in them is very low (I would argue) - you can flush them down a toilet without a thought, but deliberately mutating them in a manner likely to create develomental problems for a future human & then using them in an attempt to create a future human is out.
A fertilized egg has the same sort of “rights” - you can scrape it off of kill it without a qualm (an IUD does that, I think), but if you know it exists, you can’t deliberately expose it to lots of booze and then bring it to term.
A fetus, before it gains the indicia of conciousness, has the same sort of “rights”, only more so; you can still get rid of it without moral qualm, but otherwise you can’t mess with it in ways likely to screw it up when born.
When, finally, the fetus has a developed nervous system, sometime around the third trimester, it has developed sufficiently for its “potential” to become an “actual”. Now it has rights that move beyond those attached to its development, and one ought to have moral qualms about disposing of it, except with good and sufficient reason.
I’m not fussed about those odd situations in which a person, once they have developed concious ability, is temporarily deprived of it; that is not a question of a “potential” eventually becomming an “actual”, but rather of an “actual” temporarily impeded.
To my mind, the story of fetal development is one of rights gradually accruing in line with the gradual development of the fetus; there is no “magic moment” which clearly sets off the transition to full human rights, but rather a criterion (conciousness) which is hard ti define. Howvever, it need not be precisely defined, as however one chooses to define it, a fetus in the first trimester when the vast majority of abortions by choice take place clearly does not possess it. The cases where someone would choose to wait until the third trimester to abort are pretty unusual.
Are you serious? It’s really not complicated. You’re aware there are degrees of crimes other than murder when you kill someone right? Intent may make the difference between murder, manslaughter, or negligent homicide, but all are serious crimes {the term I used other than murder} and all are punishable offenses. I thought it was fairly obvious common knowledge so I didn’t spell it out.
Again, it’s very simple logic. Is a baby already born the same as a fertilized egg or fetus? Many in pro-life say yes and that’s the specific discussion here. If a mother kills her three week old she’s guilty of a crime. If a doctor killed a three week old with birth defects he’d also be guilty of a crime. Would that same doctor or mother be guilty of crimes by terminating a pregnancy? Please note I didn’t say murder.
It’s an analogy and should be discussed only in terms that are relevant to the thread.
Yes, but in modern times a firm belief that slavery is not wrong would not save a slave owner from prosecution. That’s the relevant bit.
That’s not the thread topic. I’m suggesting that not advocating some legal consequences for those who preform or get abortions pro-life has tacitly accepted that a potential person is not really a person {in spite of rhetoric to the contrary}
Um, how is it not?
(Starting sentences with “Um” sounds incredibly dismissive. It would be easier if you just said, “Hey, I don’t feel like talking to you.”)
I fail to see your argument from the logic. A person who has been reduced to a limited capacity by a medical procedure is entirely different from an object that exists in potential but not actuality. When someone stops the heart of a patient during surgery, is a death certificate filled out?
I thought that most “pro life” people do want legal consequences for those performing or obtaining abortions, only not the exact same ones as suitable to deliberate premeditated murder.
Doing something “illegal” generally has legal consequences.
The existence of limited exceptions isn’t determinative - after all, all sorts of laws based on general policy considerations have limited exceptions based on different policy considerations.
In short, I do not accept the conclusion that “pro lifers” doing what every wanna be lawmaker throughout history has done - i.e. attempt to craft a law to take into account sometimes competing concerns of morality and policy - are thereby exposing themselves as hypocites. Even though, as outlined in detail above, I cannot agree with the merit of their moral position, based as it is on axioms I do not accept as valid.
But every time a person ends up dead it doesn’t mean a crime was committed by someone somewhere.
If I see a pedestrian walking down the street, and I aim for him and run him over that’s one crime.
If I’m driving down the street not paying attention to what I’m doing and run over the same pedestrian that’s another crime.
If I’m driving down the street and the pedestrian jumps into traffic and I run him over then I haven’t committed a crime at all.
Same outcome in all three case–dead human being. Different legal and moral culpability for the driver who killed the human being.
It seems logical to assume that when you are talking about “a person who assign[s] rights only to those who possess a certain level of brain function”, you’re talking about me. However, if I may defend myself, you are not accurately describing my position - it’s a touch more nuanced.
First, I’ll note that the thing I personally value isn’t just the active consciousness, but the ‘state’ that underlies it - demonstrably a large portion of a person’s identity and memories and personality are separate from the active brain activity, because those people you’re resucitating don’t wake up as completely different people. An undeveloped fetus doesn’t have this at all, at least not physicaly*, and so I have no reason to value it on that count.
- and for the soul-believers out there, I have considered this option - but if you kill a cell-clump before it’s physically capable of supporting a life, you have blown up the car before the driver got into it. I certainly haven’t contributed to the suffering of the soul if there’s not a physical system to transmit the pain, and logically the driver can just go get into another car, having not actually had use of this one (and if the transit authority doesn’t allow that, blame him, not me
).
Secondly, I’ll note that I draw a distinction between a lit light bulb, an inactive light bulb, the shattered remains of a broken light bulb, and a pile of unconnected light bulb parts that aren’t fully assembled and don’t have the right gas or vacuum yet. The first two are both light bulbs - though if being lit is the defining criteria, you could debate whether the off one counted. The third certainly isn’t a light bulb anymore. And the first isn’t a light bulb and never was one. So I can easily draw a distinction between a clump of cells that isn’t physically capable of supporting consciousness, and a person who is taking a cognitive hiatus - they’re physically and functionally very different things, and one of them is a whole lot closer to being that cognitively-aware human we all value than the other. So even if we agree that the temporarily-dead person counts as a person, that doesn’t necessarily mean the fetus does.
Thirdly, when a person graduates into meriting ‘personhood’ - by whatever standard you use, they are assumed to be granted rights, including the right not to be killed. When such a person subjects themselves to a doctor for a treatment that requires the temporary cessation of brain state, the doctor became obligated to bring them back out of it, and everyone else is obligated not to prevent the doctor from carrying out his/her obligations. Thus, despite the person temporarily becoming a mere corpse, everyone is obligated to assist or at least not interfere with their consciousness being restored - based on obligations accumulated during the human’s prior state as a living being, when they had already attained the related rights. A fetus never reached the point of having such a claim.
Expanding on the above point, it’s worth noting that the obligation to resucitate the human only applies because it was explicitly accrued by the doctor when he started the procedure on a human he wasn’t allowed to murder. To illustrate this permit me to propose the thought experiment of a person who could restore the dead to life - back in working order, fully conscious, reversing decay, the whole shebang. So, to this person, every corpse is a ‘temporarily dead’ person lying on an operating table. The question is, would this person be obligated to restore every corpse they find to life, based on the same obligation they have not to murder people? I say no - the doctor has this obligation because he was obligated not to murder his patient. The ressurector isn’t murdering by failing to recussitate - he’s just leaving things as he found them.
Similarly, we have no obligation to protect the undeveloped clump of cells, because it hasn’t even reached a point of being in a state where it could attach that obligation to us. We have obligations to the mother - if she wishes the developing fetus to live we are obligated not to kill it the same way we’re obligated not to smash all her seeded but not grown flowerpots: they’re her property. But if she wants to get somebody’s help in smashing her own flowerpots, then go ahead.
I broadly agree but i prefer my approach (naturally :D), because it takes into account the notion that if a pregnant person is intending to take a fetus to term, there are certain behaviours which ought to be prohibited (such as, for example, drinking in such amounts as to risk fetal alcohol syndrome if you know you are pregnant and fully intend to have the kid).
Seems to me that the developing fetus does not have any human rights itself, not having attained conciousness, but it does possess some limited rights - not to be messed with in ways likely to screw up the human being it may become, if everything works out for it.
It seems to me that this cannot be completely an extention of the mother’s proprietary rights - if so, what would be ethically wrong with mom drinking herself senseless every night while pregnant, knowing full well the possible medical effects (i.e. a lifetime of retardation for the kid she wants to have)? It’s her body and her fetus.
Conversely, abortion doesn’t raise the same ethical issue, as in the case of abortion nothing ever arises which will ever possess human rights.
I would prefer to put it as saying that after the baby is born, it could arguably hold the mother accountable for wilfully damaging it in development, and that society might step in to hold the woman accountable on the child’s behalf. (If you actually really wanted to really implement this sort of intrusive nanny-state, that is.) The distinction is actually along the lines of the gag I started with - that one way to evade the rights the fetus would accrue when it became a baby would be to abort it before it became one. In this case, though, it would be no gag; if a woman elected to get an abortion, she would be free to drink herself senseless every night until then (and just might do so - as has been noted the vast majority of women who get abortions are not cavalier about it) because the thing she would be soaking in booze would never become a baby.
Of course, if you open up this line of argument, it’s a baby (heh) step from there to holding the mother accountable for allowing a damaged baby to be born. If a woman knew that it was extremely likely that her child would have a genetic defect, be retarded, be marginally less pretty than her peers - would not the child have a right to complain and litigate against the mother for allowing it to be born in that state? If you’re going to let them complain about fetal alcohol syndrome, I mean.
Yes, you can argue that the slope isn’t slippery - but if it’s even a little slippery, there’s not all that much distance on that slope between those two points.
Nah, as you correctly deduced I’m not fussed by that slope, any more than the one which states that holding a parent accountable for deliberately poking out a kid’s eyes is likely to lead to criminalization for parents with blind kids.
The key is the “deliberately” part. It is no crime or even unethical to accidentally end up with fetal alcohol syndrome because you were not aware you were pregnant while drinking. I think at the very least least there is an ethical duty to avoid heavy drinking if you know you are pregnant, are aware of the consequences of fetal alcohol syndrome, and intent to reproduce.
I don’t see this as intrusive nanny-statism, or if it is, it is reasonably justified: the nanny state steps in to redress all sorts of neglect and abuse once the kid is born.
I agree that a woman intending an abortion can drink all she wants, it doesn’t have consequence - so long as she carries it out.
I was mostly talking about cases where problems were anticipatable with reasonable confidence - I believe I’ve heard of cases where people chose not to have children because of the serious risk they’d have a disorder. Presumably, if they chose to have such children anyway, they could be pegged as doing it deliberately, at least as much a you could peg a person as deliberately giving their kid fetal alcohol syndrome when in reality all they deliberately wanted was to get soused. (To my shame I don’t recall the particular disorders or problems under discussion.)
And as for the rest - I’m thinking this could be a bit of a problem to enforce. “Your honor, the damage was already done by the time I knew!”
Still seems quite distinguishable to me - in the one case it is an inherent gentic risk you have just by virtue of being you; in the other, a risk you deliberately assume in pursuit of hetting hammered.
I agree, likey difficult if not impossible to enforce as law, at least with current medical technology; I’m thinking more as an ethical guide (as in, what would or should I do in this case, were it possible? What would I advise others to do, if they asked?)
I’d have no ethical troubles with the usual form of abortion, since as stated above a fetus isn’t a concious being; I would have problems with heavy drinking when one knows one is pregnant and intends to have the kid. I’ve seen kids with fetal alcohol syndrome, and it isn’t good.
So if you knew that every child you bore would have down’s syndrome (I dunno if that’s possible and I doubt it, but like I said I’ve forgotten the real examples), then choosing to have the kid anyway is less a choice than choosing to be drunk all the time and have the kid anyway? I know the situations are distinguishable, but unlike the cases “blob of cells” and “insensible for a moment”, I’m not sure the difference is relevent - in both cases conscious and deliberate choices are being made that have a very high likelihood of creating a damaged kid. If the problem making it worthy of state action is the conscious and deliberate choice to create a damaged kid, then it seems to me that both cases would qualify.
Admittedly it would suck to be the person who could only have down’s kids, as they couldn’t create an avenue to have children through simple modification of their own behavior. But that doesn’t change the fact that the details that underpin the argument for state action are basically the same in both cases.
I cannot agree. The end product may be the same (assuming for the sake of argument that Down’s is sufficiently similar to fetal alcohol syndrome); but ethically they are very different, and distinguishable in a manner that is totally rellevant.
The one case is one in which there is a chance that the child will inherit a medical condition. This was not a result of choice. It is true that one has a choice whether or not to have children in the first place, but choosing to restrain from ever having children is a major deprivation of liberty; one must weigh this serious, major deprivation of liberty against the chance of having a defect - and that is not I think an ethical calculus that is up to others to make; realizing that, for some, having children is an important aspect of their being.
In the other case, there is a chance that an otherwise normal child will be damaged. This is the result of choice - the choice whether or not to get drunk for a few months. The deprivation of liberty involved is slight - “getting drunk for a few months” cannot be seriously compared in gravity with “never having children, ever”. The calculus is wholly different, and it is much, much easier to harden one’s heart against the thought of depriving a person of the right to get hammered under those conditions - the liberty deprivation is small when compared to the damage the behaviour most likely will do.
Now, some may argue that for them getting hammered each and every night is just as important an aspect of their being as ever having a family is for other people: I can harden my heart against that sort of argument, too.
I thought the whole premise of this tangent is that it is not the case that an otherwise normal child will be damaged - in both cases, by the time there is a child, the damage is already done. From that standpoint the situations are exactly equivalent from the child’s perspective (it doesn’t care the process you used to deliberately create it damaged), and thus there is equal cause for the government to step in and try to persuade you not to let the event occur - presuming (as you noted) that down’s syndrome (or whatever the real condition is) is comparably bad with FAS.
Now, you can start splitting hairs about whether it’s too mean to prevent a woman from deliberately popping out down’s syndrome damaged kids, but from where I sit, either the government is going to be trying to prevent damaged kids from being born, or it isn’t. So from the standpoint of the law we have the equivalent of “blind woman decides to drive and gets in a wreck” and “woman decides to drive blindfolded and gets in a wreck” - in one case the problematic condition is inherent but in both cases you have somebody wilfully choosing to do something that caused a result you’ve decided is punishable.
Seems to me you are making the same error I see the “pro-lifers” making: taking some axiom as absolute. In this case, that damage = prevent it no matter how it came about. That isn’t the case in any system of law or ethics I know of - intentions and actions generally matter; the weighing of consequences and goals isn’t “splitting hairs”, but the very stuff of moral decision-making.
What is “punishable” isn’t having a damaged kid (isn’t that the “slippery slope” you were warning against?) but deliberatiely doing something which will result in a damaged kid: and the identity of that “something” is key.
In the first case, it is simply the act of wanting to give birth at all.
In the second, it is in drinking when pregnant.
The nanny state preventing either is impinging on liberty, so then one should ask, is impinging on liberty in either case reasonable?
The answer, I would suggest, is different in the two cases.