After posting the above, I went to get the morning paper. Coincidentally, there was a headline reading, “Consent laws for abortion result in no sharp drops”. Because this was reprinted from The New York Times, they don’t have a link to the story on their website. To summarize what’s in the article, abortion rates were studied in South Dakota, Arizona, Idaho, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia to see if the existence of parental consent laws could be used to predict whether the number of abortions went up or down. It couldn’t. In Tennessee, Arizona, and Idaho, the percentage of teenagers who had abortions went up after parental consent laws were put in place.
I’m no fan of abortions, unwanted pregnancies, or pregnant teenagers, but I’m even a less a fan of ineffective legislation which does nothing to solve the problem it’s purporting to take on.
I understand all of these things happen. Without wanting to be mean your objection is based on a fallacy. People die all the time, for all sorts of reasons, at all different stages of life. Their deaths, while tragic, do not negate the humanity of those that survive. Even if 99.9% of fertilised embryoes died through non-implantation or miscarraige does not necessarily mean that they cannot be human and deserving of rights. For instance during the black death in the 1300s killed around one third of Europe, with some areas suffering considerably higher fatalities. Their deaths, while tragic, did not mean that those around were suddenly not human because there was a high mortality rate.
Depends. Do we really understand for certain why miscarraiges happen anyway? (I don’t know, that is why I am asking). First of all for a murder to occur there needs to be an intent to kill. If she did intend for the miscarraige to happen, then there is the issue of whether she actually caused it to happen or not. If she intentionally caused the miscarriage then she would be morally guilty of murder. If she didn’t intend it then it is an accident. If she didn’t cause it then it is an unfortunate event. Legally since I assume there is no clear link between miscarraige and the mothers actions then I don’t think she should be prosecuted for anything because short of administering an abortive, it couldn’t be proven that she caused the miscarraige.
This argument is somewhat off track from abortion. Anyway the last I read on stuff about the pill was that it didn’t cause the death of fertilised eggs. That may well have been wrong. Without offering a firm opinion there is the case to be made that in society there is a certain level of risk that is deemed acceptable. So for instance we know that a certain relatively small number of people will die in cars every year. Yet we consider the utility of cars in general worth the lives of these people, by not outlawing the use of cars. If the percentages are around the same the argument could be made that the utility of the pill and other like contraceptives outweighs the relatively small cost of life that will inevitably happen.
Either way there is nothing intrinsicly wrong with contraceptives that stop egg and sperm meeting. If the current contraceptives fo produce an unacceptably high rate of embryo deaths, then we should try to find better contraceptive methods.
As I understand ectopic pregnancies (and I could well be wrong), the embryo implants outside the womb meaning that there is no chance that the emryo will develop into a child, and that if the pregnancy continues the woman will die. If that is wrong then correct me.
Anyway, sometimes there are situations in which there is no right answer, just one that is less wrong. There will be cases in which either the life of the mother or the child can be saved but not both. In those sort of situations I guess some sort of triage is the best approach. Since you can’t save both save the one with the best chance of life. Either that let the mother decide which one to save.
In the case of ectopic pregnancies I would say that given the mother has by far the better chance of living, and since both mother and child cannot both live, while killing the foetus is not a good thing to do, it is the best out of a bunch of bad options. Therefore I wouldn’t consider your friend immoral either.
Well, no…that’s not my understanding. You’re the one attempting to pigeonhole him into accepting the necessary but not sufficient condition.
Look, I think Der Trihs’s rhetoric is way overboard, bad form, and often borders (if not achieves) offensiveness. But, I’ve read the posts, and it’s clear to me that he considers both brain (or somesuch) structure and functional activity as necessary.
Well, of course the ontological approach is “more logical” than the functional approach. How fortunate for you that it provides a clear binary true/false position. Is, is not. For it or against it. Right vs. wrong.
Just as fortunate, IMO, the concept of “alive” is just a tad more complex than that, just as is any position concerning ethics. While there seems to be tendency to use physics as a model for biology, seeking out a few fully descriptive “laws of nature” that are adequate to define life, it’s a pipe-dream. The world is messy and contains many shades of grey. In attempting to reduce “humanity” to a single true/false, you remove the wonderful, awe-inspiring complexity that provides the multitudes of color that make up the tapestry of life, preferring a bland, black and white facsimile.
And we all end up the poorer for it when overly simplistic rules are forced on us. Oddly enough, you explictly recognize this in a later post:
I’m not arguing that. Think of capacity as a factory, and activity of the workers in that factory. A foetus has no factory nor workers. A normal person has both factory and workers. A brain dead person has the factory, and all the equipment present, but no workers. Capacity without activity.
There’s the alternate view, actually - that newborn babies do not have personhood either. And I would suggest that that is partially the case - personhood develops over time, and is not yet “finished” when the baby is born. Thus it has “some” personhood, but not to the level of other humans. When this personhood begins, however, is the question.
But 500 years ago viability was not being used as the point of personhood. Now it is. Perhaps in 500 years time we will have such machines, and yet the level at which we believe personhood to begin will be the same as now.
In law, she can, yes. But here we’re talking about the actual, rather than legal, limits.
I believe the distinction that is made is this - a baby that is not viable does not yet have full or any development of organs, or of the body that is needed to survive. Likewise, the brain is also not fully developed - thus, the brain being the centre of the mind, it is logical that personhood has not fully, if at all, developed.
I agree on this point.
Right, because they’re at, and will stay at, a lower level of intelligence. If you want to compare, compare to cockroach* larvae*, please.
But you haven’t proved that personhood beginning at conception is logical. You’ve assumed that, pointed out flaws in one other method, and declared victory. Let’s actually look at the definition of conception, shall we?
It has been demonstrated that the brain is where all activity related to the concept of “mind” takes place. An embryo at conception has no brain. Thus, no mind, and no personhood.
A human thumb has DNA. Using a thumb in good condition, we (given advanced enough technology) could clone that entire human. So thumb has the potential to create human life. Does a thumb have personhood?
A fertilized egg immediately splits - yet, personhood is “shared” amongst all the cells that split and develop. Does this mean that if we cut off a person’s arm, we remove some of their personhood?
If personhood is not “shared” among all cells that develop, then does each cell qualify as having personhood? Is it murder if one absorbs the other? Or is only the original cell personhood-having?
Seems it’s not logical to say personhood is a function of conception, either. Perhaps we’d better look at other definitions of when personhood arrives.
Sorry, I’m missing your point. Professor Der Trihs has advanced the notion that it is thought that distinguishes a human from a blob of tissue. That is the only idea I was addressing. Whether or not there are other reasons to justify abortion aren’t relevant to this particular exchange.
Again, I miss your point. If Der Trihs considers fucntional activity as a prerequisite for assigning the designation “human,” then temporarily brain dead patients are not human by his definition. The fact that he balked at our momnetarily brain-dead friend being considered less than human shows the incoherence of his position.
It’s a distinction without a difference. I think we’re engaged in another semantical distinction here, really. When I say the temporarily brain dead patient lacks the capacity for thought, I mean only that he is incapable of thought at that moment. Which he is.
I follow your anaology, but the same could be said of a corpse. So what?
sigh
I give up. Stratocaster, congratulations. You totally win.
I could take the time and effort to refute your posts, including the one above which is about as accurate as Bill O’Reilly’s fact checker; I could point out that the cite you linked to after my last post was basically a lay explanation of what happens during clinically induced hypothermia; I could even go on and explain how brain death is nothing whatever like an undeveloped fetus due to physiological differences in an undeveloped fetus and a grown man. But frankly, you aren’t open to any interpretation other than yours. Which makes you a monumental waste of my time and that of others who’ve tried to debate with you in good faith. If you’re not willing to listen, why take part in a discussion?
[del]There’s enough time left in this session to hear the case, but do they want to hear it?[/del]
Here we are having this incredibly productive debate on abortion, specifically when life itself begins, and you try to hijack it with a completely unrelated news story about South Dakota governor Mike Rounds.
Have you no shame?
If you want to discuss South Dakota laws, I’d suggest you start your own damn thread!
A fresh corpse, with no rotting, yes. I see no difference between the two, excepting that all other bodily functions (save brain and some spine related ones) are working for the brain dead person.
So, is a temporarily brain dead person a, well, person or is he just a mass of tissue? For example, if you put a bullet in his head, have you destroyed a person?
