So what other crimes should the law make subjective? I mean maybe I don’t think left-handed people are fully human, does that mean I can go around shooting them?
Technically speaking the world did not end nor did society fall apart when infanticide was widely tolerated or when lynchings went unpunished. But in all these cases there is legal sanction to murder and thus this particular decision must be considered a barbaric one. And in case you are wondering, yes I do consider the abortion of viable fetuses to be morally equivalent to any other sort of murder.
And when law applies such ethics it should err on the side of caution and thus give a generous definition to personhood.
A simple clean definition such as when the mother’s life is reasonably threatened should fit most cases. The fact that relatively few infanticides might happen is no justification for it.
It’s pretty easy if you use my metric, which is that the use of my body parts is for me to decide, which includes organ donation, blood donation, and pregnancy.
It’s “subjective” in that it depends on what I am willing to do and not do, but it’s pretty clear-cut. You want to use my body, tissues, organs, and systems? You’ll need my permission. To end all suspense, I’ll just say that an embryo won’t get that permission. I’ll happily donate blood, and it can be a free for all on my organs after I die. I would also be willing to be a living donor in circumstances where that works (but if you wanted to take my kidney without asking? No). But I will terminate a pregnancy.
And it doesn’t matter to me if you say that is killing a person, murdering a person, destroying a parasite, or any other term. People die every day any one of us doesn’t give our organs away. (And the bigger “peculiar case” for the OP is people who will demand women carry a pregnancy to term but won’t donate blood or organs even after they die. Wow, you really care about life!)
You have it completely backwards. The law doesn’t “make” anything subjective – it either is or it isn’t. The very fact that these debates keep raging, and that different states, countries, and courts all over the world all have different views about abortion is proof that the question of at what point during a pregnancy a fetus should be considered a “person”, if at any point at all, is an irresolvable subjective one. Which is precisely why the law should stay out of it. Your hypothetical analogy is ridiculous because the law in that case follows from objective principles, unless you question whether a left-handed person is really a “person”.
I disagree. A society that tolerates lynchings is a society that suffers from many other ills that are directly related, such as rampant discrimination and contempt for law and order.
If you mean the Supreme Court decision to overturn abortion laws, I disagree with that, too. And once again you have it backwards. I think you’ll find that jurisdictions with the least restrictive abortion laws are typically also the most progressive with respect to things like inclusiveness of gays and minorities and other progressive principles. You tend to see this among US states as well as countries. Whereas the states with the strongest abortion laws tend to be the opposite, and more likely than others to have the death penalty, which is quite the irony. The poster child for that one is Texas. Frankly there appears to be a rather strong correlation between strong abortion laws and barbarism.
How about giving a generous definition of personhood to the mother, who is indisputably a person.
I’m not big on “slippery slope” arguments. If these ethicists want to make the case that a newborn infant doesn’t have a life in the same sense as an older person with life experience, they don’t need permissive abortion laws to do it. They’re making a philosophical argument that I don’t agree with, and they can make it regardless of what the laws are. As indeed they did. My own view is that they’re wrong because, as much as one might argue about late-term abortions, birth marks a very clear dividing line where the infant is an independent being. As I said, there are no abortion laws in Canada but from the moment of birth the infant is protected by all the laws that apply to human beings. There is no slippery slope.
Abortion is an issue at the current time-other things we largely accept as granted were disputed in past times. Most obviously, slavery was debated all over the world the same you describe abortion was in the 19th Century, yet I doubt you would conclude based upon that fact that the slavery debate was (and presumably is) an irresolvable subjective one.
And I would argue a society that has permissive attitudes regarding abortion especially late-term ones is one that suffers from a lack of respect for human life.
That may merely indicate abortion is a blind-spot amongst progressive forces the same way Prohibition was a “blind spot” amongst those who were abolitionists and proponents of women’s suffrage in the 19th Century. This also obviously presumes the death penalty is “barbaric”. Finally this is a narrow, provincial view looking only at the United States where the abortion debate is particularly polarized along odd lines. Many European states that have no death penalty have far more enlightened laws on abortion drawing the line at 12 or 14 weeks such as Germany or France.
And there’s virtually no difference between a born infant and those in the womb at or past the point of viability. In such cases abortions are simply unnecessary since you might as well do a c-section instead.
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Except these are not merely Ivory tower philosophical debates-they are urging the application of their views into practice by permitting infanticide. As I’ve pointed out birth is quite arbitrary in terms of actual mental and/or physical development.
Yes, the pregnant person has the most invested. That doesn’t make them the most objective/unbiased judge of the situation, it makes them the least objective possible. I definitely don’t someone who has a strong investment in the outcome to be making decisions about the personhood of someone else.
Latin America too, although they are split between countries that ban the death penalty entirely like Venezuela, and those like Brazil who reserve it for specific unusual political crimes. I think only Guatemala and Cuba practice the death penalty for common crimes, though Peru was considering bringing it back a few years ago. Abortion’s mostly illegal everywhere in the region of course (aside from Cuba and I think some states of Mexico).
You’d rather some bureaucrat be empowered to make the decisions for someone else? I don’t want the government to have that much power over me and my body.
If you can compel a woman to bear a child, why can’t you compel a man to donate a kidney? Both are necessary to save a life.
(To be strict, here, I don’t concede that the fetus is a “life.” It is not yet sufficiently independent to possess all the qualities that define a “living entity.” I know others will disagree. As if agreement on this topic were within reach…)
Some decisions are best made by the most interested party. (Facetiously, I might suggest you really need a haircut. After all, you’re too involved in the matter to make the best decision…)
Yes, the pregnant person has the most invested. That doesn’t make them the most objective/unbiased judge of the situation, it makes them the least objective possible. I definitely don’t someone who has a strong investment in the outcome to be making decisions about the personhood of someone else.
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But as I said, the decision is not about the personhood of someone else.
It’s about whether or not killing that someone else constitutes murder or is, instead, a reasonable course of action. Or perhaps somewhere in-between. And what, therefore, ought to be done in that particular circumstance.
Doesn’t the government already have de facto power over your body? The FDA determines what drugs you can use. Police can arrest you and courts can determine that you need to be locked up. If you’re a danger to yourself, you can be committed to an institution. If you’re a cutter, you’ll be restrained because we view cutting the outside of one’s body to be unacceptable. It doesn’t matter that it’s yours.
Luckily, I have an uncle who writes a column and has addressed the topic of jello and EEGs. It is not that jello has brain waves, but that sometimes EEGs can be oversensitive and pick up the electrical noise of other machines in the hospital room as brain waves. That is clearly not the case when dealing with a fetus. (Uncle only in the Korean sense)
I was trying to acknowledge there are those who belief a fertilized egg is human life by saying fully human, but the debate on this issue quickly get manichean so that point may get lost.
What bureaucrat is empowered to make a decision? Abortion laws are passed by legislators and signed by governors just like every other law. The judgement of a bureaucrat is never consulted.
There is a difference between not doing an activity that could save a life and doing an activity that kills. I’ve heard donating $5,000 to anti-malaria charities saves one life on average. Does that mean we should arrest everyone who hasn’t donated the money for murder? Of, course not.
Everyone who has studied moral philosophy or developmental psychology is familiar with the Heinz dilemma. It asks whether it is okay to steal lifesaving medicine if there is literally no other way of obtaining it. The correct answer that shows the highest level of moral reasoning is yes because the moral value of life is higher than the moral value of not stealing. The abortion case is the same, the moral value of the baby’s life is higher than the moral value of the woman’s right to do what she wants with her own body.
I am pro-first trimester abortion (to the point of encouraging it in many cases).
I think we should force women to carry a healthy third trimester pregnancy to term.
I think there is ample evidence that every execution deters multiple murders.
I am very uncomfortable with how disproportionately innocent black men are sentenced tot he death penalty.
I think there is ample evidence that higher capture rates are a better deterrent than the death penalty.
Capital murder (cold blooded/pre-meditated) is pretty rare if the capture rate is 100%
Since when are cutters forcibly restrained or taken into custody? If they’re adults, they can cut away.
None of these are valid analogies to abortion. We’ve sought for one for years in these debates: nothing is similar. The FDA doesn’t force me to take drugs. I can be arrested for breaking the law. If I demonstrate that I’m a danger to myself, I can be institutionalized. None of these are the same as being compelled to have a baby.
Someone in some agency, similar to Child Protective Services, could be in a position to observe that a woman is pregnant and then to take action to compel her to do, or not do, certain things. If she starts to take an alcoholic drink, the bureaucrat could issue an order not to. If she sought an abortion, the bureaucrat could restrain her.
The police aren’t the only ones who enforce the law. If abortion is illegal, regulatory agents would be able to inspect a woman, including her person.
(It’s not impossible that abortion would be made illegal, but regulatory inspection might be precluded in the terms of the law, or by later legislation, or by the courts. At that point, it would be largely a symbolic and empty law.)
Nope; exactly the opposite. No such evidence exists.
(Or, if you want to be slightly more precise, there is a lot of evidence that no such evidence exists. Research the subject, and, at very least, you will find a great many resources disagreeing with you.)
In the first paragraph you say that you can cut away. In the second, you admit that those that are dangerous to themselves can be institutionalized. How do you reconcile those 2 statements?
And why do you draw a distinction for adults? Minors can have abortions without parental notification. (May vary from state to state)
When minors have that right, it’s because the state recognized that minors may be going without parental notification because (1) the parents may abuse or otherwise punish the kid for getting pregnant in the first place, or (2) the father, step-father, uncle, brother, etc., may actually be the father of the fetus. Once again, it’s difficult to find good analogies for abortion and pregnancy.
There is a big problem here, which I’m surprised no one has noticed. Supporting abortion makes it sound as if someone believes it a good solution to birth control. I don’t particularly support abortion except in cases of great necessity, I do strongly support abortion rights. I’m quite happy that all in my family have used birth control responsibly and have had no need for abortions, but I wouldn’t oppose it. This misconception about support for abortion rights is why pro-lifers trumpet women deciding to carry a baby as if it were a slap in the face of pro-choicers. If the woman truly wants to do that, and was not coerced, she is exercising her choice and should be considered a good thing.
I’d support capital punishment in an ideal justice system, but in a world which contains Texas I’m against it in general. Though I didn’t cry about McVeigh and I wouldn’t cry if the Marathon bomber gets it.
Your raise the slavery analogy as an interesting argument to my assertion that the point at which a fetus should be considered a person, if any, is an irreconcilable subjective one. Let’s explore that further to understand why it’s so wrong.
It’s certainly true that societal values are always changing. I don’t dispute that. But as with the other analogies with lynchings and such, there really are objective standards of morality to guide our actions (see for instance, the Categorical Imperative of Immanuel Kant). We can make the objective case, for instance, that we all collectively benefit when we treat others the way that we would wish to be treated, and when we respect the rule of law and the principles of justice, and when we have empathy for our fellow humans. The abolition of slavery wasn’t some arbitrary or capricious change in attitude, but the recognition through gradual enlightenment that people with dark skin were people just like the rest of us and entitled to the same rights.
No such clear moral imperative exists in the matter of abortion, except in the minds of the pro-lifers who anthropomorphize the fetus and grant it imaginary attributes that actual medical science cannot do and never will. This is not to say that any fetus should be treated with careless disdain and no one ever made that claim; it is, however, to say that it must be weighed against the interests and wishes of the mother, and the medical and socioeconomic factors and perhaps other factors that may figure into the child’s future well-being.
This fundamental difference, and the fundamentally reason-based and empathetic nature of the pro-choice argument, is why the pro-lifers are on the losing side of history. No, the fact that the most progressive US states are the ones with the least restrictive abortion laws is not some “odd polarization” – it’s fundamentally correlated with the prevalence of a more educated knowledge-based workforce and electorate and more enlightened social attitudes. The same effect is seen throughout the world – much of the advanced industrialized world permits abortion at least in the earlier part of the term, backwards countries tend to largely prohibit or restrict it.
It’s also seen in changes through time. In almost any country with liberal abortion laws, if you go back far enough you can generally find a time when abortion was restricted or banned. Then later it was liberalized, sometimes due to changing social mores, sometimes by direct court order. The trend is clear. The pro-lifers are on the wrong side of history.
Someone mentioned Latin America. Yes, they have pretty restrictive abortion laws, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s an area dominated by Catholics, with their attitudes on the subject shaped by religious beliefs, and many of those countries are not exactly exemplars of progressive enlightenment, either. Even so, abortion is still possible in many circumstances, except in a few of those countries. Want to know which ones? Nicaragua and El Salvador ban abortion entirely, no exceptions. Not exactly centers of first-world enlightened progress. Meanwhile Sweden, Canada, and much of western Europe allow it in most circumstances, sometimes with no restrictions at all, at least within roughly the first half of the term. Again, the correlation with social progressivism is clear.
The difference is that birth is a clear dividing line between a fetus that is part of the mother, physically attached to her for life support, and an independent being breathing on its own. The law has to create a practical dividing line at some point, and that’s the obvious point to do it.
I really don’t care what these guys are “urging”. You’re not going to get newborn babies thrown off cliffs as a result of liberalizing or repealing abortion laws, unless you believe in the “slippery slope” argument. I don’t, and the reality is that in many cases respect for life in general and care of infants in particular is superior in the countries with the fewest restrictions on abortion. You’re more likely to get abused infants in cases where mothers are forced against their will to carry them to term.