Coito ergo sum wrote:Seth wrote:lordpasternack wrote:Seth wrote:lordpasternack wrote:I believe life begins at conception - I just don't consider this fact to be significant, and find no ethical concern with women who, say, choose to terminate said life at 5 weeks post-conception.
So, if I don't consider the fact that you are 20 years old to be significant, may I abort you post-partum? If not, why not?
I am a complex, sentient, self-aware, thinking, feeling being, with memories, hopes and dreams, who has made a tangible impact for the better on a number of people's lives, and I will be mourned for those qualities if you decide to take such a decision arbitrarily.
So what? Who cares what you think you've done for humanity? If I find those facts to be insignificant, what ethical concern should I have about them?
Nobody cares what either of you personally think. As a matter of law, you are not privileged to kill fetuses or air breathing homo sapiens sapiens (except where allowed by law). In common law jurisdictions, the only thing stopping the legislature from legalizing a particular sort of killing by private persons is the political, legislative process. A statute may modify the common law proscription on murder.
Thanks for pointing out the painfully obvious. My comment was a sarcastic jab at LP's attempt at justifying abortion based on her indifference to the sanctity of human life.
Seth wrote:
There's also the crucial fact that I'm not inhabiting your body or otherwise trespassing against you that I am aware of - so there's no material reason why you in particular should be granted any right to take such action against me.
So, if you're living in a room in my house because I invited you to stay there and I get tired of having you around, can I still abort you post-partum? If not, why not?
No, unless she attacks you and you kill her in self defense, or she attacks another person and you defend that person, etc. - because the law says so.
Derp.
Again, you miss the intent of the simile.
Seth wrote:
After all, the fetus was invited to live inside the womb
No invitations were sent out. Typically, other than exclamations of joy and pleasure, and shouts to a deity and such, nobody extends an express invitation.
Wrong. "Oh, baby, fuck me, fuck me hard" is precisely and exactly an invitation to vaginal entry, and an implied invitation to the deposit of the give of semen. This is because ejaculation is a known, expected and even desired consequence of coitus. Therefore a woman who invites a penis into her vagina gives implied consent to ejaculation with full understanding of the consequences thereof, so if she gets knocked up, it's nobody's fault but her own and she's likewise invited a fetus to form within her. This is true even if she insists on using birth control, including condoms and pills, because ALL forms of birth control other than abstinence come with a known risk of failure, and therefore an accepted risk of pregnancy for ANY event of semen injection into the vagina. The fact that both (or just one) of the parties involved in a voluntary sexual act get enjoyment from the experience doesn't change the fact that it was voluntary and that such acts have known consequences. If you jump off a cliff, even with a parachute, you accept and invite the risk of death if your parachute fails to open. Assumption of risk also means assumption of the natural consequences of that risk, and it's no different for pregnancy than it is for gravity.
Seth wrote:
but can be evicted at any time according to your logic.
Being part of a body is different than being a lodger in a house. But, yes, the law could allow for the killing of the lodger. It once did, actually, under certain circumstances.
The fetus is not "part of the body," it's a unique living organism that depends on the mother's body for survival, but it's not part of her body, from the instant the zygote is formed until delivery.
And of course the law can change. That's my whole point. The SCOTUS found a "right to privacy" in a woman's pregnancy that CHANGES WITH TIME during gestation. In
Planned Parenthood v. Casey 505 U.S. 833 (1992) the SCOTUS ruled that fetal viability is the time after which the state's interest in the life of the child outweighs the woman's privacy rights.
The plurality recognized viability as the point at which the state interest in the life of the fetus outweighs the rights of the woman and abortion may be banned entirely "except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother".
Seth wrote:
The whole point is that the "right" to an abortion is no such thing, the permission of government to have an abortion is strictly a creature of law that can be changed at any time to allow or ban abortion, depending entirely on the desire of the public as reflected in the democratic process and the makeup of the Supreme Court at the time the law is changed.
How is it any different, ethically speaking?
On to ethics, rather than law. Oh, o.k. -- ethically, or morally, whether it's bad or good is a matter of opinion, purely and simply. I see a difference, however, in a blastocyst attached to the wall of a uterus than a walking, talking, breathing human. Those differences ought to be obvious. Different things, rationally, can be treated differently.
The point is that a good many people don't think that a zygote, blastocyct, embryo or fetus is "different" from a human being. Those names are arbitrary medical labels applied to a living human being at different stages of development. The thing itself never changes from its fundamental nature, that of a unique, living human being, from the moment of zygotic formation to its death. At no point in the continuous development of the zygote into a fully-grown human adult is the organism anything other than a human organism. It's not a monkey that turns into a human at 28 weeks. It's not a dog fetus that magically transforms into a human fetus when it leaves the birth canal. It's always a human being, from beginning to end. In the law, it doesn't matter that a human being is "different" for the right to life to be protected. Stephen Hawking does not "walk" or "talk" although he does breathe. Does that make him non-human? Of course not. So the simple fact that a fetus in utero doesn't walk, talk or breathe is utterly irrelevant to its status as a living human being.
Seth wrote:
Do I not have an ethical obligation to honor the agreement of occupancy I made with you unless you're doing something that endangers me?
Not necessarily. There may have been no agreement and you may well have the right to oust the occupant at your will and pleasure.
But if there IS an agreement, then the law constrains what I may do by way of evicting you. Likewise, the law may require a woman to continue to host a fetus if it judges that the rights of the fetus to life outweigh the temporary imposition on the woman's change of mind regarding the invitation and agreement.
You assume terms of an agreement where the terms have not been established.
I disagree. The terms of the agreement are formed by voluntary participation in the sex act with a fertile male. Pregnancy is a known, and therefore assumed risk, and the law may, if it chooses to do so, require that the woman accept the consequences of that risk without doing harm to the living human being within here.
Moreover, fetuses, being under the age of 18 are not competent to contract under our current law, and the fact that they are below the age of reason implies that they are mentally incapable of entering into any sort of agreement.
By that logic, any child that is not competent to sign a contract could be killed at any time. Wrong. Just because a human being is mentally or physically incompetent to sign a contract or enter into a binding agreement does not mean that everyone else is absolved of the responsibility of respecting that person's rights, in this case the right to life. When a person is deemed incompetent to care for themselves or make rational adult decisions, the law appoints a guardian for that person. Most times it's the parents, but they are bound by the law to exercise proper discretion and act on behalf of and in the best interests of the minor child. If the parents refuse or are incapable of doing so, then the state may step in and assign a guardian ad litem to protect the child even against the parents. Therefore, the State has the authority to act in loco parentis for all children, regardless of their location or state of development, where the rights of the child are in jeopardy.
Seth wrote:
Or to be more precise, if you invite me to stick my erect penis into your vagina, should you be allowed to kill me if I take advantage of that invitation?
In my view, she should not and that is the current state of the law. However, if she invites you to stick your erect penis in her vagina, but then thinks better of it and asks you to remove it, you are required to remove it, as she does not, by the invitation, give you unfettered right to remain in the vagina as long as you like.
Correct. And remaining in a vagina longer than invited would be sexual assault. But if that invitation is not withdrawn, and the man makes a gift of semen to the woman, the woman is responsible for the functioning of her reproductive organs and for accepting the consequences of being voluntarily inseminated, and the state may hold her accountable and prohibit her from damaging the new living human being within her.
It would be like if you invited a doctor to stick his finger in your bum -- you can ask him to remove it anytime, and you are not required to grin and bear it for as long as the doctor would like.
Unless you invited him to leave it there for as long as he likes. In such a case you've formed an enforceable contract, just as the woman does when she consents to the deposit of a gift of sperm that results in the formation of a zygote. If she does not wish to risk the formation of a new living human being, then she must a) prevent insemination; or b) prevent the formation of the zygote stage of human life. Once a new human life is created however, it has rights that must be respected by the mother, and everyone else.
The only argument you or other pro-abortionists can make to refute this logic is to simply dismiss the notion that beginning with the alignment of the chromosomes along the spindle apparatus and at every stage of development thereafter until full delivery of the infant that the organism within the mother's womb is
not a human being. Only by denying the fundamental nature of the organism residing in the woman's womb can you begin to justify abortion. But that's both logical and scientific fallacy, and anyone willing to look at the question in an unbiased, scientific and logical fashion, rather than one clouded by emotion and political belief can do nothing other than admit that at all stages of development subsequent to the formation of the zygote, the organism is indeed a living human being. It is undeniably human, and it has achieved the state of "being" (or existing), and attempting to deny this is mere sophistry.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
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