Only if you believe that people have no personal accountability for their actions.
Basic issues in these debates:
Is the baby a trespasser or invited guest?
Pro abortion argument - Trespasser, in all circumstances even including invitro fertilization because even if previously invited I can always change my mind
Pro life argument - Invited guest - the womans body literally invites and then protects and feeds the baby - basic human biology, you have obligations to invited guests.
When does human life begin?
Pro abortion - It doesn’t matter because they are all trespassers, or even if invited I can change my mind at any second and then they become trespassers
Pro Life - conception, the mother’s obligation begins at implantation
Can people be forced to do things they don’t want with their property if they make a commitment to another person making that person in a life threatening way dependent on their property?
Pro abortion - No, if I invite you on my boat I can throw you off at any time even if it means you will most likely be killed or I can cut off your oxygen mid surgery because i want to go home early.
Pro Life - Yes, Sorry pal some times in life if you make an obligation you have to be held to it especially when people’s lives are at stake. The doctor can’t simply just cut off the oxygen during mid surgery because they want to leave early…once you obligate yourself to someone else you have the basic responsibility to do no intentional harm and stick it out until the obligation is over or someone else takes the obligation from you (personal responsibility).
There are no middle grounds in these positions. Simply a case of good versus evil. It can only be settled by violence.
yeah, cause you’re obviously violent to say “only”. You’ve narrowed down a choice in life to conflict, meaning, somebody has to the be the initiator of an act of physical aggression and thereby somebody has to defend themselves because in this instance “only” violence is the solution.
Nonsensical dichotomy. You don’t need a phd is sex education to know that the “baby” can be either. And only in the former, does the decision to abort arises.
This is a statist question and not a libertarian question. The poor incapacitated man living on your generosity, which without it he would surely die, is also a human life. But surely, you don’t believe that he has a right to your labor that keeps him alive, do you? The question then is irrelevant as far as individual rights are concerned.
What commitment? You’re going to makeup a mythical contract to support your argument?
Some things just have no middle ground. If I think you are murdering someone and I want to protect them and you refuse to stop then the only alternative is violence.
This is the whole point…if you invite someone into your care then you have a contract with them. It is not mythical. That is why it matters how you define the relationship.
No this is a human question. You don’t have the right to murder someone you invite into your house because you suddenly change your mind.
How is you agreeing to care for someone a mythical contract?
That’s the issue however. How do you contract with an entity which cannot consent? The child has no choice who its parents are, what time it is conceived, etc. It’s hard to make the contract argument.
Also,imagine that a woman gets pregnant and talks to her abdomen, making a contract that she reserves the right to change her mind later and evict. Would that contract be valid?
This is very true. But the guest/dinner guest/house analogy is lousy anyways. The real issue is, can a fetus be a rational agent or not.
But what does this mean? The person is evicted them out of the house or womb. They didn’t kill them. They showed them the door and had them leave. Didn’t want to leave so simply gave them a a little push and out they went. If the moral question centers around what if there is a fire or angry mob outside ready to kill the visitors on a moments notice once they leave the grounds of the property and the question is are the hosts of the property morally responsible for sending the visitors out into certain death. That’s a more concerning moral question.
This is the principle argument, I think. But, how are abortions carried out? I don’t know much on the process (although, my mom is a nurse that deals with maternity, so I could call her up and ask her), but I do know that most of the time doctors kill the baby in the womb. It’s easier to extract that way (or excreted or what have you).
This again is important to define when human life begins and what rights do you automatically have upon becoming human? Using your logic if one doctor takes over from another doctor during surgery he would not be obligated to care for the patient because the patient can not consent. Consent or the rational mind element is just too vague to be used as a defining characteristic for a human being. The ability to consent to contract is how we should define a human? How can we possibly agree on when that occurs without whatever we say just being arbitrary? The only logical starting point for determining the common human origin is the beginning of life.
The contract is the most basic contract a woman can create, biological continuation of the species. If that contract didn’t exist we wouldn’t be here. Again, you are unable to define what a human being is. How can we debate human rights or liberty when so many here can not even clearly determine when human life begins. Just on a completely personal level, when did you become a human being?
Again, I don’t mind you saying that you think it is acceptable if the doctor turns off the oxygen during surgery because he wants to go home early but just follow through on the logical consequences of your belief and see if you agree that those are results that one, consistent with liberty and two that people will accept it. You can start from any assertion you want and follow it logically to arrive at any conclusion you want. You can make logical arguments why the Nazi’s killed Jews. All Humans are rational, Jews are not rational so Jews are not humans, so killing Jews does not violate any rights. Is that an acceptable outcome?
All Humans are rational, one year old babies are not rational so one year old babies are not humans, so killing one year old babies does not violate any rights.
Is that an acceptable outcome?
Do you think if you go around killing one year old babies everyone will think that is just swell and leave you alone? Or might killing children or anybody for that matter be basically against our natural instinct (we are capable of it but it is not considered an unimportant act like throwing away the garbage). how do you plan to show “rational ability to make contract”?
Yes, the mother’s body invites the fertilized egg into it to be nurtured and cared for by the mother’s body. In rape, the fertilization is forced not the implantation. Do you know how babies come into this world?
strawman.Consent or the rational mind element is an excellent defining characteristic for a rational human being who is a moral agent. obviously dead human beings do not have a rational mind and are not moral agents, yet they are human.
ok, so what is the logical starting point for determining the genesis of the rational capacity and moral agency of the human? it is not life, but life plus other facts that come with a degree of maturity. like the developing of at least some nerve-cells maybe?
thats just gibberish. you have just used the word contract arbitrarilty. various species generate progeny and they hardly form contracts. does the Etruscan Shrew form contracts?
Indeed. That is the entire discussion really. What are the conditions for rights?
The patient could offer consent in advance. A fetus could not.
I agree.
Yup.
But how do you define life?
Again, this is not a contract. A contract requires consent from two parties. You can’t contract yourself to something, and then claim you can’t break that contract. That’s illogical.
You’re approaching a familiar level of hostility, and yet seem to fail to recognize that you and I are closer on this in some ways, than anyone else is to your position. I don’t know when life begins. I don’t know where rights start. It is a major failure in philosophy because we can’t answer this question consistently. I think a lot more work needs to be done on these topics. Evictionism (to me) is wholly unsatisfactory, and yet your objections to it are not any better.
You actually have it easy. You’re a theist. You can make appeals to a spiritual origin from the supreme power and arbiter. Atheists like myself have no such starting point. While that doesn’t prove the existence of God, his existence sure would make morality a lot easier to sort out.
It is impossible to separate just action from moral action. That is just an excuse for murder is all. Are we back to the I didn’t kill them when I pushed them overboard in the ocean it was the ocean that did it, I just made them leave my property. I fired the gun but the bullet was the killer. If people are not responsible for the logical consequences of their actions then no one can ever be accountable for any action they take, good or evil.
So now involuntary physiological processes constitute a conscious voluntary choice or consent on the part of the individual. Human action involves conscious man and not automatic involuntary physiological processes.
that’s why I called it a moral question. it’s a question that I don’t know if I have the answer to. but i will not give in to initiating violence cause therefore that would mean I know more absolutely than somebody else on what I think it still unresolved. I think firing the gun-bullet is a bad analogy. the ocean overboard leaves the possibly of living still because in essence it’s leaving the answer up to life itself is what i was getting at. Now the mob outside or a fire raging is more like the gun analogy. And having a fetus fall to floor is more like the fire raging or mob outside than the ocean. It’s about the possibilites and I don’t see the possiblity of a fetus living after abortion, into a raging fire, or a mob outside. But the ocean scenario does provide the possibility of somebody still living.
So what does this all mean? It’s still a question for me. I don’t have the complete answer. Maybe it does boil down to a fetus is not a rational agent, like what Nir is saying, and therefore the bounds on this are still left open. Actually, because there may not be a logical answer to this and therefore it’s left up to opinion then that therein lies the answer for me. If it’s simply an opinion, then it’s the same as deciding on what piece of art one likes best. And to kill somebody because they didn’t like the painting you did is absurd. If that’s what this has to boil down to - opinion - then I refrain from acting as if I have the ultimate answer on this topic and will not play God and kill somebody over it. And. That’s my opinion.
We are human beings that have biological functions that limit what we can do in some cases. Do you want us to pretend babies just magically appear and that sex has no relationship with creating babies too?