Wow. So you just excluded 95% of the United States population after going through public uneducation and TV programming. 
This is totally side-tracking but fun nonetheless. Just ask someone what their rights are. People have no concept of natural rights. They have only been taught privileges that they call rights that are granted to them by the state.
POTENTIAL, perhaps. The conception itself–absolutely not.
If you feel she is in the wrong for removing the fetus from her womb, please demonstrate that the woman loses ownership of her womb when she becomes pregnant. And if you feel that she is running from the consequences by aborting, please demonstrate that your pet definition of “running from the consequences” is indeed valid, for I can say that having a broken bone set is running from the consequences, too.
That really is a false analogy. Again, you’re ignoring the difference between consciousness and “consciousness.” I’m not speaking about the common term as regards to your state of awareness, but of the mind (alternatively known as consciousness, soul, etc.) that sets man apart from beast. You do not lose your mind in sleep of when you’re knocked out, though you clearly do lose it at death and during severe brain damage.
So do you “pro lifers” think the mother can smoke?
Ok that’s not what I meant lol ^^
And yes, I know most people think rights are what are granted to them. Why is it so difficult to understand that what can be given can also be taken away?
Sure. But she never consented to house the child. Two different things.
If I cook some delicious soup and the smell wafts from my house into the street, I might consent to the potential of a passerby wanting my soup, but I don’t consent to them actually having it.
The mother has agreed to the possibility that a child might suddenly appear inside of her, but she never made an agreement to let the child live there. Such an agreement would have to be made between the respective parties.
Here are some of the oddball answers I’ve gotten:
-Right to free/affordable(subsidized!) healthcare
-Right to a job
-Right to good quality public education
-Right to minimum wage
-Right to affordable housing
Oh and don’t forget the awfully misquoted, “Freedom isn’t free.”
And there is, moreover, the issue of to whom the so-called obligation is owed. The non-existent, as of yet unborn entity? Surely not.
-Jon
Basically, many people replace the word “want” with “right”.
Rather than saying I want a job, they say they have a right to it, and etc. Isn’t it great to create obligations in others?
You are positing a methaphysical mind-body duality. Please establish that there is such a “mind” which is somehow different than that of beasts.
JC, is the mother allowed the smoke?
It is not about showing a loss but an addition.
Here is a quote from the article by Kinsella: ‘How Do We Come To Own Ourselves’
‘The idea here is that libertarianism does not oppose “positive rights”; it simply insists that they be voluntarily incurred. One way to do this is by contract; another is by trespassing against someone’s property. Now, if you pass by a drowning man in a lake you have no enforceable (legal) obligation to try to rescue him; but if you push someone in a lake you have a positive obligation to try to rescue him. If you don’t you could be liable for homicide. Likewise, if your voluntary actions bring into being an infant with natural needs for shelter, food, care, it is akin to throwing someone into a lake. In both cases you create a situation where another human is in dire need of help and without which he will die. By creating this situation of need you incur an obligation to provide for those needs. And surely this set of positive obligations would encompass the obligation to manumit the child at a certain point. This last argument is, to my mind, the most attractive, but it is also probably the least likely to be accepted by most libertarians, who generally seem opposed to positive obligations, even if they are incurred as the result of one’s actions.’
and some responses by Kinsella:
Somewhat bill:
Unfortunately, I think your solution is also contrived. How many boat owners negligently or recklessly invite someone onto their ship? Say what you will, but some people do not intend to get pregnant, although they know it is a risk. That’s recklessness, at worst.
I’m trying real hard to think of an analogy where the owner recklessly “invites” someone onto their property, but can’t come up with one. I don’t think the concept of “invite” makes any sense outside intentional, or possibly, in some select instances, knowing conduct.
My view is that you are responsible not really becuase of an invitation (that was an analogy), but because, as in the push-in-the-lake scenario, you caused this human-with-needs to exist. Your voluntary action–wheter you really “want” to get pregnat or not–is the cause of the position of peril a child find himself in. By the nature of the situation, this is the result of one’s actions. I just believe actions give rise to responsibility. I admit however that this view of mine is not rigorous like my other rights views.
I just came across the following interesting comments by Roger Pilon in his 1979 article Corporations and Rights: On Treating Corporate People Justly (n. 123 on p. 1295):
Very briefly, the argument that justifies the obligations of parents to their children borrows from both the tort/crime and the contract models. In performing acts of procreation, just as in performing any other action, the parents are responsible for the consequences should those acts create rights in others (the defense of ignorance will no more avail here than in any other tort case). We are responsible, that is, for the upshots of the actions we voluntarily perform. Of course, in many cases of begetting-one would hope in most-the consequences are not only voluntarily but intentionally brought about as well. Thus the contractual model is more appropriate here. But whether children are willingly or only reluctantly brought into being, the special rights they hold against those responsible for creating them are every bit as real as the special rights of tort victims or contractors. The difficulty here, however, is that there is no status quo, as in the tort case, or no agreed upon terms, as in the contract case, to aid in delineating the content of these rights. As a result, such ideas as “custom” or “community standards” enter, with all their attendant problems, not only of verification but of justification as well.
See also the commments of Albert Esplugas at October 3, 2006 5:20 PM on the Block on Abortion thread:
I absolutly agree. I think this is a very important point, sadly overlooked by Block and Whitehead and other pro-choice libertarian theorists for years. Positive obligations are generellay recognized in the case of “duty founded on creation of peril”. As Williamson Evers puts it: “The third sort of legal duty that is now enforced by the criminal justice process is duty founded on creation of peril. The criminal law punishes persons who put into motion some force that invades individual rights and who then neglect to halt the force which they originally set in What is really being punished is the bringing forth of an emergency, as when the pilot of a passenger airplane bails out on a whim, leaving the passengers to crash. Returning to the idea of causality and its central role in the law, we can see that the creator of the peril has effectively committed an invasive act. If he neglects to halt or mitigate the force or effect of that act, then he can rightly be held responsible. A person is culpable who omits to halt a force which he originally put in motion. If, for example, a person accidentally starts a fire in a building, then escapes the building, but sees others who could be rescued still in the building, it is his duty to try to aid them. While the accidental arsonist created the peril whicl served as an instrument for invading his victim’s rights, the duty of the perpetrator to aid the imperiled in such cases is to be distinguished from a more generalized duty that is sometimes advanced, namely, a duty of everyone to aid the imperiled.”
Or Posner, quoted here: “Thomson is right that we don’t force people to donate kidneys to strangers, or even to family members. But normally the potential donor is not responsible for the condition that he is asked to alleviate, in the way that a woman (unless she has been raped) is responsible, although only in part, for the fact that she is pregnant. The difference in evidentiary difficulty between asking who hit X and asking who failed to save X is a strong practical reason against liability for failing to be a good Samaritan. So although bystanders are not required to rescue persons in distress, someone who creates the danger, even if nontortiously, may be required to attempt rescue, and perhaps that is the proper analogy to the pregnant woman who wants to terminate her pregnancy.”
Beckwith and Thomas, in the JLS, relate this “duty founded on creation of peril” with pregnancy: For example, according to the prima facie case for negligence, one is liable for negligence if one (1) has a duty, (2) breached a duty, and (3) caused harm as a result of breaching the duty. One could argue against McDonagh in the following way: Since pregnancy is a foreseeable result of unprotected sex, and since for McDonagh a fetus is a human person, therefore, one who engages in sex has a duty to engage in due care so as not to bring into existence persons whose death due to abortion is foreseeable.
I think Feser gets right too: “it isn’t clear how it would justify any abortion other than in the case of pregnancy resulting from rape, with which the kidnapping by the violinist’s admirers is analogous. Surely a pregnancy resulting from consensual intercourseÑwhich, as everyone knows, has a chance of resulting in pregnancy even when contraception is usedÑis not analogous to Thomson’s example.”
See also Doris Gordon “Abortion and Thomson’s Violinist: Unplugging a Bad Analogy”.
No, it’s about losing ownership of the womb.
Ok, now what does that have to do with anything, given that there was no contract with the fetus? How in the world can you possibly attempt to justify slavery, anyway? Yes, that is what you’re attempting to do. The woman sustains the fetus by her own metabolic processes, and to say that she MUST DO THIS OR ELSE is to enslave her to the fetus, period. How can you justify slavery? Please explain that to me.
And it doesn’t yet exist outside the woman. And, as there is no such thing as the right to reside within the confines of another being, I fail to see how this is relevant.
Sure they are. But how does that mean that abortion isn’t taking responsbility UNLESS you attempt to redefine (and thus beg the question) that abortion isn’t taking responsibility.
And yet they overlook the woman’s right of self-ownership.
So, do you have anything that actually helps your case? Or do you just have a bunch of crap which conveniently forgets that the woman owns her womb and can have the fetus removed if she so chooses?
Allowed? I don’t know that smoking has been clearly shown to be harmful to the unborn. Some people say it is, but I take all anti-tobacco hysteria with a grain of salt. However, should it be shown conclusively that it is harmful, then no, she has no right to impose that harm on the unborn.
You just proved it.
No it is about using her womb responsibly in relation to her creation - the child - somthing she willingly allowed. Why didn’t she alllow the conception if she is in full control of he body? Maybe there is some restrictions on her self-ownership.
She enslaved herself to the child by her allowance of the conception. No one is saying she must do this or that (except maybe God) but that her choice to abort has a moral aspect of either right or wrong. If there is no such thing as morals of right or wrong slavery is not an issue - it is irrelevant.
Its existance affords it the right to reside were it was created particularly since this was at the womans allowance.
Abortion negates her responsibility it does not establish it.
Where does the woman get this right? What authority do you appeal to if the right of self-ownership is ‘violated’? Is this wrong? Who gets to decide real moral knowledge and according to what standards? Nature? How does it do that and is it intrinsicly moral?
I am sorry I did not mean to make you angry.
There you go again attempting to redefine words to suit your desire. Won’t work.
Who knows? But the fact remains that she owns her womb and can have the fetus removed if she desires.
Nonsense. Utter, total, unsupported question-begging nonsense.
No, it does not. THERE. IS. NO. SUCH. THING. AS. THE. RIGHT. TO. RESIDE. WITHIN. THE. CONFINES. OF. ANOTHER. BEING. None.
Stop trying to redefine the word to suit your desire.
Where do you get the right to type these responses?
You didn’t.
How so?
And neither is abortion an issue, if that were true. Checkmate. You destroy your own argument. It never ceases to amaze me how people arguing a moral position resort to nihilism/skepticism when things don’t go their way. I am still interested to know how normally unenforceable slave contracts are possible with contemporaneously non-existent entities.
-Jon
Well it has been proven. Now, tell me where you draw the line? Can she drink alcohol eat unhealthy food? Do anything that may harm the baby?