He does, if you saw off the branch upon which you sit.
Which is a strawman.
Absurd hypotheticals and red herrings do not interest me. If a god does exist, fine. Might makes right does not substitute logical argumentation, so unless the aliens are on another level of rationality entirely (meaning a difference in kind, not just degree), the argument is irrelevant. And, in fact, even if that were so it is irrelevant, because it’d still apply to human-to-human relations.
-Jon
I was not arguing so much about self-ownership as if the concept does not exist (obviously we are talking about it) but the extension of that concept - that it incorperates a child in the womb and therefore the mothers right to kill it because the mother owns it or because the child is part of the self of the mother.
I don’t see where he even defined the term self-ownership and its relation to the child - thats why I asked some of those questions because I am making infrences and asking for clarity but he keeps saying what does that have to do with the argument. Just because you make an airtight argument does not mean that it correspondes to reality. I could define the terms and organize the premises or conditions in order to make the conclusion correct, but that does not necessarily correspond to reality and it certainly does not have anything to do with the right and wrong of it. Why would it be wrong if I prevented a mother from having an abortion - on what moral basis do you stand - self-ownership?
The woman is having the fetus removed, and the death of it is merely a side-effect. At no point did I say that the fetus is part of the self of the woman or that the woman owns it.
Self-ownership is quite self-explanatory, I should think.
Because they have nothing to do with the argument!
Why would it be wrong if I prevented you from, say, having a tumor removed?
Which isn’t his position. His position is the same as Rothbard’s, i.e. that the foetus’s rights &c. are irrelevant since it is an uninvited trespasser, which cannot even in principle enter a contract legitimizing its stay in the womb, and thus may be removed as any trespasser may be removed from a given premise.
-Jon
My view on this is similar. At the point there is human life(a single cell with unique human DNA) that is our posterity, then it ought to be provided justice for by the institution we established for securing justice. We not only institute government for our own benefit of justice but also to secure justice for our posterity.
If I would be charged for murder if I forced someone to get out of my car while I’m driving down the highway, then it would be reasonable to conclude that a similar act toward a child in a woman’s body would require the same justice when a doctor/person attempts to evict him/her.
All the talk about property, eviction, ownership of the womb, etc. are not only irrelevant they are plainly idiotic. The common ground here is that nobody, none of us, would agree that murder is acceptable. People can do whatever they want so long as they don’t infringe upon the life, liberty, or property of another. Yet ending a human life violates the life of the child and its liberty to grow and develop. For anybody that is perfectly fine with abortion, I’d be willing to bet you’ve never seen an ultrasound, abortion procedure, or even a picute of an aborted fetus. One popular procedure is an injection into the child that stops its heart from beating; if you condone something like this I’m not sure you have a soul. You don’t have to be religious to oppose murdering a child, you just have to understand exactly what’s going on in the procedures and be willing to understand it’s wrong.
Actually, it’s highly relevant and absolutely not idiotic. There’s more to it than just “murder”. Nice try at deflection though.
-Jon
Lets see:
You acknowledge that the fetus has rights.
Yet those rights are irrelevant since it is an univited tresspasser.
[Yet its tresspassing (a legal and moral term) is not its own fault as if it were wondering the earth as a vagabond looking for somewhere to stay and illegally entered the womb - I guess we can call that breaking and entering.]
And therefore the mother has the right to murder it because not only did it tresspass it can not even justify said tresspassing. Yet somehow you accuse it of having volition to tresspass but not volition to contract.
Whatever.
I guess if someone ended-up (without any say of thier own) in your car tied-up and gaged and then discovered by you you while on the freeway you would have the right to kick em out.
So the woman has no right to remove from her body something unwanted?
So much for removing a tumor.
punches you in the face
Oh, you didn’t like that?
Hypocrite.
Show me the person to which consent was given, and I’ll grant you the argument. The problem is, of course, you can’t, since prior to conception no such person existed. I never even said it has rights: I said that whether or not it does is irrelevant. I never said it wanted to trespass: it simply is doing so. And yes, if someone just popped up in my car, I have absolutely no obligation to them whatsoever. It’d simply be nice of me not to toss them out. The case of a parasite is even more tenuous.
-Jon
Oh come-on. Talk about false analogy. As if a tumor is like a child in the womb.
You did not answer my question.
Nope, it’s a correct analogy. What is so different about it? Answer: nothing.
Answer my question.
NOTHING - well the spelling for one thing. Also tumors don’t have rights humans do. Oh don’t forget all the physiological differences as well. There is a few.
Not conceptually, no. If the woman wants a tumor removed from HER BODY, or if she wants a fetus removed from HER BODY, I’m failing to see any difference at all. Think you could show me a difference WITHOUT special pleading?
No you said that its rights were irrelevant because it tresspassed.
How do you assign a concept (a moral and legal one) to somthing that has no volition. Do rocks tresspass or how about tumors.
Popped-in - I said put there unwillingly. Don’t forget that in the analogy of the car - you were the one who is actually responsible for the person being in the car but only became aware of it while on the freeway.
Just like I have no obligation not to allow a woman to abort her child I guess it simply be nice of me to do so.
No, it wouldn’t be nice of you to not allow it; it would be you violating her self-ownership.
Oh I see - so if I was in the car and wanted to stop the person from kicking the other person out that would be violating their self-ownership, so I am obligated to let them kick them out based on this principle. Or better yet say I was in another car beside them and saw that the person was gaged and tied-up and the other person was trying to kick them out I should turn my radio up and say Ah! the principle of self-ownership at work and speed away.
False analogy. This has been tried before. Please use the search function to find out the particulars of your error.
Round and round and round we go, where we stop, nobody knows… [:P]
As much as a strongly believe I am correct on this issue, I see so much gridlock that I would much rather find issues I agree with people on, or that their mind isn’t so set on, such as economics.
This issue just tends to get very emotional for many people.
I think all the viewpoints out there have certainly found their way into this thread regarding the life/abortion issue.