quote: Then, along that same line of reasoning, uncombined sex cells do not represent genetically distinct individuals, and therefore also do not warrant the same consideration as a zygote
But they are genetically distinct. Random mutation has already occurred when the sex cells are created, and they are thus distinct. And since the argument against killing zygotes is that they are potential human beings anyway, the sex cell are still potential human beings, so the argument still holds.
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Lyrhawn, left to themselves, a single egg or a bunch of little squirmers will never develop into a human being. Without outside interference ( ) causing them to join and fertilize, they can only die. There is no other option. They will never spontaneously, in and of themselves, become a baby.
A zygote, without outside interference, in most cases will become a baby.
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CT, yeah...you know what I mean, right? Yes, it takes support, but since it took that support to create it in the first place, as long as it isn't treated to a hostile environment, most of the time it will do just fine.
Paul, that is beside the point. There is a significant difference between someone who dies of natural causes and one who is killed in a nuclear explosion, wouldn't you say?
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Yes, there's a difference. I'm just pointing out that most conceptions never become a person, and so its incorrect to say that left to their own devices, most zygotes become babies. They don't. About 50% of conceptions are never detected, and another 15-20% abort in the first 6 weeks after being detected. I also think this is a point that has to be considered when discussing when a zygote becomes worthy of legal protection.
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I think it's worth keeping in mind that sustaining a pregnancy is an active process. It means responsibility, not just "letting it happen."
That is, I'm not really disagreeing with you, moreso elaborating on what you said. Keeping the environment non-hostile to the developing fetus takes consideration -- refraining from substances which could pass the placenta and damage the fetus (alcohol, nicotine, over-the-counter medications, antihypertensives, etc), staying sufficiently hydrated, eating enough calories and vitamins to allow both of you to grow and develop normally, avoiding radiation from X-rays or certain work environments, etc.
A lot of these are things which we would well do anyway to take care of ourselves. Certain necessary medications (anti-seizure meds, e.g.) might be damaging to the fetus but helpful to the mother, but most of it is just good healthy living. On the other hand, we all make choices about where to scrimp on resources when things are tight, be it money, time, or what have you. We make choices about whether to stay hydrated if there isn't a clean bathroom around, whether to deprive ourselves of sleep in order to get a particular task completed, whether to restrict calories in order to fit into a paticular dress, and so forth.
Gestating a healthy baby does take active participation, both in doing certain things and avoiding others. Whether a given person has a responsibility to do so is a different matter than whether she has to do so to achieve an optimal outcome, if she chooses to carry to term. I just don't want to conflate these two separate (even if related) issues.
As the contrast was drawn to "They will never spontaneously, in and of themselves, become a baby," I just wanted to clarify that the spontaneous part of it is rather more involved than that in the other case, too. And, as noted, ~70% are thought to end in misscarriage.
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Paul, if more people died of unnatural causes than natural, would it then make sense to legalize murder?
CT, thanks for that clarification. I really don't want it to sound like it's no effort at all to be pregnant. It is inconvenient a lot of the time and doesn't feel all that great for most women. But it's of such short duration in the grand scheme of things. And putting up with that discomfort while being hospitable to the little guest (and sometimes not a very gracious guest, especially at 3am when the aerobics class starts) inside has such long term results.
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While he may want to extend an argument relating to it at some point, he was just pointing out a factual innaccuracy.
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"Paul, if more people died of unnatural causes than natural, would it then make sense to legalize murder?"
Thats the question, though, isn't it? At what point does something become worthy of legal protection?
In this case, we're discussing the legality of killing something that, first off isn't a person in any secular manner (Since a person has rights and responsibilities. a zygote clearly has no legal responsibilities). It also won't survive on its own, and if left to its own devices, will die. Even with proper care, more then half of them will die. Under the law, if you don't take proper care of a person, and he dies, then you're guilty of negligence, and responsible for that persons death. This is usually some form of manslaughter. Are we willing to throw millions of women in jail for manslaughter? If not, then, clearly, we're already not applying the same standards to zygotes and people.
In pointing out that most pregnancies are naturally aborted, I am not asking whether or not its a person, but whether or not its practical to consider protecting a zygote at the stage, and whether it makes legal sense to do so. I think, though, the fact that 70% of pregnancies are spontaneously aborted, clearly indicates that the zygote/embryo is not a person, and, as such, not worthy of strenuous legal protection, although it may be worthy of certain protections. (Animals aren't people, either, but we grant them certain limited protections). Ability to survive is an important determination in the legal defintion of personhood, and always has been. Of course, that has nothing to do with it religiously, but I'd point out that jewish custom until the 1900's in europe didn't consider newborns to be full fledged people, either.
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Yes, but not a highly relevant factual error, since by the time abortion is an option 50% that fail to implant are not part of the population under consideration.
It might be applicable to a debate on the morning after pill or the generic question of if human life begins at conception, of course, but not on what most people consider abortions.
quote:In pointing out that most pregnancies are naturally aborted
Based on the last time we discussed this issue, I believe medically a pregnancy does not begin until the zygote implants. Therefore, most pregnancies are NOT aborted.
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"Yes, but not a highly relevant factual error, since by the time abortion is an option 50% that fail to implant are not part of the population under consideration."
I consider it to be a highly relevant point, since it says a lot about legal protection for zygote/embryo/fetus and whether its practical, as well as a legal understanding of what a person is.
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Paul Goldner, modern-day Spartan. Seriously (just ribbing you), I find abortion wrong for the same reason I find murder and rape wrong: I abhor the acts viscerally... they are violent impositions of one person's twisted power and control on another organism of the same species. I'm enough of a relativist to understand that there is no cosmically applicable natural law against murder, rape, abortion, infanticide, etc., but enough of an idealist to find such acts barbaric, animal-like, and worth of being expunged from the repertoire of human activity.
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Paul, if no one knows about the existance of the zygote, not even its host, how can it be relevant to the question? Currently we can't practically examine the possibility, so it really is irrelevant.
I was wondering where your line of logic was leading, and hoped it wasn't the fear that suddenly, by giving zygotes legal recognition and protection insofar as against actively hostile environments, women who have miscarriages would be sent to jail. For one, what purpose would that extreme serve? It couldn't happen -- no one would stand for it, not even the most extreme of pro-lifers.
It's not a difficult thing to define the difference between abortion and miscarriage. Abortion is a willful act intended to bring about the premature end of a pregnancy, resulting in the death of the zygote/fetus. Miscarriage is not an act of will and there is no intention to end the pregnancy.
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quote:No-- fully grown humans are protected from murder because murder is wrong, and civilizations recognize it.
Indeed? In the trivial sense that 'murder == wrongful killing', yes, all civilisations have considered murder wrong. If we go to a slightly less non-tautological definition, then you should keep in mind that
Some cultures practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism (ritual or otherwise).
Many civilisations had a code duello.
Most if not all cultures practice infanticide, including ours if you count abortion.
All civilisations practice war.
I think it is not obvious that humans, even civilised humans, recognise killing as wrong. Certainly we can't agree on when it is.
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How is murder=wrongful killing trivial? I'll cede that it may be tautological (before going on to point out that all moral pronouncements are tautological on a cosmic scale, as humans themselves determine human morality), but that certainly doesn't make it trivial. Every society has to decide where to draw the line here, of course, but again, that's not trivial. Comanche, Spartans, early pre-colonial Ibo: all these groups drew the line on the beginning of viability in a different place (and using a different definition) than we do, but that doesn't make the present need to define that line trivial. In fact, it is the opposite of trivial: it is the sort of thing that being human is all about... we need, we crave, those lines of demarcation.
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I meant that, if you define murder as wrongful killing, then it is trivial to say that all civilisations have disapproved of it; it's like saying 'we disapprove of things we disapprove of.' Well, yes, we do, but it doesn't add much to a discussion, does it? I did not mean to imply that deciding where to draw the line is a trivial task.
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Is it possible to believe in the inherent value of human life regardless of its use to society and not be in any way religious?
I ask this because I thought the answer was yes. I stated that I didn't let religion affect my politics, but my politics are certainly affected by the above statement. So does this mean I'm really a religious extremist?
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nfl, in my original post on this subject, I clearly stated that my view of the laws on murder were descriptive. That is, this is the way I think things are, not necessarily the way I think they ought to be.
That said, yes, I think you can view human life as valuable without being religious; you can make a conscious decision that 'humans are pretty cool, I won't kill any without good reason'. But maybe that isn't what you meant by 'inherent' value. I don't think anything in the Universe has a value other than what humans (or other intelligences) choose to put on it, no. And I would indeed characterise such a belief as mystical, if not religious.
PSI-T, maybe you missed the discussion on the previous page? People really ought to stop posting a whole page of stuff while I'm at work, it's a terrible habit. Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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KoM: You'll find that blood oranges, especially those you might buy in an Italian open marketplace, are especially good when served with a strong, aged parmesean.
I think my question is valid-- it prompts you to answer how you, personally define humanity.
Your ideas about why murder is frowned upon leads me to believe you favor utilitarianism. So-- do you define 'humanity' by what the creature can do for you?
By the way-- I think one of the great things about our modern civilization is just how far we have extended the definition of humanity. To include folks who were not previously considered human-- like the mentally deficient and so forth.
posted
Then why is it supposedly impossible to extend that worth to a unborn child without religion? Why is it impossible to believe that there isn't a barrier between life that exists only between the one second where the baby begins to emerge from the womb? If you don't agree with Paul, then don't feel obliged to answer that.
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Please keep in mind my statement was that no secular argument can be made for banning abortion... not that any of the less extreme legal positions that could be taken do not have secular arguments.
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Well, in fact I don't think it impossible. In fact, isn't an abortion pretty difficult to get after the twenty-sixth week or so? I'm pretty sure Norway at least draws a line there. So clearly we do extend humanity, or at least legal protection (animals have rights too, remember) a good bit before birth. On the other hand, while in principle we could certainly extend protection to fertilised egg cells, it's a bit like saying we could extend protection to individual sperm cells. Yes, we could, but why would we want to? And I think that's what Paul is arguing too.
I define humanity much as I define science fiction : "Whatever I'm pointing at while using the term." I am prepared to point at the mentally handicapped, late-term embryos, and desperately poor people in Sudan, so I am forced to the conclusion that I do not define humans by their utility to me alone.
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While my position has never been for abortion in an abstract sense, I have generally tended towards a position that legal abortion is an unfortunate necessity, similarly to war.
I still think it is, currently, but I have generally come to the conclusion that this is not inevitable and we are near to making it no longer so.
Specifically, I feel that were the government to undertake significant , but not overly extreme, reform (read in large part, better funding, eliminating certain barriers involved (though paying close attention to the safety of the child)) of adoption and foster care systems, I would be happy to support a ban on abortion given certain, and I feel reasonable, exceptions (some specific ones: the ban must not include abortifacients which operate before implantation, must include allowances for the physical danger of the mother, that sort of thing).
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Scott, interesting as the definition of humans is, I still think you haven't responded to what I posted about civilisations recognising murder as wrong. Have you lost interest in that part of the discussion?
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Paul, it could just as equally be said then that there are no secular arguments to be made for banning murder. Secularly, murder is infringing on another human their right to life. A fetus/zygote is alive. It is a human life -- it must be, for it is both alive and made from human seed. Really, there can be no logical argument FOR legal abortion except to say that the rights of some humans supercede the rights of others.
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Except that its not clear that what's genetically the same as a human is human. For instance, an organ can be kept independently alive, but we wouldn't call it a human. You're ignoring a huge body of philosophical contention; while one side or the other may be wrong, its not obvious at all.
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jen, I thought I just made a secular argument for banning murder. To wit, I don't want to be murdered, and neither does anyone else; the simplest way for us all to achieve our aim is to agree to enforce a no-murders rule, and pay specialists to do it for us.
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A kidney most certainly can be made self-sustaining. Put it into a human. Try that with a fetus.
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I'll start with a few simple reasons. I'm going to miss some, and there will be objections to others.
1) There are serious legal difficulties in enforcing an abortion ban. None of these exist for killing people.
2) While I will concede that an embryo or fetus is human life, it is hardly obvious that, in particular, the embryo is a person, while it is blindingly obvious that, for example, you are a person.
3) There is no apparent societal harm, other then the nebulous "respect for life" argument, in having abortions be legal, while there are tremendous societal harms in allowing people to be killed. The respect for life argument, to be consistent, requires either that we not eat, or that we recognize the embryo as a person, which again is only even remotely obvious if you assume a soul. On the other hand, if murder is legal, society cannot exist.
4) Legally, a person is a being accorded legal rights and responsibilities. REligously, a person is a being with a soul. Secularly, then, to define an embryo as a person, you have to figure out what responsibilities it has that only beings accorded protection from being killed it has under the law.
5) There are societal goods served by having abortion be legally available (legal abortion, along with legal contraception, made the women's lib movement possible. Without those, the movement never succeeded to the degree it has). There are no societal goods served by having murder be legal.
1, 3, and 5 are the most important of those listed.
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Now, I'm only playing devil's advocate here - but I think there are a few goods that can be had from legalising murder, without society collapsing. More specifically, I'm thinking of a code duello. If duels are rare, then society will survive their existence. The goods provided are a court of absolute last resort : There would be limits on personal courtesy and treatment of others, past which one could not step except at risk of life and limb.
I do agree with our current legal code, which says that these goods are not worth the costs. But that's not the same as saying there are no goods at all.
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quote:I'm trying to imagine how awful I would feel about disconnecting the sick violinist knowing that if I would just wait a matter of months, he would be well enough to continue on his own without me. That might make beauty out of a situation I didn't ask for, didn't want, wouldn't have chosen if I had had a choice.
Sure, that's probably how I'd feel too (if I were a woman etc). But I think it's pretty clear you should have the legal right to be callous and disconnect the violinist.
Anyway, not to make myself sound like a pro-choice partisan or anything. I don't really know what to think about abortion. My hope is that the issue will go away as birth control becomes easier. I am entirely for every woman (and man, if/when that becomes possible) going on birth control from the moment they hit puberty until they decide to have a child. That'd solve the whole problem, without any religious/philosophical wrangling.
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Re 1: Difficulty of enforcement has rarely been a hinderance to the passage of laws. It's impossible to enforce a ban on spam, yet we benefit by its illegality because that makes it prosecutable.
Re 3: I think the word "apparent societal harm" is debatable. The most obvious harm to society is the tens of millions of potential tax payers that were never born because they were aborted.
Re 5: Legal abortion was not a boon to women's liberation and equality. Female contraception, without question, was. I contend that *no* societal good comes from killing fetuses simply because they are not wanted by their mother. This is a value judgement, as is the converse.
posted
Don't think I've been particularly rude in this thread, have I? Espoused controversial opinions, sure, but not rudely, I hope. Of course, precisely that argument is one of the reasons I don't think the goods of duels outweigh the ills : It permits people who feel strongly about something to shut the opposition up in a final and unarguable manner.
jeniwren, for all practical purposes abortion is a form of contraception. That's not how it's supposed to work, but some women do use it that way. If contraception is good, then why is abortion, with pretty much the same effects, bad? Particularly if you define the morning-after pill, which (as far as I know) has no side-effects, as abortion.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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KoM, to be honest I was just busting your balls.
But since you mentioned it, you have been a bit rude.
Calling others religious views equal to superstition isn't exactaly polite, you know. You DO like to get people worked up a bit, don't you...and I know it isn't something that is all in my head, because others have commented on it in the past.
You definately were rude to Dag.
No big deal...I could care less what your personal views are on my religion, but I am pretty sure that what matters in my life is what I think, bit what you think.
I am willing to listeen to anyone, religious or non-religious, as long as they play well with each other.
posted
"Difficulty of enforcement has rarely been a hinderance to the passage of laws. It's impossible to enforce a ban on spam, yet we benefit by its illegality because that makes it prosecutable."
Not the legal difficulties I'm necessarily talking about. Its impossible to enforce a ban on abortion without getting rid of doctor/patient confidentiality, removing the right ot privacy (a right that has been recognized by the courts since the early 1800's, to one extent or another), and starting a government observation program that would destroy the fourth amendment. If you CAN"T enforce such a ban equally, then you run afoul of the equal protection clause.
"I think the word "apparent societal harm" is debatable. The most obvious harm to society is the tens of millions of potential tax payers that were never born because they were aborted"
Right. This is another part of why a reasonable secular argument for banning abortion is impossible. You value a few tax dollars, which may or may not be paid (how many abortions are on children who would be born into circumstances where the liklihood of them paying taxes that outweigh their consumption of public dollars?) over several principles that people of our country find to be extremely valuable... such as the right to be secure in their persons against unreasonable searches.
In the case of abortions, these harms are judged by possible future losses, whereas in the case of murder, they are judged by definitive present and future losses, as well as undermining the very structure upon which society is built.
"Legal abortion was not a boon to women's liberation and equality"
No? I don't think there are very many people who were active in the women's liberation movement who would agree with you. The fact is that without the ability to end unwanted pregnancies, women are forced out of the workplace for a certain amount of time, which costs them with respect to men in terms of seniority, pay, promotions, and career choice. These effects are fairly well documented.
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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Lryhawn, I have a question...What is a "tooth cell"?
Every cell has a copy of your DNA in it, which is why DNA is so valuable to law enforcment people.
Your arguments were unoriginal, and didn't pass intellectual muster for this thread. It helps that we have heard it about 30 times, so we have our counterarguments right at hand...lol...
posted
I think you'll find that I haven't used the word superstition in this thread, even though it's pretty accurate. As for Dag, well, he'd just dismissed my views on pretty much everything. So if I was being rude to do the same, why, he started it. Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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No, but you strongly implied it was the same...so lets not split hairs on the subject, ok? I got what you were saying....and so did Dag, and others in this thread.
You said that one of the defining characteristics he prides himself on was worse than useless, and that we would be better off without it...and said that with luck it would soon disappear.
Or something like that.
Feel what you like, but to dismiss someone just because they are religious is more than disrespectful....it is down right ignorant.
Some of the best minds of all time were religious...does that mean you don't have to care about their ideas and theories either? Just a bit heavy-handed, don't you think?
I love the irony of you playing a Paladin, though...talk about type-casting!
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