2 Deep PRO-LIFE Questions from an atheist

[Pattylt]

I think you are correct that trauma is the better word. However, when my son was kicking the dickens out of me and kicked my ice cream bowl off my stomach, assault still comes to mind!

 

[MamaJewel]

This is what one commentator calls the language of the Anointed . . .

We the Benighted are not less “educated” than you; we simply see the issue through different set of ethical lenses.

Humility and an open mind are beneficial to these discussions.

Oh, you don’t go there with me. I am humble. I put up with so much abuse before I became educated. I surely don’t think I’m better than anybody here. Seven years ago when my ex walked off from our family and the priest laughed at me over the situation and the bishop could care less and waved a dismissive hand at me, I vowed that I would look back in 5 years and not know who that woman was. I got an education so I can take care of myself, my children (some of whom are disabled) and to know my rights.

I’m a childhood SA survivor, and DV survivor as both a child and as an adult. I’m educated so I don’t have to be oppressed, not because I think want/need to be better than others.

And let me tell you something, people don’t have any value in this society. Unfortunately, not even in our churches. Before I was educated I even took a beat down from my own nasty attorney who had the audacity to lie about her connections to my then husband. I’ve been through the wringer.

I understand completely what Roe v Wade was about. And I understand the ruling of McFall v Schimp. Whether anybody likes it or not, a person has the right to be free from having his or her body for the direct use (benefit) of another human being. Just saying.

 

[humbleseeker]

And let me tell you something, people don’t have any value in this society.

I’m sorry that you feel this way. It sounds like you have been hurt by those who should be looking out for your welfare. I’ll be praying for you.

 

[dougp]

Niceatheist, they’re not embryos. They don’t develop into humans. They “reproduce” more of their kind, whatever they were (kidney, bone, whatever).
Embryo is special. Just ask your Mommy.

 

[goout]

blackforest:

This is what one commentator calls the language of the Anointed . . .

We the Benighted are not less “educated” than you; we simply see the issue through different set of ethical lenses.

Humility and an open mind are beneficial to these discussions.

Oh, you don’t go there with me. I am humble. I put up with so much abuse before I became educated. I surely don’t think I’m better than anybody here. Seven years ago when my ex walked off from our family and the priest laughed at me over the situation and the bishop could care less and waved a dismissive hand at me, I vowed that I would look back in 5 years and not know who that woman was. I got an education so I can take care of myself, my children (some of whom are disabled) and to know my rights.

I’m a childhood SA survivor, and DV survivor as both a child and as an adult. I’m educated so I don’t have to be oppressed, not because I think want/need to be better than others.

And let me tell you something, people don’t have any value in this society. Unfortunately, not even in our churches. Before I was educated I even took a beat down from my own nasty attorney who had the audacity to lie about her connections to my then husband. I’ve been through the wringer.

I understand completely what Roe v Wade was about. And I understand the ruling of McFall v Schimp. Whether anybody likes it or not, a person has the right to be free from having his or her body for the direct use (benefit) of another human being. Just saying.

I understand that your pain gives you an outlook that I can’t appreciate.
But you say this:

a person has the right to be free from having his or her body for the direct use (benefit) of another human being.

And I wish you would extend the same consideration to the helpless unborn who are victims of use by others.

 

[CRM_Brother]

I understand completely what Roe v Wade was about. And I understand the ruling of McFall v Schimp. Whether anybody likes it or not, a person has the right to be free from having his or her body for direct use (benefit) of another human being. Just saying

From your description and use of Roe v. Wade, it seems that you do not actually understand what it was about. Roe v. Wade was about the Right to Privacy between a physician and patient and the inability of the government to regulate the physician’s ruling as to what was ‘detrimental to the health of the woman’, thus allowing for an abortion. It wasn’t until 1992 and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey that abortion became a personal right of a woman and there was no longer a need for a declaration of ‘detriment to health’ by the physician.

As to McFall v. Shimp, there are a few legal hurdles for this to be used in support of abortion rights. First, it is not a federal precedent. It was decided in a Pennsylvania county Court of Common Pleas, which are trial courts of general jurisdiction and an appellate for the minor county courts. It was never even appealed to the state’s major appellate circuit or supreme court. As such, it cannot be used in a legal argumentation of rights protected by the Constitution of the United States and federal law.

Secondly, this case specifically targets the compelled donation of human body parts to another person and was written so that it would be a very narrow interpretation, only usable in the case of a person being compelled through an order of law to give invasive bodily aid which had not yet been administered. It has nothing to do with the right of someone prohibiting a person the continued use of bodily aid after it had been donated. This can only be used to argue that a woman has the right to refuse to allow an embryo to attach to her uterine wall. Once the embryo was already attached, the case is mute. Whether knowingly or unknowingly the donation had already been made and an entirely new case would need to be brought before the courts to rule on this issue. It is a precedence of refusing the command to an act of aid, not the right of person to rescind aid which had already been given.

Thirdly, this case can only be used to support abortion if you first acknowledge that the embryo is a legal human being as the narrow wording of the judgment is specifically within the context of legal litigation.

 

[Damian]

A child, regardless of age, is limited in its ability to care for itself by its very nature and has a natural right to parental care.

Yes if the pregnant woman first consents to be a parent to the child. You assume that being pregnant automatically makes you a parent. It doesn’t. The adult has to consent to be a parent to be held legally accountable for failing to be a be a parent to this child. Otherwise every adult that walks past a homeless child is held to the same legal standard as this pregnant woman that didn’t consent to parent this child either. Once they consent, then we can legally step in and protect this child from the neglect of this parent. But we can’t step in an make a random adult accountable for the protection of random children they interact with if the adult has to use their body to save the life of these children. Otherwise every child that needs an organ donation should be able to sue every adult they encounter for not giving up their kidneys to save this child.

The child can’t be treated as an autonomous outsider to either parent; the child arises naturally from the natural processes of the parental bodies,

How the process is that created the child is irrelevant. The natural process of falling from rock climbing is gravity, rocks, and a broken bone. So by consenting to rock climb, do I now have to be obligated to live with a broken arm from taking the risk of rock climbing? No, I take the responsibility of that bad outcome of risky behavior and fix the bad result. The bad result of consenting to sex is pregnancy and she is taking the responsibility of fixing that bad result and is not to be forced to live with it any more than I would be force to live with a broken arm.

 

[Damian]

I see it as letting nature take its course.

Abortion is removing someone else from using the body of another person that is not consenting to have their body be used that way. So they disconnect the fetus from the woman. Now the natural course will be that the fetus will die of natural causes now since it is not developed enough to survive without the use of the woman’s body. Exactly no different than a child that needs the woman’s kidney to stay alive, she refuses to have her body be used, and the child dies of natural causes because the woman wouldn’t allow her body to be used to save this child.
The antichoice movement focuses on what the doctor does after they disconnect the fetus as the outrage. Since the fetus will die of natural causes on its own and then poison the woman if left there, the doctor gives a lethal dose to the fetus and then has to remove the dead person from the woman. That process seems to be what people object to. So if we come up with a more humane way of dealing with the dead child’s body, would this then be an issue?

 

[blackforest]

I disagree that either of these definitions apply.

With an assault on the body, in a medical sense, the body would have to be fighting it, or at least trying. A good analogy would be your immune system kicking into gear when you’re assaulted by a virus.

But for the majority of pregnancies, women’s body’s don’t try to fight off embryos and fetuses. On the contrary, they lay out the red carpet for these children to develop and grow. The uterus expands, the placenta and cord develop to nourish the child, etc.

I’m just trying to figure out defending an anti abortion position by denying it’s an assault to her body will score any points?

I don’t feel like I’m playing a game, a reference to your word choice about “scoring,” so much as trying to seek the facts about an issue and point out holes in arguments.

My first reaction to that statement was, “did you ever have a baby?”

We call this the Ad Hominem fallacy. But since you asked, I’ve experienced pregnancy multiple times, thanks for asking.

 

[Damian]

So to paraphrase, a woman with a successful abortion is A-OK both ethically and in the eyes of the law

Ethically no, legally yes. It is unethical to kill someone but legal under self defense to protect yourself. You are still violating the assaulter’s right to life as they are violating your right to safety. Just, legally, your right to safety supersedes their right to life. So unethical but legal. Our legal system is setup to place a hierarchy of which of our rights supersede other rights when they come into conflict. So our culture, by law, has bodily autonomy over someone else’s right to life through the use of someone else’s body. Otherwise we could harvest the dead and force inmates to give up their body parts to save the life of their victims.

But you’re not.

I am granting the fetus the same rights as anyone else. They have a right to life, just not at the expense of someone else’s bodily autonomy; which is what everyone has at this point. The mental state of someone that needs someone else’s body to live is irrelevant, their ability to understand that they are hooked up to someone else to stay alive is also irrelevant. The decision to have their body used is solely on the person whose body is being used regardless of the state of the person that needs their body to stay alive. That’s the law for everyone, but granting a fetus rights over someone else’s bodily use is granting the fetus special rights that no one else has.

o equate a human growing naturally inside a woman to assault , e.g. rape, is an inflammatory

Its an analogy to point at the underlying issue, not to equate them. Sorry that this triggers you but not my problem because I am trying to present A + B = C idea by using D+E=F. What ever I used for A, B, C, D, E, or F is irrelevant when I am trying to discuss how addition works. If you get upset and focus on the A and B used and don’t get the point that I was talking about different ways to show the concept of addition, not my problem and you don’t seem to get the point of what I was trying to talk about.

To starve one’s child legally constitutes an act of neglect.

Yes to starve your child is neglect. However, are you responsible if you walk past a starving child that is not your own on the street? No, no you are not. You are not even a parent to that child. Being pregnant doesn’t make you a parent until you accept the role of parent. If you don’t then you are not declaring yourself a parent to this child and not responsible for it any more than you are for a random child on the street. You can give the child on the street a sandwich, but no one expects you to have to give up a kidney for this child. It would be extremely altruistic of you, but that child has no legal right to force you to give up your body to save it at all, correct?

 

[Ghosty1981]

Yes if the pregnant woman first consents to be a parent to the child. You assume that being pregnant automatically makes you a parent. It doesn’t. The adult has to consent to be a parent to be held legally accountable for failing to be a be a parent to this child.

Consent has no bearing on the natural rights of the child. The child is naturally dependent on the mother regardless of the choice of the mother. This is true of every single human being, and is integral to human nature. We are not talking about legal obligations but natural rights.

Otherwise every adult that walks past a homeless child is held to the same legal standard as this pregnant woman that didn’t consent to parent this child either. Once they consent, then we can legally step in and protect this child from the neglect of this parent. But we can’t step in an make a random adult accountable for the protection of random children they interact with if the adult has to use their body to save the life of these children. Otherwise every child that needs an organ donation should be able to sue every adult they encounter for not giving up their kidneys to save this child.

The child doesn’t have a natural right to dependency on any given human being, but to the care of their parents. The child is the natural effect of the parents, not of the passerby on the street. As a society we might impose an obligation on a passerby if they see a child in distress, but right now we are discussing natural rights, not legal societal obligations (bodily autonomy is not an absolute legal right after all).

continued…

 

[Ghosty1981]

How the process is that created the child is irrelevant. The natural process of falling from rock climbing is gravity, rocks, and a broken bone. So by consenting to rock climb, do I now have to be obligated to live with a broken arm from taking the risk of rock climbing?

This is not an example of a natural right, but rather the effect of an accident. Natural rights arise from the nature of the thing in question. You bring up bodily autonomy for human beings, and this is an example of a natural right; by virtue of being a human being the person has a right to bodily autonomy. This can’t be confused with possible accidents, injuries, or defects.

The bad result of consenting to sex is pregnancy and she is taking the responsibility of fixing that bad result and is not to be forced to live with it any more than I would be force to live with a broken arm.

Again you are confusing defects that result from accidents with natural rights. They are not at all the same; one is a consequence of extrinsic factors that cause a change on the individual’s body, the other is something that arises intrinsically from the very nature of the thing in question. On the one hand we have the intrinsic right of the mother to bodily autonomy, a natural right that you grant, on the other we have the intrinsic right of the child to parental care. As I argued previously this right of dependency is intrinsic to human nature, and the mother has already benefited from it as the right to bodily autonomy is subsequent to the right of parental care. One literally can’t have the right of bodily autonomy without first having the right of dependency. The pregnancy may be an accident, but a real human child is the effect, and this existence is not contingent in any way on the consent of the mother.

Human nature quite simply can’t exist without a period of dependency, so any natural right that a human enjoys follows from this dependency. You can’t treat the child only as an extrinsic accident without natural human rights without denying its humanity, and you already granted that the child has humanity.

 

[Ghosty1981]

Exactly no different than a child that needs the woman’s kidney to stay alive, she refuses to have her body be used, and the child dies of natural causes because the woman wouldn’t allow her body to be used to save this child.

This highlights the gap in your argument: a child has no natural right to another’s harvested kidney, but they do have a natural right to parental care regardless of consent. The first is a case of treatment of a defect in an individual, the second is the natural course of human nature itself.

 

[Damian]

You are actually denying normal rights to the fetus, not giving them the same rights as anyone else.

What person has a right to use someone else’s body to stay alive? Only a fetus does. That is the exact example of special rights.
You are again conflating right to life over someone else’s right to bodily autonomy. Sorry but our legal system has that exactly backwards from what you would like. Legally, our bodily autonomy supersedes someone else’s right to life. Both are moral issues of course, just they are in conflict and we have to determine which supersedes the other.

You seem to concede that humans do have natural rights as you are claiming the right of bodily autonomy, but you aren’t consistent in your recognition of these rights.

I challenge you to point this out for me.

require parental nurturing

Again, being pregnant does not make you a parent until you consent to be a parent. Otherwise, every child on the street that runs into a random person can claim that adult as a parent as well.

You are granting this to the mother and denying it to the child.

No I am applying the same standard to the child as anyone else has. The mother can’t force their child to give up their body to save the mother any more than a child can force their mother to give up their body to save their life. Ex: Parents place their child in the car and then run a red light and the child suffers in the accident. As a result, the child needs an organ transplant from their parents to stay alive because they can’t wait for a donor. Do the parents have a choice? If so, why and why is this different for the fetus and parent then?

 

[blackforest]

Yes to starve your child is neglect. However, are you responsible if you walk past a starving child that is not your own on the street? No, no you are not.

Some states actually have Good Samaritan Laws that would legally compel you to help the child.

But I appreciate you keep the legal and ethical dimensions of this discussion separate. Given its history of egregious human and civil rights violations, I don’t use the State as a metric for what is ethical.

I am granting the fetus the same rights as anyone else. They have a right to life, just not at the expense of someone else’s bodily autonomy;

So if I understand, you’re saying there’s a right to life until somebody decides to kill you.

The embryo-as-assaulter doesn’t work for reasons that I’ve already explained to @Pattylt . A true medical assault on the body would initiate a defensive response, such as an immune response. Unless there’s a molar pregnancy, from which a human organism cannot develop, or a miscarriage due to chromosomal abnormalities, bodies don’t respond to embryos and fetuses as assailants. On the contrary, they develop and change to become more hospitable.

Sorry that this triggers you but not my problem because I am trying to present A + B = C idea by using D+E=F.

It actually is on you to tread into these debates with some degree of compassion and sensitivity, at least if you’re concerned about civility.

The analogy is false one, anyway, as I delineated above.

It would be extremely altruistic of you, but that child has no legal right to force you to give up your body to save it at all, correct?

What about the Chinese woman who breastfed the starving babies? Had she decided to let the babies starve, she may not have gotten in legal trouble. But I believe that most cultures would have frowned on her.

That’s the law for everyone, but granting a fetus rights over someone else’s bodily use is granting the fetus special rights that no one else has.

Well, I’ve long argued not for equality of circumstance but equality of opportunity. This ethic has guided my political, philosophical, and ethical outlook on a wide range of issues. The human embryo can’t possibly enjoy the equality of circumstance with a grown, thinking, able-bodied woman. But with your argument, the embryo/fetus would be denied the opportunity that the woman has to enjoy a right to life and a future with potential. If anything, it is you who believes in granting a special set of rights to one human being at the expense of another.

 

[Damian]

you’re saying there’s a right to life until somebody decides to kill you.

Is the person that refuses to donate blood or anything else about their body to save someone else also killing someone then? If so, then everyone that is not an organ donor is at least guilty of man-slaughter.

I don’t use the State as a metric for what is ethical.

Yes I agree, there is a difference between legal and ethical and moral to do. When moral and ethical issues come into conflict, that is when we have to use what the legal system says for assessing the hierarchy of these conflicting moral issues. I’m fine changing the hierarchy as long as it ends up affecting fathers as much as mothers. Let’s see if men are willing to put their bodies on the line for their children, legally, as much as they are forcing women to. Don’t hold your breath. There’s a reason we cured erectile dysfunction before creating a birth control pill for men.

A true medical assault on the body would initiate a defensive response

Where’s the medical assault on a woman who’s unconscious and doesn’t have her body damaged, but is raped in her sleep. That wouldn’t be assault by your standard then. Assault is a mental assessment of the situation regardless of its impact to our bodies.

What about the Chinese woman who breastfed the starving babies? Had she decided to let the babies starve, she may not have gotten in legal trouble. But I believe that most cultures would have frowned on her.

I agree that she did the most she could to save those children and I applaud her for it. I do not agree that we should have legislation that forces people to give up their body to save someone though because I don’t agree that our governments should have that much control over us. They should never gain control over how we use our bodies and never have power over killing us either.

But with your argument, the embryo/fetus would be denied the opportunity that the woman has to enjoy a right to life and a future with potential.

Everyone has a right to life, just not to a right of any amount of life through forcing other people to give up their body to prolong life. That has to be granted through people choosing to give up their body to prolong other people’s lives. Disconnecting a fetus from a woman is exactly no different than a woman not deciding to give up a kidney to save someone’s life. Just the fetus will die quicker from natural causes than the person needing the kidney transplant. The amount of life they live is irrelevant.

 

[Damian]

a natural right to parental care regardless of consent.

So being a parent makes you lose your rights over your body’s use to save the life of your child? So if your child needs a lung to stay alive at the age of 6, you are legally compelled to give up a lung? If not, why is this different for a fetus then? That is special rights.
But again, you still make the mistake that everyone else is doing. Being pregnant does not make you a parent unless you consent to be a parent. Otherwise, to be fair, every child on the street that runs into an adult can claim that adult as a parent and obligate that adult to care for that child. The adult can give the child a sandwich, but is not obligated to give up a lung.

 

[Damian]

Consent has no bearing on the natural rights of the child. The child is naturally dependent on the mother regardless of the choice of the mother.

Yes you can be obligated to share food with children and anyone else that is on a boat that is set adrift in the ocean for example. If you throw someone overboard or deny someone equal access to the resources, then you can be held accountable for that. But no one is obligated to give up their body to save someone. That is the line too far. Just like the child that needs an organ donation, they are obligated to be given a sandwich, but not an organ from someone. They have no right of the use of someone else’s body, which is the same for everyone. If not, then you are granting special rights to this child that no one else has rights to.

 

[Ghosty1981]

What person has a right to use someone else’s body to stay alive? Only a fetus does. That is the exact example of special rights.

Every adult human person has been a fetus. The child in this scenario is not given anything that the mother has not already received by definition. On the contrary, you are seeking to remove this natural right from the fetus while having already tacitly granted it to the mother.

You are again conflating right to life over someone else’s right to bodily autonomy. Sorry but our legal system has that exactly backwards from what you would like. Legally, our bodily autonomy supersedes someone else’s right to life. Both are moral issues of course, just they are in conflict and we have to determine which supersedes the other.

We are not talking about legal rights, but natural rights. You yourself said that the government should not impose on the bodily autonomy of individuals, so you are working in the realm of natural rights as opposed to legal rights.

I challenge you to point this out for me.

Gladly. You wrote:

That we posses an inherent right to our body and its use over someone else’s right to live by the use of our body.

and:

But I’m definitely not going to codify that into law because I fundamentally disagree that we should grant our government the power to have say over our body’s use.
Same thing with the death penalty. I fundamentally disagree that we should give our government the right to end the lives of its citizens.

This is a natural principle, not a legal one. If it is a legal one then it is extrinsic, not inherent. Even when you are arguing legal principles you seem to be doing so from the perspective of laws protecting natural rights, and that laws that violate these rights are wrong.

Again, being pregnant does not make you a parent until you consent to be a parent. Otherwise, every child on the street that runs into a random person can claim that adult as a parent as well.

Consent doesn’t cause the child to exist, and every child has parents. I do not exist because my parents consented to my existence, I exist because my father’s sperm met my mother’s egg; we all had parents before they knew of our existence. This argument about the stranger on the street is a red herring.

No I am applying the same standard to the child as anyone else has. The mother can’t force their child to give up their body to save the mother any more than a child can force their mother to give up their body to save their life

The right of dependency must be a given before the right of bodily autonomy, so by granting bodily autonomy to the mother you have already tacitly granted her natural right to dependency. At the same time you are attempting to grant bodily autonomy to the child while denying the right of dependency, a logical fallacy; human nature does not develop without dependency, so you can’t grant human rights without including the right of dependency.

 

[Ghosty1981]

Yes you can be obligated to share food with children and anyone else that is on a boat that is set adrift in the ocean for example. If you throw someone overboard or deny someone equal access to the resources, then you can be held accountable for that. But no one is obligated to give up their body to save someone.

These are examples of legal obligations, not intrinsic natural ones. Now we can argue about the natural rights of the weak to the protection of the strong, or the natural right of the poor to the food of the rich, but that is a whole other level of argument that isn’t really necessary for discussing the natural rights of a child to parental care.

Yes, society might oblige its citizens to provide care to some, and this obligation may even be founded on natural principles, but these are many steps removed from the inherent natural right of dependency that every single human being possesses if it has any right to exist at all.