2 Deep PRO-LIFE Questions from an atheist

[blackforest]

And if there was no pain and no blood to clean up and the only outcome from it was that she knew she was raped, then would it be okay?

I had to save the “best” for last because this statement is so outrageous.

I cannot @#% believe I have to explain this, but there’s no such thing as painless rape.

And here I thought pro-choicers were feminists . . . .

I’m replying to my own because I need to clarify something.

I explained to you that an embryo can’t be assaulting a woman because pregnancy is a natural process, and her body welcomes the embryo under most normal, healthy circumstances.

Sex is similar. I have to stay vague per forum guidelines, but like the male body, the female body undergoes particular changes to prepare for and physiologically welcome consensual sex. Your scenario of a passed out woman getting painlessly (???) raped is therefore not analogous to the physiological changes women go through to support a pregnancy.

If a woman’s body does consider pregnancy and “assault,” she undergoes a miscarriage.

 

[Damian]

I disagree with your premise that granted rights by society seem to emerge from some other source other than people. So I don’t see a difference between your distinction between natural and granted rights. Our “rights” come from people first and then we have a discourse amongst ourselves to see how to create boundaries around the expression of these “rights” so that when we demand our rights, we don’t over reach and infringe on other rights when they come into conflict. We codify this process through law. So there is no difference to be between the two as you seem to suggest.

 

[goout]

I think it’s telling that the pro abortion philosophy must necessarily resort to byzantine moral hypotheticals to obfuscate when reason escapes you.

Human life is demanding isn’t it. The protection of life calls for lots of effort and moral formation. But one thing about human life is, it’s real, not hypothetical.

Hypotheticals are easy distractions that amount to nothing but confusion.
Why don’t you just admit you know a human being when confronted with one?

 

[Damian]

It is relevant because refusal to help isn’t an issue and therefore debunks your analogy.

Can you address what I’m actually pointing out? I am pointing out that people helping is when they are exercising their consent to help through the use of their body, by donating blood, marrow, organs, etc. They never lose their right to refuse to do this only that they are consenting to help when they help. They never lose their right to their body’s use so no one is legally forcing them to donate their body to save someone, which is what the probirth movement is trying to do. They are trying to remove people’s choice to help by removing their ability to choose to help. I don’t know how to make this point clearer and you keep not addressing this point.

There is no scenario in which somebody else may donate their own body for an unwanted embryo growing in another woman’s body. So your analogy has another hole.

What is it about this conversation where you keep not actually addressing what I am pointing out? You can’t be this thick and I believe are now just trolling.

And fetuses aren’t “unhooked.” They are either killed through abortion, miscarried when they die of natural causes, or delivered through the childbirth process.

I’ve explained this process. Not going to repeat myself. If you don’t agree with the description of what happens, nothing I can do about it other than you asking a gyno if my description is correct or not.

Then it’s a willful action on the part of the assailant, something impossible for a fetus or embryo to accomplish.

The mental state of someone assaulting you is irrelevant. Someone who doesn’t have the mental ability to understand they are assaulting you is irrelevant. You never lose your right to refuse to have your body be used by someone else regardless of the other person’s mental capability to understand the situation.

You were saying that it’s all “mental” and defined by whomever feels they’ve been assaulted

The law states assault is when your right to swing your arm touches my body, regardless of the amount of damage it causes to me.

Elective, induced abortion requires killing the fetus. Death by killing is not death by natural cause.

I cannot @#% believe I have to explain this, but there’s no such thing as painless rape.

Okay, I’ll appeal to the fair-mindness of the readers here to see just how think you are in this conversation. This response clearly indicates you can’t seem to actually read what I wrote and pick up on the actual point I am making. You are just trolling now.

 

[goout]

Can you address what I’m actually pointing out? I am pointing out that people helping is when they are exercising their consent to help through the use of their body, by donating blood, marrow, organs, etc. They never lose their right to refuse to do this only that they are consenting to help when they help. They never lose their right to their body’s use so no one is legally forcing them to donate their body to save someone, which is what the probirth movement is trying to do. They are trying to remove people’s choice to help by removing their ability to choose to help. I don’t know how to make this point clearer and you keep not addressing this point.

The argument for right to absolute bodily autonomy is silly and circular.
Any human right presupposes a living human being, a priori.

Do you understand that? Human rights are proper to living human beings. (ok, you’ll go off on a tangent to show that deceased have continuing rights now, but really, I think you can understand that human rights are proper to human life…)

Do you understand what a human being is, and how human beings come to exist?
This is a pretty simple question, and you ought to answer it to establish some credibility.

 

[blackforest]

What is it about this conversation where you keep not actually addressing what I am pointing out? You can’t be this thick and I believe are now just trolling.

I think our communication wires are just got crossed. I have a long-standing membership with CAF and am not a troll. I am sorry to see our conversation take such a personal turn and will be muting this thread.

 

[Ghosty1981]

I disagree with your premise that granted rights by society seem to emerge from some other source other than people

That’s fine, but this is different from what you said earlier. You said that people have an inherent right to bodily autonomy, but now you are saying that they have merely a legal right to bodily autonomy.

So there is no difference to be between the two as you seem to suggest.

There is a huge difference between natural rights and legal rights. A natural right is something that is inherent in a person by virtue of their nature, the other is granted by laws, social contract, ect. If one believes in natural rights, then one can believe that laws are invalid for violating them. If one believes merely in social contracts then there can be no fundamentally “illegitimate” laws and no inherent rights that these laws can not overstep.

You don’t really have grounds to say that the government shouldn’t take away the right of bodily autonomy, because you believe that the right of bodily autonomy is part of a social contract and not something inherent to the person by virtue of their nature; if the social contract says that there is no bodily autonomy, then there is no right to bodily autonomy. You may not like an absence of bodily autonomy, and you might struggle to change the social contract and convince others to side with you, but you can’t properly speak of a “right” to bodily autonomy, merely a social privilege to it.

Under social contract theory, slavery is ok if the social contract says it is, as is murder or anything else that can be justified according to the majority of participants. It all depends on what the social contract stipulates, and no one has inherent rights that they bring to the table.

So it appears that you don’t believe that the mother has an inherent right to bodily autonomy, so you can’t just stack that right up against the right to life (another privilege, I’m assuming). I’ll await a clearer articulation of what you mean by a right to bodily autonomy before I respond further.

 

[Damian]

That’s fine, but this is different from what you said earlier. You said that people have an inherent right to bodily autonomy, but now you are saying that they have merely a legal right to bodily autonomy.

To give an analogy, scientists look at how reality actually is and then engineers use that knowledge to create a system build around those revealed truths of reality that the scientists discovered.
There is no duality here where the engineers are creating a world that doesn’t first stem from what reality demonstrates to be the case.
Just like there is no duality between legal and human rights. Human rights are truth that reality has revealed about the common human experience. Legal rights are the social application of those human rights build into a social system by creating a hierarchy of those rights to see what rights should and do supersede other human rights. IE: Your right to life does not supersede my right to bodily autonomy.
The universal experience of the human condition is the starting point from building our laws for society. They’re not creating laws separately and in parallel from the human experience, they start from the human experience.
So again, I repeat, when our human rights come into conflict with other human rights, we try to codify the process for dealing with that issue through laws so that we don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel to deal with these issues when they arise. If we get the process wrong for dealing with these issues, which we do all the time, then we update our laws and correct them. Exactly no different than when scientists have to update their models of reality when they are convinced their models are broken.

If one believes in natural rights, then one can believe that laws are invalid for violating them. If one believes merely in social contracts then there can be no fundamentally “illegitimate” laws and no inherent rights that these laws can not overstep.

The social contract is what the society has determined to be the correct path for addressing natural laws for that society. Yes they get it wrong, and we can hold them accountable for getting it wrong, even if they didn’t know any better. We can empathize with people being indoctrinated to implement a bad idea of natural laws but we still hold them accountable for it. So with slavery, yes there are people that didn’t know any better, but tough, they still got it wrong and we can hold them accountable as bastards in our history books for doing this. Slavery is wrong just like an engineer that builds a bridge that fails is wrong. We will get the laws wrong all the time as long as we keep ignoring universal human truths regardless of class, culture, race, economic status, gender, etc. Just like the engineer that ignores material forces.

 

[Damian]

The argument for right to absolute bodily autonomy is silly and circular.

I’m not arguing for absolute bodily autonomy, only to the issue of bodily autonomy vs right to life. Which one supersedes the other? Bodily autonomy does.

I explained to you that an embryo can’t be assaulting a woman because pregnancy is a natural process

Irrelevant because falling off a cliff from rock climbing is a natural process as well. What we are addressing is do people have to live with the results of that natural process after they assessed it as something good or bad? If bad, like a broken arm or pregnant, then they take the responsibility of dealing with the bad results of risky behavior by not living with those bad results of risky behavior.

If a woman’s body does consider pregnancy and “assault,” she undergoes a miscarriage.

What the biochemical process does inside of a woman is not by her choice any more than she has a choice to have her immune system work. Assault is a not at all the same in this case. Seriously do I really have to point this out?

 

[JohnStrachan]

According to The Ethical Brain (2005): “Even though the fetus is now developing areas that will become specific sections of the brain, not until the end of week 5 and into week 6 (usually around forty to forty-three days) does the first electrical brain activity begin to occur.” (Published in the NY Times

 

[Ghosty1981]

Just like there is no duality between legal and human rights. Human rights are truth that reality has revealed about the common human experience. Legal rights are the social application of those human rights build into a social system by creating a hierarchy of those rights to see what rights should and do supersede other human rights. IE: Your right to life does not supersede my right to bodily autonomy.
The universal experience of the human condition is the starting point from building our laws for society.

This still doesn’t answer whether or not you believe in natural rights, but it appears that you are leaning towards yes. I’ll proceed on the assumption that you believe that there are rights that are inherent to human nature (human experience is too nebulous a term to be useful here, I think).

Irrelevant because falling off a cliff from rock climbing is a natural process as well. What we are addressing is do people have to live with the results of that natural process after they assessed it as something good or bad?

This quote highlights a gap in your argument. Falling off a cliff is not a natural process; it does not arise from the nature of any one thing, but is an outside accident affecting a thing. A bodily function is a natural process because it arises from the nature of the body in question; photosynthesis is a “natural process” of plant life, for example. A human body may fall from a cliff, but falling from a cliff is not a “natural process” to human nature. Pregnancy is not like falling from a cliff because it arises from the natural process of the female human body, even if the introduction of sperm is an accident.

What the biochemical process does inside of a woman is not by her choice any more than she has a choice to have her immune system work. Assault is a not at all the same in this case. Seriously do I really have to point this out?

You have not demonstrated that choice is somehow more fundamental than other natural processes. On the contrary, choice is subsequent to many natural processes that are fundamentally required for human nature. You do not choose to develop in the womb, you do not choose to be fed and nurtured as an infant. Your ability to choose comes after these things, both logically and in time, and these things are fundamentally required for human nature to exist.

If, as you seem to claim, human nature has a right to choice and bodily autonomy, then it must first receive nurturing care as a dependent. Since choice is a right, and is fundamentally subsequent to dependency, dependency must be a right as well, and must be foundational to the right of choice and bodily autonomy. You can’t cut the trunk from the tree in order to preserve the branches, so you can’t place the right of choice and bodily autonomy over the right to dependency.

The choice of the mother can’t be held up in favor against the dependency of the child, because dependency is a more primordial right.

 

[goout]

goout:

The argument for right to absolute bodily autonomy is silly and circular.

I’m not arguing for absolute bodily autonomy, only to the issue of bodily autonomy vs right to life. Which one supersedes the other? Bodily autonomy does.

That is absolute bodily autonomy. You position bodily autonomy above the right to live, which is either really silly, or insane. So why are you denying that you claim absolute bodily autonomy when you place it above the right to live?

Correct me where we disagree:
The right to bodily autonomy is not proper to a cat.
The right to bodily autonomy is not proper to a dead man.
The right to bodily autonomy is proper to living human beings.

It rests on human life, rather than at the expense of it.

And there is no other sphere of life where a right to bodily autonomy is absolute. That assertion is dead in the water.
Tell a policeman who’s arresting you that you have a right to bodily autonomy.
Tell the TSA you have a right to bodily autonomy before you board a plane.

You have to come up with better than this.

 

[Gorgias]

I’m not arguing for absolute bodily autonomy, only to the issue of bodily autonomy vs right to life. Which one supersedes the other? Bodily autonomy does.

Sorry… I haven’t read the whole thread. This assertion piqued my interest, though. At the beginning of the thread, the claim was made that these questions all boil down to one critical question: when does someone become human ? So, did we decide that a human isn’t defined chromosomally, such that a zygote is human?

In any case, if you say that ‘bodily autonomy supercedes the right to life’, does that ‘bodily autonomy’ not apply to the child in the womb? Does he not have the right to the life of his body? How might we say “bodily autonomy trumps all” and then destroy his body?

Irrelevant because falling off a cliff from rock climbing is a natural process as well.

Actually… that would be a failure of a natural process (that of ‘climbing’ or ‘preserving one’s own life’. )

What we are addressing is do people have to live with the results of that natural process after they assessed it as something good or bad?

Without considering the effect of their assessment on another person?

 

[Damian]

you believe in natural rights

I believe in the most universal drivers that we all experience in the promotion of human flurishment as the result. We all need food, shelter, companionship, safety, etc. to maintain our physical and psychological well-being. Now what cultural practices we do to express our need for love, companionship, social acceptance and hierarchy, etc. is up for debate when those practices interfere with someone else’s practices for these drivers. IE: your culture values the life of someone else at the expense of someone else’s bodily autonomy. My culture values bodily autonomy over someone else’s right to life. Both our cultures, and everyone else, values right to life and bodily autonomy, but how do we address these issues when they come into conflict? My culture will grant that the fetus is a human being just like anyone else is and as such has the same rights as anyone else. So it does not get to have it’s life continued by forcing someone else to give up their bodily rights to do this. Just like the child in the car crash, put there by her parents, and now her parents have to give up a kidney to save their daughter’s life. Do they have a choice in this? Yes they do. Same with the fetus, the parents have a choice in this to have their body be used to save the life of their child here as well. The fetus and the daughter of 6 have no right to force anyone to give up their bodily rights to save their lives. Your culture’s position is to grant special rights to a fetus and then remove that once they are born. That is granting special additional rights that no one else has rights to.

Falling off a cliff is not a natural process

We’re just not going to agree here.

choice is somehow more fundamental than other natural processes.

Didn’t see that was what you were driving at, obviously. Any human process, including choice, is a natural process because using your brain is a natural process.

You do not choose to develop in the womb,

Irrelevant to the discussion for me. The mental state, conscious state, any other state of the person using someone else’s body does not supersede the right of the person to withdraw the use of their body to save that person. You seem to be arguing that if you woke up one day and I was hooked up to you to stay alive, my opinion in the matter could supersede your request to unhook yourself from me. Nope, sorry, doesn’t work that way. I can try to persuade you, but you have the ultimate say in how your body is to be used.

 

[Damian]

That is absolute bodily autonomy.

No it isn’t. I am only addressing the right of bodily autonomy vs right to life comparison. There are many other comparisons as well, but this is the only two I’m addressing.

Correct me where we disagree:
The right to bodily autonomy is not proper to a cat.
The right to bodily autonomy is not proper to a dead man.
The right to bodily autonomy is proper to living human beings.

Cat never got brought up, you have bodily autonomy over your own dead body via a will and family members and if none of those, the default position is to not use your body for anything other than burial.
Yes right to bodily autonomy is a right that all people have. “Right” in the idea that this is a universal human assertion regardless of culture, time period, race, sex, etc.

And there is no other sphere of life where a right to bodily autonomy is absolute.

Irrelevant. The quantity of “spheres of life” is never an issue. Okay, how about this then. Female genital mutilation is just a single sphere of life. That’s just 1 point in the sphere of life. Is that irrelevant or too small of a sphere to discuss then? So any other irrelevant points you want to throw in the mix?

 

[Damian]

Zygote is a person just like the marathon runner is a marathon runner on the first step. That was pointed out long ago. I am pointing out that the zygote person gets the same rights as everyone else, just they can’t force someone else to have their body used to save their life otherwise you are granting special additional rights to the zygote person that no one else has. Example: the 6 year old daughter that is placed in the car and ends up in a car crash either by her parents fault or someone else’s. She has no right now to use anyone’s body to stay alive, even from the people involved and cause of the accident in the first place. Want to give the zygote these rights, then change the laws to force all parents to give up their bodily autonomy for the life of their child. Since this will now affect men, and men are making these laws, don’t hold your breath on this change in law.

does that ‘bodily autonomy’ not apply to the child in the womb

Not anymore than the bodily autonomy of the 6 year old daughter in the car crash.

Actually… that would be a failure of a natural process

We’re just not going to agree on this.

Without considering the effect of their assessment on another person?

The other person’s life is considered, which is why this decision isn’t taken lightly, but it is ultimately up to the person whose body is to be used to make the decision over what the other person would want.

 

[Gorgias]

She has no right now to use anyone’s body to stay alive, even from the people involved and cause of the accident in the first place.

Wrong example. It would be more relevant if the example went like this:

A six-year-old gets on her school bus. On the way to school, there’s a horrible crash. The six-year-old is trapped in the bus, in such a way that she cannot be extracted immediately without killing her. As you wait for the appropriate time and appropriate medical care to come to her, the bus operator shows up on the scene and demands that the girl be extracted right now. “It’s my bus, and she has no right to continue to be inside it! I insist that she be removed from my bus immediately!” he demands.

Now… does the school bus operator have the right to have the child ripped from the bus in such a way that will preserve his bus, but will kill her? After all, he does own the bus. He did accept her as a passenger, but now, he wishes her removed, on the grounds that he’s no longer required to keep her alive by remaining there for a time. Does the bus owner have a case… or does the girl have the right to avoid being killed by virtue of his demands?

 

[MamaJewel]

Wrong example. It would be more relevant if the example went like this:

A six-year-old gets on her school bus. On the way to school, there’s a horrible crash. The six-year-old is trapped in the bus, in such a way that she cannot be extracted immediately without killing her. As you wait for the appropriate time and appropriate medical care to come to her, the bus operator shows up on the scene and demands that the girl be extracted right now . “It’s my bus, and she has no right to continue to be inside it! I insist that she be removed from my bus immediately! ” he demands.

Now… does the school bus operator have the right to have the child ripped from the bus in such a way that will preserve his bus, but will kill her? After all, he does own the bus. He did accept her as a passenger, but now, he wishes her removed, on the grounds that he’s no longer required to keep her alive by remaining there for a time. Does the bus owner have a case… or does the girl have the right to avoid being killed by virtue of his demands?

I respectfully disagree. Damian’s example is more appropriate when speaking of autonomy of the body. Parents of a child injured in a car crash are not legally compelled to give their blood, organs, etc to their child. One would hope that if their child needed blood, that the parents and others in the community would donate if they are a match.

The scenario in your example doesn’t add up. A bus is a non-living object, not a living person with rights and duties. (Not saying that you’re trying to, but you appear to denigrate women when making the comparison to a bus. A woman’s body isn’t an inanimate carrier of people. ) Now, if a six year old was injured and trapped on a bus, needing blood immediately, could the owner of the bus be told he or she has to give blood because the child was hurt on the owner’s property? No. The owner of the bus can’t be forced to donate blood to the child. The owner has a right to privacy and bodily autonomy.

 

[Gorgias]

Parents of a child injured in a car crash are not legally compelled to give their blood, organs, etc to their child.

Nope, but they’re not the ‘owner of the car’. In my example, the ‘owner of the car’ is the one who’s making the claims of autonomy. Not so much in Damian’s example.

A bus is a non-living object, not a living person with rights and duties. (Not saying that you’re trying to, but you appear to denigrate women when making the comparison to a bus. A woman’s body isn’t an inanimate carrier of people. )

Puh-leeze.

My example doesn’t ‘denigrate’. Rather, it accurately represents what Damian (and you) are attempting to express – the owner has rights over a passenger who is no longer wanted. The question isn’t “forcing to donate blood” in this case – it’s “ability to force the passenger to leave and therefore to die.” That’s the crux of the example.

 

[MamaJewel]

Your example does denigrate women. In trying to make your point, you indirectly compare women and their bodies to a bus and its owner. No comparison for bodily autonomy.

While the bus owner in your scenario wouldn’t be able to force a trapped child off of the bus (it would not reasonable), in my state a property owner can kill someone under “stand your ground”. Also, a property owner can go to the court and file to have a person forcibly removed from the premises. In addition, cops can tell a person to move from a property if that person is deemed to be loitering or can arrest an individual for trespassing.

Btw, a fetus isn’t “owned” by the woman, either. She can’t sell it by law.