Noah's Ark Explanation

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Dan123 said:
Yes. External actor.
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You’re trying to have it both ways, though: in one case, it’s a mother making a decision about her own body, and in the other, you’re saying that there are two distinct murders. They’re mutually exclusive assertions – either we’re talking about one body or two.

And, if we’re talking about two, then the claim of “external” or “internal” is irrelevant.
 
In one example the mother was willing to continue carrying the child, in the other she wasn’t. A non-viable child, by definition, isn’t viable without that continued consent from the mother. Whether she has those rights over her own body while pregnant is of course a currently-legal but debated topic.

If someone was on life support but an order from them was found expressing a wish not to be on life support, taking them off it wouldn’t be murder. If no such document was found and it was only the word of their spouse, he or she would be considered someone acceptable to express the person’s wishes on their behalf, and that wouldn’t be murder. If someone walked into the hospital and yanked the cord, that would be, even if the cord-yanker felt the person in the bed should die.
 
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Dan123 said:
Whether she has those rights over her own body child pregnant is of course a currently-legal but debated topic.
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Yes, it is still up for grabs, as a legal question. What’s really odd about it, though, is that it seems to give the child legal standing not based on his appearance as a distinct human individual, but based on the state of his mother’s mind. I’m not sure that there’s any other precedent in law that grants rights to people based on another’s consent.

What does “her own body child pregnant” mean? That’s an odd phrasing I’ve never seen used before.

Regarding life support: I’m not certain it’s as cut-and-dry as you make it out to be. 🤷‍♂️
 
Gorgias said:
Yes, it is still up for grabs, as a legal question. What’s really odd about it, though, is that it seems to give the child legal standing not based on his appearance as a distinct human individual, but based on the state of his mother’s mind. I’m not sure that there’s any other precedent in law that grants rights to people based on another’s consent.
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Sorry I meant ‘her own body while pregnant’.

So, I don’t want to derail it but this is a legit question I’ve posed before and it fits well with what you brought up about legal status. Say the law and people’s opinions swing heavily prolife and we all agree the unborn child has a right to live regardless of the mother or really anyone’s wishes. When, if ever, does that end? For example if a month into the pregnancy the mother doesn’t want to be pregnant, in this new scenario she’d be hopefully shown compassion but informed she has to stay the course, that the child needed her body to live and she accepted this when she became pregnant.

Now suppose that child is later born, but is failing to thrive. Doctors discover the chlid’s liver is defective and unable to filter the child’s blood. The only reasonable solution that will save the child’s life is a partial transplant from the mother. There’s no guarantee it will work, and of course there’s some risk, but it’s the only thing they can try.
  • Does the child have a right to part of his mother’s liver?
  • If not, why not given that same child has the right to it’s mothers body just days earlier?
  • If the mother refuses is that murder?
  • If she refuses does that mean she goes to jail, or is she physically compelled to undergo the surgery?
 
It comes around to this: God is the Author of life. Humans are not. And like it or not, He really does have the right to decide when that life ends.

And I’ve just seen so many people cry “Unfair!” at the idea that God can decide to cause an event like the Flood, but then want abortion to be legal.

If you have the right to take life, so does God.
 
In an abortion an intervention is made with the goal to kill the baby. The baby is in the situation where it is receiving ordinary care relevant to their state of life. Let nature take its course and the baby will be born (assuming nothing goes wrong). Also, unless she has been raped she has put the baby in the situation where he/she needs her body to survive.

With the transplant it would be virtuous for the mother to donate but it is not required. The transplant is not ordinary care and if nature to take its course (sadly) the baby will die. The abortion would be more analogous to her refusing to care for the baby and him/her dying as a result of the neglect.
 
Elf01 said:
The abortion would be more analogous to her refusing to care for the baby and him/her dying as a result of the neglect.
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Except normally speaking caring for a baby doesn’t involve risk to the mother’s life, pregnancy does, so your analogy isn’t perfect either, but in fairness I doubt any analogy would be a perfect stand in for such a unique human experience.

That said, if the needs of the newborn weren’t so great we wouldn’t be satisfied with letting nature take its course. If the child was born needing a minor corrective surgery, that carried little risk, a decent to high chance of success, and was financially viable, would you accept a parent refusing them that care as being morally right simply because not performing the intervention was the same as letting nature take its course? I think many would find fault with that, so we can’t simply appeal to nature as being the arbiter here. Nature aborts a large number of pregnancies.

I guess my objection is best summed up by your parenthetical though. “Assuming nothing goes wrong.” In a country where a majority of people and the laws supported pro-life stances, how much risk does a pregnant woman need to assume? If there’s 90% chance of complications which could lead to the death of the mother does she have to carry that pregnancy and take the risk? She did, after all, put herself in that situation unless she was raped, as you pointed out. If not, 60%? 30? 10? What if it’s unlikely she dies but likely she suffers a stroke or something debilitating like that. Must a woman with a 90% chance of having a debilitating stroke carry to term? 60? 30? 10? If there’s a number where it’s okay, does that mean abortions were more moral in the past when the risks were more likely? Is a woman in a developing country with less access to modern medicine more morally right to abort than one where the risks can be better managed?

I know I’m throwing a lot out here but I feel like these are natural questions that should follow arguments for pro-life oriented laws and yet I don’t hear them discussed. I’d like to see something more formally written that could potentially become law and more thoroughly expounds on what would and would not be permissible. I would think pro-life proponents would want to see the same, as drafting legislation is an important step towards implementing it.
 
Dan123 said:
I guess my objection is best summed up by your parenthetical though. “Assuming nothing goes wrong.” In a country where a majority of people and the laws supported pro-life stances, how much risk does a pregnant woman need to assume? If there’s 90% chance of complications which could lead to the death of the mother does she have to carry that pregnancy and take the risk? She did, after all, put herself in that situation unless she was raped, as you pointed out. If not, 60%? 30? 10? What if it’s unlikely she dies but likely she suffers a stroke or something debilitating like that. Must a woman with a 90% chance of having a debilitating stroke carry to term? 60? 30? 10?
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I think that the risk would be better left to medical experts to determine.

Personally with death I would say 70% or higher pre-viability and my tolerance would go down after that (or maybe approaching).

Other conditions would depend on the severity of the condition. Again lower percentage risks post viability.

I’m also referring to indirect abortion. If a treatment is necessary for the mother that will kill/harm the baby that is morally OK. I would argue that direct abortion is never necessary but indirect abortion may be. However, given the current climate I would support a law to permit abortion in those circumstances if it was otherwlse illegal. Would you?

I would also only permit delivery, not killing. Yes, pre viability the baby will die, but it feels less deliberate.

If you think of conjoined twins who share a vital organ and treatment for one may impact the other I want doctors to deal with a pregnant woman the same way. There are two patients whose rights need to be balanced.
Dan123 said:
If there’s a number where it’s okay, does that mean abortions were more moral in the past when the risks were more likely? Is a woman in a developing country with less access to modern medicine more morally right to abort than one where the risks can be better managed?
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I would agree with them. A woman who has an abortion because she is afraid for her life is more moral than a woman who has one because she just doesn’t want a baby (the reason the vast majority of abortions are carried out)
 
Dan123 said:
Except normally speaking caring for a baby doesn’t involve risk to the mother’s life, pregnancy does, so your analogy isn’t perfect either, but in fairness I doubt any analogy would be a perfect stand in for such a unique human experience.
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How’s this for an analogy, a baby is born and a man with gun tells the nurse to kill the child, or there is a 90% chance he will shoot the mother. Should the child be killed?
Dan123 said:
  • Does the child have a right to part of his mother’s liver?
  • If not, why not given that same child has the right to it’s mothers body just days earlier?
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An unborn does not have a right to the mother’s liver, and doesn’t need the mother’s liver. All an unborn asks of the mother is nourishment, space and time. It’s never going to stick it’s hand out of the womb and grab a bunch of organs from the mother. If that was the case then abortion probably could be justified.

So it does not have the right to it’s mother’s body, other than the part that has been specifically made for the unborn.
 
let’s start by mentioning that Genesis uses figurative language

…I like to think of it as the word of God…
 
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Huh, I forgot to delete that part. (It was supposed to be a preamble to the other stuff I deleted in favor of posting a link to the CA main site.)

But as for what you’re saying, there’s great beauty to be found in Genesis when reading the literal,as opposed to literalistic, meaning. Genesis is inspired. But inspired doesn’t always equate literal history. A little like how “it’s raining cats amd dogs” means it’s raining hard, not that popular pets are falling from the sky.
 
mVitus said:
First off, how did we manage to turn a thread about Noah’s Ark into abortion?
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Because you can’t get all mad at God for taking lives if you reserve for yourself the right to take a life.

And I pointed out that the people most likely to get mad at the Noah’s Ark story are the same ones who promote legalized abortion and euthanasia.
 
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