Death Penalty & Abortion

[Uli]

Originally posted by walto
"I am not a 100 pct certain about my views and decisions either."

If not, you're out of the Crawjo/Dolan/Sisco moral certainty camp.

Yes, but I think for different reasons, Walto (I have not paid much attention to what Gary or Scott sed and focused more on the Crawjo contributions) I think ethics are possible without morals. My believes in human rights are based on the believe that is the best way for everybody to get along with each other. The best guarantee for a enjoyable survival of humanity. In terms of my views on the two issues here I am reasonable secure in my believes, bwtfdik?

[Dr Dave]

Regarding personhood: My dictionary says a person is someone with "rights and responsibilities." What responsibilities does a fetus have? Antiabortionists want to give a fetus rights, but they say nothing about responsibilities, because they can't. Forget that argument anyway: Does a fetus have a name? Does it breathe air? Etc.

Again: As far as I can tell, the anti-abortion crowd lives in a moral fantasy world in which women must be kept from abortions they are eager for, and in which childbirth is the penalty for having sex. I think it's sick shit.

[patricia]

Originally posted by GA Russell
Let me say to the many here who are not Catholics that the Vatican has made it clear over the past 35 years that one cannot be pro-choice-on-abortion and be a Catholic in good standing. It's one or the other. The Church says that those who thus disagree with Church teaching have excommunicated themselves.

I suppose that I should have said "lapsed Catholic", but not because I am pro-choice.
I'm a lapsed Catholic because of the Church's position on divorce, birth control, and other factors. I still classify myself as Catholic, though I haven't attended Mass for years. I guess I feel that because I was baptized in the church as a baby and haven't adopted another faith, I'll always be a Catholic. Perhaps I have excommunicated myself, because of my views on abortion being a private matter. So be it.

Both my children are Catholics and were raised in the church, were alter-servers and observed all the traditions.

My view on when life begins comes from my mother's view on when a child is a person. To her and to her English ob/gyn, when she was pregnant with my older brother in the forties in England the mother is the patient, until the baby is actually born. Until then, the baby is a pregnancy, and if there is ANY threat to the life of the mother, the mother must be saved, even if she should lose the baby.
She can have another baby, or not. But the baby cannot have another mother.

My mother was a devout Catholic, probably moreso than most, since she was a convert as an adult. She attended church, faithfully, observed all the directives of the Church and raised my brothers and me as Catholics. When she and my father divorced, after 25 years of marriage, she never went into the church again, assuming she was excommunicated.

She didn't feel that the Church had any business dictating how people planned their families. I feel that is a reasonable stand to take.

So, I'm pro-choice on abortion. [Nobody is Pro-Abortion. They are in favour of the woman making a choice of whether or not she wants to carry to term and give birth to a baby.]

I'm pro-death penalty, but only in the most heinous cases, absolutely proven.
Hit-men/women
Murder of a child.
Murder/rape
Mass Murder
Murder for financial gain
Torture/murder
Kidnap/murder

Appeals run out. Condemned person is executed, as sentenced.
If the law regarding the death penalty is to be changed, change it by the vote of the majority of citizens. Until then, the death penalty is accepted as the appropriate punishment for the most heinous.

Having said that, why are so many in favour of the killing of innocents in the ongoing war, when they are adamently against the death penalty for murderers??
Just asking.

[moneyp]

Jesus: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

*thump!*

Jesus: "Mom, you're really starting to piss me off."

[Captain Hate]

Originally posted by walto
With respect to voting, I guess I pick other issues as litmus tests. [/FONT]

Single issue voters == toolboxes

[john williams]

I am pro-choice and have had lived through the 'process' ( on a supportive/emotional level which is as much as a male can). The whole process was deeply upsetting for both me and my partner and the decision was as agonizing as any I/we have ever made. I still feel a deep sense of pain when I think about it but one positive outcome in my view was in bringing me and Louisa closer together and it strengthened our relationship on many levels. Having said that, the idea of abortion and the unknowns/unknowable still me me feel squeamish and extremely uncomfortable.

I am anti death penalty because I view it as revenge.


Kill everybody, not a bad idea as it would solve many of these irksome moral problems.

[crawjo]

Originally posted by Dr Dave
Regarding personhood: My dictionary says a person is someone with "rights and responsibilities." What responsibilities does a fetus have? Antiabortionists want to give a fetus rights, but they say nothing about responsibilities, because they can't. Forget that argument anyway: Does a fetus have a name? Does it breathe air? Etc.

Again: As far as I can tell, the anti-abortion crowd lives in a moral fantasy world in which women must be kept from abortions they are eager for, and in which childbirth is the penalty for having sex. I think it's sick shit.

Well, okay, what responsibilities does a newborn have?

[Vince Kargatis]

Originally posted by crawjo
By your logic, a human fetus has less right to life than a dog.

As a matter of fact, I do think it probable that dogs have some degree of self-awareness, though it's certainly hard to tell how much. As with all things in nature (above the quantum scale), there's a continuum. In any case, I'm not sure how much more clear I can be - species identification is irrelevant to my rights ascription. I depend only on observed/deduced individual characteristics.

You are looking at the fetus as it is, rather than as what it will be.

Yes, the "potential principle" means nothing to me. What "will be" doesn't exist yet, and I don't ascribe rights to nonexistent entities, in general. Not on an individual basis.

So why do you arbitrarily stop at birth? What makes a newborn more "self-aware" than a fetus?

At this point I have to think you're imagining things. When did I mention birth? I find both birth and viability ethically irrelevant. I see no essential difference in an individual immediately pre- and post-birth. I've no idea why you invoked it.

Do you really believe that the difference between a human and a dog is purely based on genome structure?

Are you relying on some implicit religious basis for your arguments? I don't know anything about you, so I request you be explicit when possible. I'm an atheist, so of course genetic structure is the only basis for differences between species and individuals. I'm unfamiliar with any religious propositions I find reasonable or arguable. What alternative mechanisms are you proposing? Why are you acting surprised at that position? It seems most of your responses here are taking the form of outraged incredulity rather than logical rebuttals.

I assume, then, that you are a strict vegetarian, as I am.

I regard consumption of the current animal industry as unethical, though primarily due to issues of suffering, lesser so the issue of murder. I am not a strict vegetarian, but only because I'm weak - I do consider any animal-industry-consumption I indulge in as unethical. I actively attempt to minimize it though, considering, say, 2 wrongs better than 10.

therefore we can "harm" them, under your ridiculously narrow construction of that term.

I haven't really gone much into harm assessment, and don't understand why you call mine "ridiculously narrow". I think you're making conclusions based on your own whims.

(How does science explain empathy, exactly?)

The origin of empathy isn't particularly important to ethics, imo - only its existence. However, the question is interesting in itself. I think empathy probably evolved as an efficient mechanism for altruism, a beneficial and selected trait observed in many species.

I am guessing that you believe that human existence is a mere accident, then.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, but presume you're taking some religious approach and contrasting it. I expect that in whatever way you mean this, my answer is "yes".

There is no reason to respect life, since it is all a cosmic accident anyway. We might as well just kill ourselves.

Ah, a traditional but silly characterization of materialism by the religious. You may speak for yourself, I guess. If I lacked empathy, yes, I expect I would hold no implicit respect for others. But, well, I do feel empathy. So your statements do not apply.

And simply stating that XYZ has "self awareness" while ZYX does not, holds no water with me as well.

I don't "state" it - I offer it as a criterion I find relevant (through my empathy) that one can potentially observe and make decisions on. Arguments about what species/individuals exhibit the capacity for self-awareness are certainly ethically germane and legitimate. Is the relevance of self-awareness to the question of a right against life-removal not clear? Outside of a blanket statement that all life is "holy" (a religious sentiment irrelevant to me), I cannot assess the harm of removing the life of something that doesn't have any realization that it's living. If it isn't aware of its life, what suffering is it undergoing if (painlessly) killed? (I distinguish this from harm through suffering, which I think can easily exist without self-awareness, and which I treat with a separate fundamental right.)

To be honest, I doubt I'll respond further - from what I've read of your responses, I don't think there's enough overlap to engage further in productive discussion.

[walto]

"I cannot assess the harm of removing the life of something that doesn't have any realization that it's living. "

I don't really follow this. When I've had to put dying cats to sleep, I think about the following: Is it enjoying its food? Does it still groom itself? Does it bask? Does it respond to my caresses? etc. I never consider whether it has any "realization that it's living." I don't see why any such right as it may have to life should depend on that.

In my own case, anyhow, I wouldn't want anybody to think it was OK to put me down just because I wasn't "self-aware." In fact, the concept of self-awareness seems incredibly complicated to me, and (like a Buddhist, maybe?) when I think about it, I'm not really sure what it means. Certainly many philosophers (as well as Buddha) have denied there is any "self" to be aware of! Think of Hume, e.g.

Anyways, my own empathatic responses don't seem limited to instances in which self-awaremess is apparently manifested.

[Gary Sisco]

I love the "state's rights" argument, if only for its old, familiar odeur. State's rights to *what* is the question. States don't have any "rights," first of all. Under the Constitution, only the people have rights. Governments are assigned powers only (with those being delegated to it, as power and sovereignty originate from and remain with the people) and only those specified in the Constitution, with the rest being specifically held by either the states or the people. But no state has a "right" to violate the rights of its citizens, however it's interpreted. That's why they have courts to begin with, as part of the Constitution. And that's what made the South's "state's rights" issue absurd in the first place.

It might be noted also that Roe v Wade was not specifically an abortion decision, but one limiting the powers of government to intrude upon one's personal life. Abortion or no was only the spark for the decision. The issue the court decided in Roe is that there is a private sphere where the people have the right to decide for themselves, and where the state has no business intruding.

Overturn that decision, and all kinds of other, perhaps unanticipated, hell could break loose, as it would be overturning a general decision about the rights of the people v. the power of the state, because of a specific political issue. To me, that would be idiotic. It would be like overturning the First Amendment because you don't like what a certain group of writers has to say.

[Al in NYC]

And on that note... I am anti-death penalty and pro-choice because I don't feel the the power of the state can or should extend that far into people's lives.

The kinds of issues Crawjo brings up are indeed troubling ones, and would definitely trouble me if I were to find myself involved in a decision for/against an abortion. But his own arguments also show the difficulties in deciding how to define the status of a fetus, so I see no reason why people shouldn't be left to decide the issue on their own using their own definitions founded on their own beliefs without the interference of the state -- which is exactly the stance taken in the Roe v. Wade decision.

My feelings about the death penalty are much more complex, and personal, based on the experience of the murders of a few of my family members, but suffice it to say that the death penalty in my eyes simply replicates as a state-sanctioned procedure the retributive revenge that many of us would want to take on our own. In so doing it places the state in the position of taking an irrevocable action that is morally and practically only a little less repugnant than the original crime, and by reinforcing our natural thirst for the ultimate revenge flys directly in the face of one of the main reasons that we have ceded the powers of adjudication and penalization to the state in the first place.

[crawjo]

I don't "state" it - I offer it as a criterion I find relevant (through my empathy) that one can potentially observe and make decisions on. Arguments about what species/individuals exhibit the capacity for self-awareness are certainly ethically germane and legitimate. Is the relevance of self-awareness to the question of a right against life-removal not clear? Outside of a blanket statement that all life is "holy" (a religious sentiment irrelevant to me), I cannot assess the harm of removing the life of something that doesn't have any realization that it's living. If it isn't aware of its life, what suffering is it undergoing if (painlessly) killed? (I distinguish this from harm through suffering, which I think can easily exist without self-awareness, and which I treat with a separate fundamental right.)

You are right that we are very far apart on this issue, Vince. But just answer me one question. By the criterion outlined above, would it be wrong to "painlessly" kill a newborn child?

[Vince Kargatis]

Originally posted by walto
"I cannot assess the harm of removing the life of something that doesn't have any realization that it's living. "

I don't really follow this. When I've had to put dying cats to sleep, I think about the following: Is it enjoying its food? Does it still groom itself? Does it bask? Does it respond to my caresses? etc. I never consider whether it has any "realization that it's living." I don't see why any such right as it may have to life should depend on that.

Anyways, my own empathatic responses don't seem limited to instances in which self-awaremess is apparently manifested.

I follow your point, Walt, and don't think we're on totally different wavelengths here... There are several issues:

- My characterization of how I view "self-awareness" might have been a bit reductionist. To be sure, I do not think "self-awareness" is any kind of binary state. I don't mean to invoke a simple test of "knowing the abstract I" or anything. I think brains at the complexity level of cats can probably be what I would call "dimly self-aware", in that I'm guessing they can place their current state in the context of past states - I expect they can "miss" feeling pleasure, living in more than "the moment". I empathize with your concerns above, and feel they can be placed in the context of my "life-right" evaluation. I do think there's room for argument on this point, sure.

- I've been restricting myself to trying to ken what I view as fundamental rights, which I feel are negative rights - ones protecting against egregious malicious harm as the (group of) judger(s) measures. So in the context of your questions above, I have to try to identify the actual harm we're talking about. Without positing some level of self-awareness (the lower limit of which is something people would decide for themselves, based on their empathic reactions), I can't discern what the actual egregious harm is in life-removal. The idea that a "good thing" (pleasure) is stopped bothers me, but not to a degree I call egregious regarding the right against life-removal and in the absence of a degree of observed/deduced self-awareness.

- In fact, I more empathize with the pleasure-stopping you invoke above not in terms of a right against life-removal, but in terms of a distinct right I identify - one against constraining non-harmful actions. This "right" too lives on a sliding scale of empathic reaction, but still, is of the same kind (thought not degree) for me in considering caging a human and caging a cat. I would characterize my reaction to your examples as similar to yours, but in the context of my ethical evaluations would fit them into a combination of the two rights I mention. TETO, of course!

- Just to clarify, I don't mean to assume limits to anyone's empathy - I'm generally just talking about what one's empathy identifies as egregious harm to the extent one posits the existence of a fundamental right... There's plenty of empathic response that won't necessarily rise to that level...

I'm not at all sure this cleared anything up, but what the heck...

[Vince Kargatis]

Originally posted by crawjo
By the criterion outlined above, would it be wrong to "painlessly" kill a newborn child?

If it could be established that the current brain structure of a newborn was insufficient to establish a degree of self-awareness (to a TBD threshold), then I would say no, it would not be wrong. However, in terms of gross structure, infants ' brains are pretty much done, and bear no significant differences to older ages - self-awareness itself grows as that brain is "exercised" and neural connections formed (something that continues to much lesser extents throughout a life). So I judge that the criterion (recall: a physiological capacity for a threshold-degree of self-awareness) is passed, and as I noted, is probably passed at some point in the second trimester. So my answer is 'yes'.

The great animal-rights thinker Peter Singer is most notorious for suggesting that the answer to your question is no, given a self-consistent requirement for self-awareness as an active state. I don't think he himself had that requirement, but was just using it to illustrate what self-consistency required for a set of criteria.

Singer expounds very convincingly imo on the "speciesism" I referred to earlier, if you care to follow what I meant.

[walto]

Vince, as always, I'm impressed with both your smarts and your comprehensive vision, and I do think we're sort of on the same wavelength. OTOH, I'm not sure acceptance of all of your principles will help me even to figure out what to vote for on this poll!

I mean, I agree that in order to have a right to life one must have "the capacity to have a certain sort of consciousness" (call this property "X"). But now, not only do I worry about "capacity" but also about X.

Earlier, you indicated that you'd use statistical probability to flesh out "capacity"--the likelihood of coming out of the coma is the key. But, of course, the likelihood that a fetus will, if not impeded, grow into something with X probably isn't much worse than the probability that someone who's asleep and so lacks X tonight will awaken with X in the morning. If, to avoid this sort of reductio, we take the relevant capacity to be reducible to some sort of brain chemistry or make-up that the (possible) person has RIGHT NOW, I don't really think science is there yet--and for all I know, may never be. Certainly Wittgenstein and his followers have denied strenuously that mental states will ever be reducible to brain states.

Then, of course, there's the question of precisely what this X is and who has it. I don't know exactly what it is, or when (if at all) fetuses get this property, and I don't think anybody else does either. I suppose--now forgetting the capacity issues for a minute--we could agree that nobody has X the first week after conception, but maybe nobody has it until a couple months after birth either. Certainly the baby can't tell us--so, again, we're dependent on some sort of neuro-physiological breakthrough to tell us what to be yelling at our Congressmen.

I mean, even if we're right about the basis of rights, what do we do when we have to make political decisions? Uli and others have suggested that while all this academic analysis may be interesting, what's important for a civil society is that there be some sort of workable, non-violent consensus. I take it (I could be wrong) that he recommends something like the Roe decision's first trimester as a cut-off. Since we can't really come up with a more precise date, do we accept that, or do we take Crawjo's absolutist moment of conception position (or Gary S's suggestion of the moment of birth)? Those solutions, whatever their defects, at least tell us how to vote on this poll!

[crawjo]

Originally posted by Vince Kargatis
If it could be established that the current brain structure of a newborn was insufficient to establish a degree of self-awareness (to a TBD threshold), then I would say no, it would not be wrong. However, in terms of gross structure, infants ' brains are pretty much done, and bear no significant differences to older ages - self-awareness itself grows as that brain is "exercised" and neural connections formed (something that continues to much lesser extents throughout a life). So I judge that the criterion (recall: a physiological capacity for a threshold-degree of self-awareness) is passed, and as I noted, is probably passed at some point in the second trimester. So my answer is 'yes'.

The great animal-rights thinker Peter Singer is most notorious for suggesting that the answer to your question is no, given a self-consistent requirement for self-awareness as an active state. I don't think he himself had that requirement, but was just using it to illustrate what self-consistency required for a set of criteria.

Singer expounds very convincingly imo on the "speciesism" I referred to earlier, if you care to follow what I meant.

I'm very familiar with Singer and his "speciesist" arguments, having read "Animal Liberation." I don't find that part of his argument to be very convincing at all.

[Gary Sisco]

I've no doubt that mammals have some degree of self-consciousness and decisionmaking powers, as I've seen it myself in action. I'm not being anthropomorphic here at all, nor do I mean to imply that their self-consciousness exists on the same kind or level as that of homo sapiens sapiens. I've also no doubt that they develop very different personalities, because I've seen them, and also that they have an imaginary life to some extent (some mammals more than others -- cats and horses definitely have a rich one), and to me this is proven by the mere fact that we know that they dream. These are the reasons I choose not to eat mammal flesh (that and health reasons). It's not a new agey thing to me in any sense but just a decision that I've made based on my own observations of their behavior, that led me to conclude that they generally speaking too far along the evolutionary line of self-consciousness to be used a food source. For me. Others can do what they like.

They can and do think and problem solve on some level, as anyone who spends observant time with them knows. One of my mares, for example, can untie a slipknot (the standard one for tying horses as it's not safe to really tie a horse to the extent that it can't get loose if it freaks out) and does so, just to show you she can. But she doesn't do it all the time. She just thinks its entertaining to do. Sometimes instead of untying it, she'll just run it up and down the stall-grill bar -- again, to fuck with me. It's a form of play. They learn things, very, very quickly, that could only be learned through some sort of intellectual problem solving skills. And this to me is proven by the fact that they learn them on their own, and not through rote training. (You try to make a horse do anything at all by rote, or, for that matter, try to make one do anything at all if it doesn't want to. Good fucking luck.)

Nevertheless, if one of my mare's lives were in question, I'd have her fetus aborted, immediately, no hesitation, as a fetus isn't a horse and won't be til it hits the ground, living.

Interesting as all hell to me that the antiabortionists (as I had long predicted, for decades) are finally officially coming out against "assisted suicide" (an absurd phrase for mercy killing -- something we routinely do for animals and are considered cruel and callous if we don't).

You have the right to life, motherfucker, even if you don't want it, for as long as it lasts, no matter how painful or miserable you may be. Suck it up, dude.

Unless you're an abortion providing doctor or worker. Then we'll shoot your ass and/or give aid and comfort to those who have and are on the run from the law.

What a bunch of shit. I very recently had to make the decision (unanimously, with my family, including my father) to put my father down, as there was no recovery for him, and he'd have died, miserably in ten minutes or so without the life support. And he did die in just about exactly ten minutes when the life support was removed. But he didn't die *miserably* because the doctor gave him a hot shot of morphine, at his request. So he went out high and painless.

I'll tell you what. I've seen other people die before that, but watching my father die was a hard thing. I have the memory with me all the time. But what was harder than that by far was watching him gasp and struggle for each breath, and even the amount of time it takes to take a sip of water would cause intense panic for him, as he'd begin suffocating almost immediately, when the oxygen mask was removed for the water straw.

If any doctor had refused to put him down -- or if it had been prohibited by the state, against his and his family's will -- I'd have done it myself and put down myself anyone who tried to stop me. Fuck that. That's nobody else's business, much less the state's.

(In fact, once the decision had been made, the doctor said he'd be back in half an hour to administer the shot, but it took longer than that. My sister, an RN, gave me a questioning look with the morphine pump in her hand -- I didn't know it at the time but the family, including my father, had decided to leave the final word on things to me, as the eldest child -- and I nodded to her to go ahead, and she gave it a couple pumps on her own before the doctor got there, as my old man was being tortured by the oxygen (which intensely dries out one's mouth and throat and sinuses) and the wait. He wasn't being tortured at all after my sister hit the pump. And he was painless and unconscious when the doctor arrived to finish the operation off.)

These aren't abstract questions for mere political opinion surveys to answer. These are hard facts of life. If we left animals to suffer, knowingly, as we do many humans, we'd be jailed. That's one of the strange ironies of American life.

[Vince Kargatis]

Originally posted by walto
Earlier, you indicated that you'd use statistical probability to flesh out "capacity"--the likelihood of coming out of the coma is the key. But, of course, the likelihood that a fetus will, if not impeded, grow into something with X probably isn't much worse than the probability that someone who's asleep and so lacks X tonight will awaken with X in the morning. If, to avoid this sort of reductio, we take the relevant capacity to be reducible to some sort of brain chemistry or make-up that the (possible) person has RIGHT NOW, I don't really think science is there yet--and for all I know, may never be.

Yes, "right now" is what I've meant all along. But I don't use statistics in quite the way you describe. The "capacity" is already observed in a sleeper - the sleeping doesn't change the capacity. Not surprisingly, I empathize strongly against the notion of being killed in my sleep (whatever my current state of self-awareness is at the time). That's a rather obvious incentive to choose capacity to rely on, ethically. (Also, I dislike the idea of indentifying fundamental rights based on circumstance/location of the individual in question, preferring to focus on what I observe as "essential characteristics". This is why I think the dividing line of 'birth' proposed by some regarding abortion is nonsensical.) However, I do not similarly empathize with an individual (e.g. young fetus) lacking capacity which simply has some likelihood of acquiring it in the future. I can identify no harm to robbing a non-existent self-awareness of future existence. I do indentify harm in the case of current capacity, when there's just temporary lack of self-awareness. (The "edge case" or continuum transition of those having capacity but not yet achieving self-awareness, I'll ethically err on the capacity side - and those cases will be fuzzed out anyway in the difficulty of determining the threshold anyway. And I have no problem with the legal system sliding along with that indeterminancy - having the law's protections grow weaker along the scale.)

I mean, even if we're right about the basis of rights, what do we do when we have to make political decisions? Uli and others have suggested that while all this academic analysis may be interesting, what's important for a civil society is that there be some sort of workable, non-violent consensus.

Completely true, no doubt. But I find it necessary to identify what information my ethics require, before seeking it, and compromising where necessary due to practical limits. I'm a bit of a techno-optimist, in that I expect that researchers will make progress in identifying at least gross/essential physiological structures required for mental states that look like self-awareness.

Where would I draw the line now, legally, given my druthers? Well, obviously post-conception, and pre-birth, based on previous arguments. I'd want to take a neurophysiologist-type survey, to see if there's any current info/hints to be had on my criteria. At least find out when the brain is gross-structurally mature. But let me just guess for now: I'd be comfortable with a current legal choice that disallowed discretionary abortions after the 2nd trimester, with exceptions for self-defense (i.e. health-endangerment) and possibly, as a purely practical allowance, rape (recognizing that even with identified fundamental rights of the fetus, the consensus empathy for a rape-fetus will be lower. I'd definitely want those who are considering an abortion to get one early in any case).

My position on the death penalty stands on my previously mentioned basis. There's no ambiguity there - I'm unwilling to allow innocent people to be killed as a part of the justice system. Whether or not a particular criminal "deserves" death is a non-issue for me (I may well think they do in a specific case, but - irrelevant). Once you allow any capital punishment, you inherently allow the chance that innocents will be killed in that system. My request of supporters of capital punishment is to at least state what their tolerance level is for what fraction of executions are innocents, for it must be non-zero.

[Gary Sisco]

The connection between rights and responsibilities, indeed, obligation, has long been lost to the American mind, if there is one. It's all "rights" now, including imaginary ones.

I'll tell you what. If I'd have been Eve, her son (she'd have only had one) would have been a hopelessly horny motherfucker unless he did his mom, because once having been pregnant and given birth, I'd have cut Adam's dick off. This whole question would disappear from political discussion if men had to endure pregnancy or the birthing process.

[GoodSpeak]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
The connection between rights and responsibilities, indeed, obligation, has long been lost to the American mind, if there is one. It's all "rights" now, including imaginary ones.

I'll tell you what. If I'd have been Eve, her son (she'd have only had one) would have been a hopelessly horny motherfucker unless he did his mom, because once having been pregnant and given birth, I'd have cut Adam's dick off. This whole question would disappear from political discussion if men had to endure pregnancy or the birthing process.

There's only one tinsey little problem with that...

And I quoute: And Cain knew his wife.


OK.

Where the hell did she come from? You know...Cain's wife. Figure they pulled off a Creation in the next county?

I mean, if "In the Beginning" there was only Adam and Eve then came Cain and Able...WHERE did Cain's wife come from?

Either we're talking about incest here or there was more to this Creation thang than the Bible allows, eh?

The religion point is crap.

[crawjo]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
The connection between rights and responsibilities, indeed, obligation, has long been lost to the American mind, if there is one. It's all "rights" now, including imaginary ones.

I'll tell you what. If I'd have been Eve, her son (she'd have only had one) would have been a hopelessly horny motherfucker unless he did his mom, because once having been pregnant and given birth, I'd have cut Adam's dick off. This whole question would disappear from political discussion if men had to endure pregnancy or the birthing process.

That's pretty misanthropic, Gary. What you are basically saying is that if men had to get pregnant, the human race would have long since vanished from the earth.

There is a reason, you know, why women are biologically capable of bearing children while men are not. Most women that I know, no matter how independent, want to have children. Women have a maternal instinct. My wife just went through the "horrors" of pregnancy and child birth, and she definitely wants to have another one.

[crawjo]

I find it interesting that in this poll, not one person has voted for anti-abortion and pro-death penalty, even though that view is held by a quite sizeable percentage of the U.S. population.

I also find it interesting that many of us are more willing to extend amnesty to murderers than to the unborn. Hmm.

[Scott Dolan]

While I am definitely for the death penalty, abortion has always been a stickier issue for me.

I think it is a despicable act when it is done for some girl who simply made a stupid choice and is unwilling to live with the circumstances. But, then again, would it really be fair for the child to be raised by such a person?

Secondly, I have a really hard time with the fact that the government has the power to dictate what a woman can do with/within her own body.

[Chris A]

Originally posted by crawjo
I also find it interesting that many of us are more willing to extend amnesty to murderers than to the unborn. Hmm.

• Murderers are living, breathing, thinking human beings who--in many cases--may not be murderers at all (I don't know what your definition of "amnesty" is here). The unborn are, well... unborn. Do you really think a woman's life (literally and/or figuratively) should be jeopardized in order to save a fetus that has no functioning brain, has never known life, and has less self-awareness than the fly you readily swat? Do you really believe that male government bureaucrats have a right to make such personal decisions for women--to tell them what they may or may not do with their own body?
  
  Since you find it "interesting" that many are "more willing to extend amnesty to murderers than to the unborn," do you find it less "interesting" that religious zealots will murder people in order to demonstrate their "pro life" stance?

[crawjo]

Originally posted by Chris A

• Murderers are living, breathing, thinking human beings who--in many cases--may not be murderers at all (I don't know what your definition of "amnesty" is here). The unborn are, well... unborn. Do you really think a woman's life (literally and/or figuratively) should be jeopardized in order to save a fetus that has no functioning brain, has never known life, and has less self-awareness than the fly you readily swat? Do you really believe that male government bureaucrats have a right to make such personal decisions for women--to tell them what they may or may not do with their own body?
  
  Since you find it "interesting" that many are "more willing to extend amnesty to murderers than to the unborn," do you find it less "interesting" that religious zealots will murder people in order to demonstrate their "pro life" stance?

When we find out that a 10-year-old kid dies, do we feel bad simply because he was 10 years old or also because we know how much of life he is now going to miss out on?

As for what women may or may not do with their own body, I think it's a weak argument in the face of what that woman "may or may not do" with the body of a fetus.

As for the "life" argument, it's really a straw-man, since the vast, vast majority of abortion cases have nothing whatsoever to do with saving the life of the mother (or with rape or incest, for that matter.)

I think religious zealots hurt their own cause when they attack abortion clinics. No doubt about that. And I think it's wrong. But put yourself in their perspective...if you saw an abortion clinic as a state-sponsored killing factory, what would you do about it? Most people protest peacefully, through the legislative process or through lobbying or whatever. But some people aren't going to do that. Some people are going to resort to violence. It doesn't make it right, but it's certainly not surprising.

[Gary Sisco]

Crawjo -- I'm not misanthropic. I said that if *I* had been Eve that's what would have been the result. I know a lot of women who happen to agree with me. Not ever having had the slightest desire to be a father, I've had to know a lot of them! :-) I've never known one (I mean in the biblical sense) who hasn't had an abortion at least once, either. But none of them were due to my behavior, which has always been strictly *not* for procreational purposes, even accidentally. If I thought or knew a woman was one of the nesting types, I walked the other way, at a quick march, even as a kid. In my high school, it was nearly a fashion for girls to get pregnant and married. So I learned very young through the experience of my unfortunate male friends who found themselves married and fathers while still in school. Needless to say, not a single one of those marriages lasted for more than single digits.

In any case, I like people. And children. If they're someone else's children.

What I am, I've decided by self-diagnosis, is a sociophobe. I don't like this society or most of the people it breeds. I find it objectionable, indeed, and so I've chosen to increasingly hermitize through the years, and happily, I've been able to.

Also, the fact that someone's on death row in the US means only that. It does not in any way mean that the cat's a murderer, especially if he's black. It can as easily in this country mean he's just a cat waiting to be murdered by the state, who hasn't in fact done the crime. Happens a lot, in fact. One thing about a life sentence is that it can be aborted (so to speak) but the death penalty cannot, if evidence emerges later that proves the cat didn't do it.

No one will ever, no matter how hard they try, convince me that a fetus has the rights of a living human. And I'll have no respect for that movement until it convinces me that it is as concerned with the rights of the actually living as it is with those of the not-yet living, which to me is an absurd concept and always will be. Things that are not yet cannot have rights. It's a meaningless idea. It's not even an idea.

[Jazzzoline]

Originally posted by crawjo
When we find out that a 10-year-old kid dies, do we feel bad simply because he was 10 years old or also because we know how much of life he is now going to miss out on?

As for what women may or may not do with their own body, I think it's a weak argument in the face of what that woman "may or may not do" with the body of a fetus.

As for the "life" argument, it's really a straw-man, since the vast, vast majority of abortion cases have nothing whatsoever to do with saving the life of the mother (or with rape or incest, for that matter.)

I think religious zealots hurt their own cause when they attack abortion clinics. No doubt about that. And I think it's wrong. But put yourself in their perspective...if you saw an abortion clinic as a state-sponsored killing factory, what would you do about it? Most people protest peacefully, through the legislative process or through lobbying or whatever. But some people aren't going to do that. Some people are going to resort to violence. It doesn't make it right, but it's certainly not surprising.

Crawjo, as much as I admire your extraordinary "démarche d'analyse" ( sorry I miss some English vocabulary here),
I think sometimes you miss what's called "reality of life".

Think of this: Maybe the woman who got pregnant with you doesn't want to deal with YOU all her life.
There had been some crooked cases about violent and controlling men here. And I could understand the woman wanting to get rid of what was growing up in her stomach.

ALso, think that a baby changes a woman's life FOREVER, and not always for the best.
When I met my biologic mother, she told me she wanted to abort. She gave me to adoption but still, it changed her life so much, I can only feel sorry for the other kids she had. And "NO" she didnt want all this to happen, she has been forced.

[Vince Kargatis]

Originally posted by crawjo
There is a reason, you know, why women are biologically capable of bearing children while men are not. Most women that I know, no matter how independent, want to have children. Women have a maternal instinct.

?? If I'm reading you right - this appears exactly backwards. Any 'maternal instinct' evolved due to a particular sex bearing offspring, not the other way around. "Women are biologically capable of bearing children" by definition, because that's the label attached to the human offspring-bearing sex. Why a strategy of one offspring-bearing sex and one fertilizing sex evolved long ago happened because that's the way it worked out, and won over competing reproductive strategies within the populations it appeared.

[Chris A]

Originally posted by crawjo
When we find out that a 10-year-old kid dies, do we feel bad simply because he was 10 years old or also because we know how much of life he is now going to miss out on?

As for what women may or may not do with their own body, I think it's a weak argument in the face of what that woman "may or may not do" with the body of a fetus.

As for the "life" argument, it's really a straw-man, since the vast, vast majority of abortion cases have nothing whatsoever to do with saving the life of the mother (or with rape or incest, for that matter.)

I think religious zealots hurt their own cause when they attack abortion clinics. No doubt about that. And I think it's wrong. But put yourself in their perspective...if you saw an abortion clinic as a state-sponsored killing factory, what would you do about it? Most people protest peacefully, through the legislative process or through lobbying or whatever. But some people aren't going to do that. Some people are going to resort to violence. It doesn't make it right, but it's certainly not surprising.

As you so often do (and I'm not sure it isn't deliberate), you are skirting the issue. There is a very big difference between a 10 year old and a fetus, we mourn the former because he or she was born--the unborn wasn't. Do you mourn a spilled sperm?

As for a woman's right to her own body, I think that is elementary--what the hell gives politicians the right to interfere with such personal decisions? The core of this argument lies in perception. You obviously see no difference between a fetus and a developed human being. I see a big difference between a newborn baby and a fetus.

The vast majority of abortion cases may not be performed to save the would-be mother's life or to terminate a result of rape or incest, but so what? Many abortions are performed to save lives emotionally rather than physically, but it really doesn't matter, because neither politicians nor other zealots should have a right to make such determinations. Removing a fetus is not murder--yes, the zealots apply the murder tag to abortion, but that's such crock. I am really surprised that intelligent people can align themselves with the bible fanatics, and you seem to half-condone their murderous protests. Sorry, but putting myself in their perspective, murder is still murder.

Using the bible, a book that is largely fiction and almost entirely based on ignorance, to justify murder and other violence is, IMO, contrary to reason and intelligent thinking.

[Vince Kargatis]

Originally posted by Chris A
As you so often do (and I'm not sure it isn't deliberate), you are skirting the issue. There is a very big difference between a 10 year old and a fetus, we mourn the former because he or she was born--the unborn wasn't.

I hardly agree with crawjo's conclusions, or even intellectual methods, but this statement doesn't strike me as any better. Clearly various parties find the differences between those examples arguable - and why insist "we" mourn for specific reasons, when it's clear people mourn for a variety of reasons? I for one feel no empathy stemming from the "born-ness" of an individual, as I stated 2 posts ago (and actually am skeptical people have thought that position through), so wouldn't recommend you rely on that premise in an argument...

Perhaps reflecting on what rights one might ascribe to a sentient alien with a different biology would reveal the irrelevance of arbitrary physiological/biological facts in the process of rights ascription in the first place?