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Originally Posted by Ethereal  Are you just going to completly disregard my previous rebuttal? How can you leave all of these points unadressed? Just because Prometeus choose to adress them doesn't mean you have... |
I thought Prometeus answered everything quite well, and I don't see the need for more repetition. These extremely long posts are getting very tedious.
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You cannot have it both ways. The abortion debate has legal and scientific implications. If your classification of the unborn as parasitical is not scientific then it has no legal or physiological relevance. What you're doing is akin to saying that society can legally treat a man like a bear because he is big and hairy.
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The abortion debate has two parts: 1. what a woman should do as guided by moral and ethical considerations, and 2. what a woman is required to do by force of law. Scientific knowledge may be important to consider in forming moral and ethical decisions. As far as law, the ONLY consideration is whether a law is necessary to maintain order in society. Laws criminalizing abortion do nothing to maintain order in society, so the debate should be centered strictly on what a woman SHOULD do, not on what she is required to do. A second reason why we should not debate criminalizing abortion is that those laws don't work. Women have abortions anyway.
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It's easy to say this because it's true. Most of those effects are only permanant if a woman chooses not to adress them. They are easily mitigated and of little consequence to one's overall health.
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Answered previously. You obviously have no experience with these effects.
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Remember that we are speaking to the hypothetical situation that the unborn have a right to life, and none of these consequences are a legitimate reason to violate that right
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People have been trying since 1973 to prove that the "unborn" have a right to live with no success, but keep going. I understand that is necessary for you to minimize the effects of pregnancy/childbirth to make your point, keep trying.
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They possess them? How so? In order to possess intelligence or self awareness one must be capable of exercising them. Coma patients only have the potential to exercise them, and according to you there is no such thing as a potential person.
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I did not say there is no such thing as a potential person, only that a potential person does not have rights. You will find that coma patients don't have rights either unless it is fairly certain they will come out of the coma quickly, as the plug can be pulled on the decision of the next of kin.
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Says who? How does one quantify a moral responsibility? How do coma patients have a moral responsibility?
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A moral responsibility is acquired and maintained through a personal conscience, and a personal conscience does not allow one to just discard responsibilities willy-nilly.
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This makes absolutely no sense at all. Why does personhood require characterisitcs that are missing in the fetus, besides the obvious implications it has on your political agenda?
All those characterisitcs you gave me were completely circular. They made no sense. It doesn't suprise me that you're having trouble defending a viewpoint you couldn't articulate without the help of some pro-choice network. Do you have a personal definition of a person or do you simply allow the pro-choice movement to dictate that for you?
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Personhood requires at the very least a functioning brain. A person, you see, has
personality.
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Once again, it doesn't matter what society thinks a fetus is if science can determine what it actually is. Personhood is not outside the scope of scientific application, therefore we have a moral obligation to analyse that viewpoint
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Analyse away, but members of society, like the blind men, see things from different points of view and therefore come to different conclusions.
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How many times are we going to have this conversation before you realize you are wrong? You have failed to prove that another right can supercede the right to life, therefore your entire point is irrelevant. The only instance where this is even partially true is Roe v Wade, and as I am currently contesting the validity of that law its implications have no bearing on our discussion.
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You have failed to prove that a "right to life" even exists. A majority of the populace believes that RvW should remain as a limit on government, so all your contesting is unlikely to have much effect.
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| So, you agree, that pro-choicers, unless they confer the status of personhood upon some primates, are not being consistent in their interpretation and application of the law? |
What law? I have never heard of a law defining or conferring personhood. As a matter of custom, born people are generally referred to as 'persons'. As a matter of custom, zefs are not.
Here's a suggestion: limit a post to one or two questions or points. It will not only be less tedious to reply, but will be less tedious for other readers. No one wants to plow through a book-long post.