Cremaster77 said:
Supporting evidence that something matters? Well, whether something matters is subjective by definition. If I say the life of a 2 month old baby matters, where is the OBJECTIVE evidence that it does? How about the life of a person dying of AIDS in Africa? Is there OBJECTIVE evidence so say that life matters, after all many die around the world every day with no skin off of the overwhelming majority of the world's back. So what exactly am I supposed to provide in terms of "evidence" that says any life matters?
How nice of you to understand this. The evidence indeed is that there isn't anything that matters, Objectively speaking. We persons exist, and we persons have the power to choose to see whatever meaning we wish, in that existence. THAT counts as Objective Fact, and having that power is one of the things that makes us persons, different from mere animals.
Cremaster77 said:
By nature it's subjective and to say that it's invalid because it's subjective is as erroneous...
NOT. How many UFO sightings are both subjective and declared invalid? How many nightmares are both subjective and declared to be not-real? It is
normal for Person A to discount the purely subjective things expressed by Person B!
Therefore: Why is Person A's subjective decision, regarding a fetus inside Person B, superior to Person B's subjective decision regarding that fetus inside Person B? Currently, legally, this is as much a "property" issue as it is a "privacy" issue. Should Person B be telling Person A what to do with Person A's private property?
Cremaster77 said:
...as saying that the wishes of the mother don't matter because those wishes are SUBJECTIVE.
But that's not what I say. What I actually do say is expressed above.
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Cremaster77 said:
Morals are certainly interchangeable in place and time, but the argument remains (from the other thread) that society has already made that judgment.
Society has made the judgement that abortion is acceptable. I'm aware that there is disagreement, and that various things are subject to a "pendulum" phenomenon, such that that disagreement may temporarily prevail. That doesn't mean it is correct; greed tends to temporarily prevail, too, after all.
Cremaster77 said:
There are clearly certain moral standards set by society, such as it is wrong to kill innocents and the government has a role in preventing that from happening.
Again you are trying to "load" an argument with prejudiced nonsense. The government has no role in preventing the killing of innocent houseflies, nor is anybody requesting such a role from the government. The government should indeed have a role in preventing the killing of innocent persons. Which continues to exclude human fetuses.
Cremaster77 said:
Society has also said that bodily sovereignty is not an inalienable right, else drug use and prostitution would be legal.
They are legal already, in a prejudiced way. Nicotine and alcohol are drugs, after all. And prostitution is legal in certain counties in Nevada. So, if you agree that prejudice is stupid, then the existing laws are stupid, that predudicially disallow particular things in a class.
Cremaster77 said:
Therefore the real argument is whether a z/e/f is a life that should be protected by those same societal standards.
But we just showed that those standards are prejudiced. Why, therefore, do we want to increase the amount of stupid prejudice in the world?
Cremaster77 said:
From a biologic standpoint, I think it is...
Except that from the biologic standpoint society should prohibit the killing of an innocent housefly, just as much as it should prohibit the killing of an innocent unborn human. The biologic standpoint is not a good standpoint, therefore.
Cremaster77 said:
...and therefore a society that condemns murders, jails people for murdering, and even puts some to death for committing the act is acting inconsistently when it also supports abortion on demand.
From the standpoint of killing persons, there is no inconsistency whatsoever.
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Cremaster77 said:
Clearly the right to do whatever you want with your body whenever you want is not a basic right that is universally protected.
FutureIncoming said:
Clearly the "right to life" is not a basic right that is universally protected.
Cremaster77 said:
I've never said there is a universal "right to life". Please find the post where I said that and quote me since you are attributing that statement to me.
Actually, it is not true that I attributed that statement to you. There is no place in Msg #155 that claims you wrote a statement about "right to life". What I was actually doing was exercising facetiousness in that message. Are there
any "rights" that are universally protected? Hah!!! So why single out a "right to bodily sovereignity"? A large percentage of pro-lifers call themselves that because they proclaim, in ignorance of the Truth, that there is such a thing as "right to life". If you are not among that group, fine, but posts such as this:
Cremaster77 said:
the government has a role in preventing {{killing of innocents}} from happening.
certainly implies otherwise. Why should innocents be protected if they have no right to life? We don't protect innocent fatted calves from the slaughterhouse/veal-sellers, after all.
So, an argument based on the general notion, which I shall phrase as "bodily sovereignity doesn't exist, and therefore fetuses can be protected from abortion" --that argument can be countered by showing that right-to-life doesn't exist, either.
Cremaster77 said:
What I have said is that our current society has deemed it the role of government to prevent the harm of innocent lives and punish those who do.
Yet you have been over-broad in your statement, since "innocent lives" includes houseflies, fatted calves, lettuce plants, and so on, for thousands of examples. That's why, phrased that way, it is a
FALSE statement.
Cremaster77 said:
The last I noted, this protection was not limited to people of certain IQ levels or a certain level of intelligence as you have suggested. It is not legal to kill mentally retarded people, nor is it legal to kill a newborn child, neither of which can pass some sort of intelligence test that you might devise that makes their lives worth protecting. Yet as a society, we have decided that those lives are worth protecting. In fact, brainwave patterns of a health fetus are often more complex and organized than a severely mentally handicapped person. By your logic, killing those who are mentally handicapped is justified since it is only "Intelligent Life" that should be protected.
The phrase "intelligent life" is intended to be a synonym for "persons". It was not intended to be taken to be a specification of some level of intelligence. In fact it could be argued that if some level of intelligence was to be protected, then the SPCA would have to be prohibited from euthanizing dogs, and cattle and pigs could no longer be killed, either.
So, getting back to "persons", there remains the
generic question of how a person of any type can be distinguished from an ordinary animal of any type. It happens that a certain level of intelligence is a
starting point for further distinguishment. And it is indeed true that many born humans totally fail to qualify for persons, including the brain-dead on life-support. Note that despite legal arguments, "pulling the plug" on the latter has been allowed in case after case. Because the human body is
not the person. Brain-dead humans are empty vehicles, their drivers departed, and those vehicles no longer need to be kept "running". Likewise, unborn humans are vehicles under construction, and are not constructed
enough for a driver, a person, to exist within them. That's why the construction project can be scrapped if unwanted.
