Here's your problem JayDubya, you're thinking everyone must have the same view point you do and you're judging other peoples veiws out of an assumption they think like you...which is a poor assumption.
Not really, no. I am applying logic and reason and judging other people's views based on whether or not they also do so.
In this case, having judged these views, they have been found wanting in the logic and reason department, as described thoroughly in the post you quoted.
I do agree, most people would stipulate that a human is being killed there. I'd also stipulate that there are numerous instances where society dictates it's perfectly legitimate to kill a human....self defense, war, punishment for law violations, etc.
I didn't make those kind of specifications. I can, certainly, but I didn't in the post above. When talking about killing in self-defense, first of all, there is a victim, the one who was attacked in the first place who had to resort to lethal force to save themselves... and that death isn't treated lightly or trivially, either.
We're not talking about a cigarette ban or a speeding ticket, there's quite a bit more gravity to that news item and the laws around it... more seriousness. Because, of course, we know a human being was killed.
The "smoking" type argument I would make - that it's none of my business what people do to themselves - just doesn't fit when you're not talking about a victimless action that only affects the actor in question.
You're trying to paint it as some kind of standard where somehow we, as a society, never allow contextual situations that legitimaze killing of a human. We absolutely DO.
As I've pointed out numerous times, we almost never do, at least not in aggression. Abortion stands alone on that.
Self-defense is not aggressive. A just war is not aggressive. An execution may be in error - a topic for another thread - but if the perp actually committed the crime, it is not aggressive.
Hiring someone to kill a third party who has done nothing wrong? Yes, that's aggressive.
While I would wager most agree that a fetus is human, there's GREAT disagreement as to whether or not it should be considered a fully "Living" human, or whether or not it should be considered one with full vested rights, or whether or not it's symbiotic prescence within a woman justifies a balancing level of competing rights similar to the principle that is used in things like Self Defense.
Such a "disagreement" would be predicated on not knowing the facts or substituting facts for arbitrary, subjective standards about what is "really" alive or "really" human. In fact, one can say that we know what is alive and what is human, whereas what is "really really for reals" alive is frivolous and not likely to be based on anything.
We all know that a human being is killed in an abortion - the act is violent and intentional, the harm caused is permanent, the victim is innocent. These are simple, objective facts. What opinions people will make of them are their business, but dismissing the weight of that altogether just suggests that someone hasn't really given thought about the issue.
And beyond that...yes, as crazy as it may seem, some people don't consider a fetus at any given time to be "human" in the traditional sense of the word anymore than they'd consider a sperm or egg to be simply because it has the capacity to become one. I don't personally agree, but if one approaches it with that mindset then those type of analogies are not so crazy.
The problem is that mindset, in and of itself, is crazy.
A sperm cell is not an organism, it is part of the body of one organism until it is cast off and either is consumed in the fertilization of an egg cell or dies. Equating a haploid gamete cell and the entire body of a distinct organism of that same species is an exercise in futility that belies an ignorance of scientific fact.
