Troubadour
Banned
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2010
- Messages
- 464
- Reaction score
- 181
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Liberal
Re: South Dakota Justifiable Homicide Bill Under Fire as Critics Say It Invites Murde
That is not at all my standard. I am stating as a positive assertion of rational fact and common sense that a fetus is not a person, and that you cannot offer any argument to the contrary that is not steeped entirely in religious ideology.
It appears you are the one trying to rationalize an untruth with legal technicalities. If we are arguing law, then the law permits abortion and therefore does not permit force in its prevention. Even if the law did not permit abortion, it does not necessarily follow that a fetus is categorized as a person, that abortion would be categorized as murder, or that force would be authorized to prevent it. If we are arguing morality, then morality permits abortion because it is clearly more of a violation to enslave a woman for months than to allow her control of her own physiology at the expense of a mere potential.
If we are arguing ethics, then ethics permits abortion because your arguments completely discards the principle of human autonomy at the center of ethical philosophy. If we are arguing science, then the nature of an organism's brain activity is the most fundamental definition of consciousness. You, however, do not seem to want to settle on any of these bases, hopscotching from one to the other as each one in turn fails you.
It has nothing to do with Cartesian philosophy - this has been the overwhelming and unavoidable conclusion of neurological science for generations. Brain damage or chemical impairment can alter the very foundations of your being, and selective stimulation of known cortices can induce every possible experience ever articulated, including synesthetic experiences that have no distinct verbal translations. Whatever resource you're relying on is very out of touch with science, and primarily concerned with discussions in the humanities.
This is complete gibberish, and your sneaking in a link to a deranged anti-Obama rant is the low point of a very low paragraph. First, the mere existence of brain activity is not the definition of being - non-human animals have brain activity, just not to the same complexity or density of operations. As I've said, there are ambiguous grey areas, but abortion does not involve any of them. Fish are more neurologically active than fetuses. Second, I don't know where you're getting a reference to the 1st Amendment, but I can assure you it contains no mention of fetuses being people or abortion being illegal. Are you just throwing out random words or what?
If the mother presses charges - it is an extension of her rights alone.
A human being is something that exists or doesn't exist in physical fact, not something invented by society. I can't believe how often I have to explain this to people on both the left and right on different issues. Now, once again, I don't deny that there are ambiguous thresholds between humanity and something prior to humanity, but abortion doesn't even come close to those thresholds - a fetus is not conscious, and does not possess even the capacity for consciousness. Its brain is still organizing the basic autonomic structures that regulate simple metabolic and cardiovascular processes. In the earlier stages, it's basically a lobed spinal cord with a thin membrane that will eventually become skin - a fish has greater claim to sentience.
I'm sorry you disapprove of independent thought and reality not based on authoritarianism. This is not the Austro-Hungarian Empire - a law is not whatever someone in a robe says it is. There is room for expert interpretation, but there are also simple matters of fact and common sense. One of them is that corporations do not have the rights of people, because (a)they are not people, and (b)no law has ever been passed granting them such. The same rationale holds true for abortion: Fetuses are not people, and every law identifying them as such has been struck down as unconstitutional. The validity or invalidity of a court decision rests in itself, not in some authoritarian ideology that holds the source of a decision to be the definition of its legitimacy.
I specifically asked you to affirm that you are not encouraging, endorsing, or rationalizing the killing of abortion doctors because the position you are arguing could be interpreted that way, and you have declined to do so. I have asked that you affirm that this is a matter of intellectual debate, and that you are not trying to incite people to acts of violence against abortion doctors, and you have declined to make that stipulation. That is not paranoia - that is cause for legitimate concern. The rhetoric of the right is often violent, and its actions likewise. I ask you again to affirm the legitimacy of this discussion by stating categorically that you are not encouraging or rationalizing the killing of abortion doctors, simply pursuing a legal interpretation of the SD law. That I'm mentioning this is a courtesy to you, so that no one gets an unintended impression of what you are arguing.
Someone else's child is a person, and therefore acting in their defense is both legally and morally equivalent to acting in your own. But someone else's property does not afford you that right - to the best of my knowledge, it is not legal anywhere in the US to use deadly force purely to protect another person's property. In most of the US it isn't even legal to use deadly force purely to protect your own - you have to have some reasonable sense of danger, not just catch a teenager breaking into your car and shoot them because you feel like it. A woman's body is her property, and a fetus is part of her body.
That is not at all my standard. I am stating as a positive assertion of rational fact and common sense that a fetus is not a person, and that you cannot offer any argument to the contrary that is not steeped entirely in religious ideology.
It appears you are the one trying to rationalize an untruth with legal technicalities. If we are arguing law, then the law permits abortion and therefore does not permit force in its prevention. Even if the law did not permit abortion, it does not necessarily follow that a fetus is categorized as a person, that abortion would be categorized as murder, or that force would be authorized to prevent it. If we are arguing morality, then morality permits abortion because it is clearly more of a violation to enslave a woman for months than to allow her control of her own physiology at the expense of a mere potential.
If we are arguing ethics, then ethics permits abortion because your arguments completely discards the principle of human autonomy at the center of ethical philosophy. If we are arguing science, then the nature of an organism's brain activity is the most fundamental definition of consciousness. You, however, do not seem to want to settle on any of these bases, hopscotching from one to the other as each one in turn fails you.
It has nothing to do with Cartesian philosophy - this has been the overwhelming and unavoidable conclusion of neurological science for generations. Brain damage or chemical impairment can alter the very foundations of your being, and selective stimulation of known cortices can induce every possible experience ever articulated, including synesthetic experiences that have no distinct verbal translations. Whatever resource you're relying on is very out of touch with science, and primarily concerned with discussions in the humanities.
This is complete gibberish, and your sneaking in a link to a deranged anti-Obama rant is the low point of a very low paragraph. First, the mere existence of brain activity is not the definition of being - non-human animals have brain activity, just not to the same complexity or density of operations. As I've said, there are ambiguous grey areas, but abortion does not involve any of them. Fish are more neurologically active than fetuses. Second, I don't know where you're getting a reference to the 1st Amendment, but I can assure you it contains no mention of fetuses being people or abortion being illegal. Are you just throwing out random words or what?
If the mother presses charges - it is an extension of her rights alone.
A human being is something that exists or doesn't exist in physical fact, not something invented by society. I can't believe how often I have to explain this to people on both the left and right on different issues. Now, once again, I don't deny that there are ambiguous thresholds between humanity and something prior to humanity, but abortion doesn't even come close to those thresholds - a fetus is not conscious, and does not possess even the capacity for consciousness. Its brain is still organizing the basic autonomic structures that regulate simple metabolic and cardiovascular processes. In the earlier stages, it's basically a lobed spinal cord with a thin membrane that will eventually become skin - a fish has greater claim to sentience.
I'm sorry you disapprove of independent thought and reality not based on authoritarianism. This is not the Austro-Hungarian Empire - a law is not whatever someone in a robe says it is. There is room for expert interpretation, but there are also simple matters of fact and common sense. One of them is that corporations do not have the rights of people, because (a)they are not people, and (b)no law has ever been passed granting them such. The same rationale holds true for abortion: Fetuses are not people, and every law identifying them as such has been struck down as unconstitutional. The validity or invalidity of a court decision rests in itself, not in some authoritarian ideology that holds the source of a decision to be the definition of its legitimacy.
I specifically asked you to affirm that you are not encouraging, endorsing, or rationalizing the killing of abortion doctors because the position you are arguing could be interpreted that way, and you have declined to do so. I have asked that you affirm that this is a matter of intellectual debate, and that you are not trying to incite people to acts of violence against abortion doctors, and you have declined to make that stipulation. That is not paranoia - that is cause for legitimate concern. The rhetoric of the right is often violent, and its actions likewise. I ask you again to affirm the legitimacy of this discussion by stating categorically that you are not encouraging or rationalizing the killing of abortion doctors, simply pursuing a legal interpretation of the SD law. That I'm mentioning this is a courtesy to you, so that no one gets an unintended impression of what you are arguing.
Someone else's child is a person, and therefore acting in their defense is both legally and morally equivalent to acting in your own. But someone else's property does not afford you that right - to the best of my knowledge, it is not legal anywhere in the US to use deadly force purely to protect another person's property. In most of the US it isn't even legal to use deadly force purely to protect your own - you have to have some reasonable sense of danger, not just catch a teenager breaking into your car and shoot them because you feel like it. A woman's body is her property, and a fetus is part of her body.
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