Subject:
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Re: From Harry Browne
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 12 Nov 2000 18:19:57 GMT
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Viewed:
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654 times
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OK, I am taking on the somewhat daunting task of responding to this huge note.
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John DiRienzo writes:
> I disagree. I don't believe anyone's viewpoint will be swayed if we all
> keep our opinions to ourselves. I will gladly give you clarification. I
Me too, I guess that's why I read and respond to this stuff.
> Occasionally, the birth process can
> result in damage to either body involved, and in such a case, I do believe
> defense of one's body is acceptable.
How much damage has to be included in the threat to the woman's body before
it's OK for her to abort? It seems to me that depending on how you define
damage, it's pretty clear that most successful pregnancies damage the woman's
body to some extent. But probably not so much that you would normally justify
lethal self-defence.
> Determining when an individual begins to exist is a great topic of
> debate, as we all know. I believe conception is the beginning of existence
> of the individual.
Only in a biological sense. Why is that more important than the psychological
sense? There is no identity for a long long time after conception. Without
identity, how can the fetus be called an individual? Another aspect of
asigning individuality, in my mind, is one of...well...individuality. Are
siamese twins individual? Sort of. Is this proto-human parasite with no
identity and individual? Sort of.
> I don't know how to argue this part, because I do not
> comprehend the argument made against me. The argument against me says that
> up to 4 months (or 6 months or something) after conception, the new
> individual does not yet exist.
Or maybe even later. Maybe 2-4 months after birth!
> But if you look at a crispy fetus after an
> abortion operation, there is definitely something that was once existing.
That tissue still exists. It has merely been ripped into pieces and extracted
from its host organism.
> I do not understand the argument against me. It is denial.
It is a disagreement. And in my case, it's not even a sure disagreement. I
just don't see things as clearly as you do. it is not denial.
> By ultrasound, you can see a fetus. You can see the tiny arms and legs
> of a tiny human being. You can see the blood flowing through it. You can
> see the heart of it beating. You can see a life-form.
If you ultrasound a dog at similar stages of development, they are quite
indistinguishable from the human until fairly late. I presume you don't seek
to assign the same rights to the fetal dog that you would to a fetal human,
right? So it can't be based on what you see in the ultrasound. What if I made
a little machine that could be inserted into the woman that ultrasounded just
like the fetus does? Would you want to give it humanity too? Probably not.
So the results of the ultrasound really isn't the test you want to use.
> This is not an organ in a woman's body, but an organism.
A parasitic organism.
> Its not her property, but her offspring's property.
> It is its own property, as all human beings are.
It is as soon as we are convinced that it is actually a human.
> A two year old child is not very intelligent, and it is not very big.
Actually a two year old child is amazingly more intelligent than it will ever
be again. It quite clearly thinks in a human process. and younger children,
at _some_ point fail that test. They are not meaningfully human individuals.
> does not have much in common with a grown human being. But we treat it like
> a human being. It is protected and its rights are defended like any human
> being's should be. It is still very unable of defending itself, just like a
> fetus.
It has an individual personality.
> The hypocrisy is to protect life at one stage of life and not to
> protect it at another.
Genetically human life isn't what's magical. It is the presense of a
personality. The presense of an individual who can and will carve out his own
context. That person really exists.
> It is the same as protecting human beings all of
> their life except the four months following their 30th birthday. That is
> ludicrous.
It is not the same and is not as ludicrous. And you know that there are
significant differences even if you disagree with their importance.
> A woman who has a child has a legal and innate obligation to care for and
> protect her child.
For how long? Under which circumstances is that not (or no longer) true?
> But I do know that a fetus
> is incapable of being responsible for itself,
A fetus has no 'self' for which to be responsible.
> and therefore its creators are
> responsible for it. Those who are charged with protecting their creation do
> not have the right to forego that responsibility. As a child is considered
> an extension of the adults who created it,
the child is quite litterally such an extension. A bit of the parents' tissue
which grew quite a bit.
> and therefore the responsibility
> of those adults until the child is grown and responsible for itself,
I agree. And that transition is gradual. But this isn't relevant to the parts
of your stance that I probably disagree with.
> I wrote above about one's right to the pursuit
> of happiness colliding with another person's property rights. I said I
> believe that humans have both of these rights, but I tell you here that I
> believe the first right, property rights of one person supercedes the right
> to the pursuit of happiness of another person.
To the extent that I agree with the notion of rights, I agree with all of this
stance.
> The fetus' right to life,
> its property rights that give it dominion over its own body, supercede a
> woman's right to her pursuit of happiness.
I will agree completely if/when I agree that a fetus counts as a person.
> An abortion can occur in one of two ways.
> 1 - necessarily
> 2 - unnecessarily
>
> It may be considered necessary to abort an unborn child when the female
> creator's own life is threatened by the birth process - she then is given
> that choice of her life or its.
Threatened how severely? What if there is a 1% chance that she'll die in
giving birth? What if it's 10%? Or 30%?
> Unless it is life-threatening, it is not an attack on the woman,
Not all attacks are life-threatening.
> IMO, the state should not sanction an unnecessary abortion - a murder.
OK, in a couple earlier notes, I expressed uncertainty about your stance. That
clears it up completely. Consider my earlier comments no longer valid.
> Using self defense (the only acceptable reason for killing another human
> being) as an alibi for an abortion does not work. The fetus' invasion of
> the woman's womb may be seen by some as an unprovoked attack and therefore
> gives the woman the right to defend herself. This fails because women are
> sufficiently informed in our society to know what causes this invasion.
Does a woman have the right to use lethal force to defend herself against her
child later? How much force can one use to prevent a person from stealing
their goods?
Are you saying that IF the woman is uninformed, then killing the little human
in her womb is OK? That's screwed! If it's a human, then killing it is never
OK until it proves aggression.
> Some would argue that the unborn child is not a human being until it has
> been in the woman's womb for a specified amount of time. So what is this
> non-human stuff inside the woman? A dog? A car? A cosmos? A house? A
> filing cabinet? Get real. Denial... like I said.
No. Not denial. This big gobbet of meat that I'm walking around in isn't the
magic that makes us assign these "rights" to each other. It is the mind (and
not the brain) that we value enough to have invented rights. This is too
clean an example for complete accuracy, but the brain is hardware and the mind
is the software. Until a certain age, the software is not running.
At least that's how I think I see it.
Chris
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: From Harry Browne
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| Hi Maggie, This is debate, so that's what we'll do. "Maggie Cambron" <mcambron@pacbell.net> wrote in message... (...) I'm (...) clarification. I disagree. I don't believe anyone's viewpoint will be swayed if we all keep our opinions to ourselves. I (...) (24 years ago, 11-Nov-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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