Hello

[Brant Gaede]

I would like to see those.

Adam

Even one death in child-birth makes the point. Child bearing is hazardous. Who should determine what risk shall be borne? Easy. The potential victim.

Ba'al Chatzaf

In the 19th C, U.S., a woman had a 1 in 7 chance of dying giving birth. I read that once and cannot reference it.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

The fetus?

The fetus is not a person, so it can't be a victim. It has no rights. Nothing is due to it. It is just a thing that someday may turn into a child. But in the womb it is just a thing.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

hmnm seems like a modern medical system makes having a child safer than being in the Clinton White House or the back seat of Ted Kennedy's car.

I guess we should not vaccinate women because some may die hmmm no that won't work.

How about sterilizing all the women which would make sure none would ever die in pregnancy.

http://www.who.int/whosis/mme_2005.pdf

"Lowest rates included Iceland at 0 per 100,000 and Austria at 4 per 100,000. In the United States, the maternal death rate was 11 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2005.[8]"

[bradbradallen]

I would like to see those.

Adam

Even one death in child-birth makes the point. Child bearing is hazardous. Who should determine what risk shall be borne? Easy. The potential victim.

Ba'al Chatzaf

For once, you, sir, are fundamentally incorrect. Child bearing is hazardous, this much is true, but the woman made her choice when she has sexual intercourse. That is her choice. Regardless of any preparation made in attempt to not bear a child, when you commit the act of sex, you are taking the risk along with any repercussion, such as the baby, being an acceptable side effect of the act.

In short, the woman makes her choice to have sex in full consciousness of the possible child-bearing outcome. If she does not go into having sexual relations with another individual knowing that a child could bear itself, that is ignorance. Ignorance that should not be faulted on the baby by the termination of his development.

Brad

[Hazard]

Everyone is responsible for their own choices and actions, even if the consequence is death.

The fetus is not a person, so it can't be a victim. It has no rights.

What is your standard for determining when rights belong to someone?

Jordan

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This is an issue that will be debated until human nature is fully defined.

I am a bit amused at Bob's strong position. If I understand correctly, he has stated that mind-wise, we are nothing but slabs of meat. But when it comes to abortion, he seems to think that a human being should not have any rights until it has a soul.

(I couldn't resist this one...)

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

This is an issue that will be debated until human nature is fully defined.

I am a bit amused at Bob's strong position. If I understand correctly, he has stated that mind-wise, we are nothing but slabs of meat. But when it comes to abortion, he seems to think that a human being should not have any rights until it has a soul.

(I couldn't resist this one...)

Michael

More correctly, no rights until born alive. Only autonomous humans have rights (by convention). We may be meat, but some of us have personalities.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

Careful Ba'al:

"autonomous humans" defined as ......?

Watch out - slippery slopes ahead!

Adam

[BaalChatzaf]

Careful Ba'al:

"autonomous humans" defined as ......?

Watch out - slippery slopes ahead!

Adam

Free will, intentionality, self-awareness, ability to survive outside its mother's body. A fetus at the 128 cell level has none of these characteristics. It has no rights. Even at six months along it has insufficienty neural tissue to support formation of intention and has only minimal awareness of its surroundings. Only a few fetus/embryos have survived at 24 weeks in utero and only with heroic medical support.

And these are considerations aside from the mean issue: how much danger should the mother accept? Clearly this is her call and no one else's. The case against abortion is feeble at best and involves depriving women of their basic right to decide how they will guard their own lives.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

We know what the law is. We want to know what is right.

So you believe there is an absolute right law for every situation? Sounds like a recipe for totalitarianism. What do you do with the people who disagree with your laws?

GS, iti is more than a matter of semantics that "absolute" does not mean "objective." I agree that some Objectivists make the mistake of absolutism, of seeking it or of claiming to have found it. Absolute truths do exist.

A is A.

The sun exists.

The first is a rational truth. The second is empirical. However, the first is supported by empirical evidence and the second by logic. That is what objective means: rational and empirical. Objectivism (capital O) is a rational-empirical philosophy.

Context differentiates the objective from the absolute. Whether sum of the interior angles of a triangle is 180 degree or more than 180 degrees depends on whether the figure is on a plane (or very nearly so) or on a sphere (or very nearl so). And lest we go astray, I point out that "Very nearly so" has objective meaning.

In this discussion, some claim that the embryo has rights and so abortion is wrong. Others claim that the mother has rights, so her choice must be allowed. Both seek absolute truth -- invariable; context-free -- and neither has identified objective truth: empirically known and logically consistent.

(And in deference to you, GS, despite my yanking your chain above, I created a Topic under Metaphysics just for this discussion of Absolute versus Objective.)

Edited May 1, 2009 by Michael E. Marotta

[tjohnson]

There is no such thing as a right, even if people use a capital letter and call it a Right. A fetus has a right to life if the society it exists in deems it so. If society says it can be aborted in the first trimester then it has no rights until the 2nd trimester etc. We are free to change the laws if we want but there are no "Natural Laws" governing abortion in the sense that laws exist in physics, for example.

[syrakusos]

GS, what rights, if any, are yours by your nature?

What is your nature, GS?

If you can answer those, you will be farther down the road on the problem at hand.

[tjohnson]

What is your nature, GS?

I have no idea what this question means.

[Brant Gaede]

What is your nature, GS?

I have no idea what this question means.

How about, "What is your nurture?"

I put this up so we can have one of those nature/nurture debates.

--Brant

[Hazard]

GS,

Do you have a moral standard? If so, than why dont you believe in rights?

Jordan

[Alfonso Jones]

There is no such thing as a right, even if people use a capital letter and call it a Right. A fetus has a right to life if the society it exists in deems it so. If society says it can be aborted in the first trimester then it has no rights until the 2nd trimester etc. We are free to change the laws if we want but there are no "Natural Laws" governing abortion in the sense that laws exist in physics, for example.

GS -

So your position must be that Socrates was just "unlucky," not that anything WRONG was done to him?

Bill P

[ginny]

General Semantic, I am totally stunned. I can't believe you said that. Our rights are determined by society (I guess that means the majority.)????During the Third Reich, German society withheld all rights from the Jews. Are you saying they were right? I honestly don't understand where you're coming from here, GS.

Ginny

[tjohnson]

GS,

Do you have a moral standard? If so, than why dont you believe in rights?

Jordan

No, I have no moral standard that I am aware of.

[tjohnson]

General Semantic, I am totally stunned. I can't believe you said that. Our rights are determined by society (I guess that means the majority.)????During the Third Reich, German society withheld all rights from the Jews. Are you saying they were right? I honestly don't understand where you're coming from here, GS.

Ginny

No, it was horrible what the Nazis did but it doesn't change the fact that our rights are determined by the society we live in.

[tjohnson]

So your position must be that Socrates was just "unlucky," not that anything WRONG was done to him?

Bill P

What happened to Socrates??

[Alfonso Jones]

General Semantic, I am totally stunned. I can't believe you said that. Our rights are determined by society (I guess that means the majority.)????During the Third Reich, German society withheld all rights from the Jews. Are you saying they were right? I honestly don't understand where you're coming from here, GS.

Ginny

No, it was horrible what the Nazis did but it doesn't change the fact that our rights are determined by the society we live in.

GS -

YOu say you have no moral standards. In the light of that, how can you use the word "horrible" in the sentence above?

Bill P

[Alfonso Jones]

So your position must be that Socrates was just "unlucky," not that anything WRONG was done to him?

Bill P

What happened to Socrates??

You should read a little history.

Bill P

[ginny]

General Semantic, we both agree what the Nazys did was terrible. But if rights come from society, then they had the RIGHT to do what they did. Help me out here. Please explain the logic in that thinking. My head is spinning and I just don't get it.

Ginny

[tjohnson]

Hmm...I think there is some confusion here about the word 'right'. There is a difference between what an individual thinks is right and what our laws have stated are our rights.

[Selene]

G.S. - does that stand for we will guess what our human rights are> :whistle:

What rights, as in natural empowerments, does any human possess at birth, irrespective of what society the human is born into?

1.

2.

3.

etc.

We can start there.

Adam