liz@umcp-cs.UUCP (07/06/83)
From: cbostrum@watdaisy.UUCP >From liz@umcp-cs.UUCP > ... What are the necessary morally relevant criteria > for possessing a right to life? ... >This is a religious question and a matter of belief. Are >humans morally special in some way different from the >animals ...? Whoa! Whether or not you have rights is a religious question? ... if you mean the nature of rights or means of possessing them is religious, then for all those athiests out there who believe in rights, I should hope it isn't! By "a religious question", I didn't mean that atheists couldn't believe in rights. I just meant that different people have different views on human rights, and that (in the context of abortion and someone asking "What's so special about being human?") what it meant to be human depends on what you believe about human rights. By the way, if rights do not depend on people's beliefs, then they must be some kind of absolute standard... (and I do believe in this kind of absolute.) On abortion, you say: The issue about comatose people does seem difficult to solve for many pro-abortion people who take a similar line. I submit that it is simple. It is totally analogous to the way that when someone dies, he can dispose of his property (and in fact his body) for the most part as he sees fit. Why? Because they *are* his property. Once you conceive of a person's body and his life as his propery, this problem dissolves. Just as murder and lying are considered wrong since they are an offense against someone's property (and this is an *implicit* agreement) so killing a comatose person should be accepted as wrong, without his previous permission since there is a similar implicit agreement that this is an offense against his property. Well, the obvious reply to this is that killing a fetus is an offense against the fetus' property. But, I think you mean also that the fetus is not yet capable of having property and that his body still belongs to its mother. This is harder to answer. Two things come to mind. One is that the body of the fetus does belong to the fetus and it is certainly the one that experiences the pain of being forcibly removed (although the woman does experience some labour -- but she has some choice...). The second is that (as I believe that the fetus is human and a person) whether it has grown to the point it can fully possess its body. ... by saying "such arguments endanger [fetal] rights as well" you are engaging in the fallacy of presuming they have rights to begin with. Yes, because I'm assuming they are human. It appears you have an axe to grind, and have already decided for certain that foetuses have a right to life, but no nonhumans do. The question is, **On what ground do you base these beliefs??** While I admit that my criterion so far is not perfect, it is one hell of a lot better than "X can have rights iff X is human", or "X has rights iff God says so" (the last is a screamer). I'm not so much discussing whether nonhumans have a right to life, but whether a fetus (which I'm assuming is human) has a right to life. And, I do base my beliefs in a belief in God as a starting point. I don't think its illogical to believe that there's a God that's interested in our affairs and has some things to say about them. But I also think that from a medical stand-point, a seperate unique life begins at conception and that it is indeed a human life. Sigh...-- -Liz ...!seismo!umcp-cs!liz (Usenet) liz.umcp-cs@Udel-Relay (Arpanet)
faustus@ucbvax.UUCP (07/07/83)
Liz seems to think that the right to property is the most fundamental right one can possess, as the right to life is derived from it (I have a right to live as my life is my property). I do not see where this fundamental right comes from, or how it can be justified. Is the right to private property the fundamental right which is given to us by God? Or is it something which is an inherent right of all intelligent life? If it is the latter than we cannot really say that fetuses and comatose (vegetable) people possess it, as they are not actively intelligent. (You could say that a fetus has potential to become intelligent, but so does the food that its mother eats during pregnancy.) Is the right to property purely a human right? If we say this then we exclude all non-human intelligent life. I think that any such attempts to justify our actions by means of a priori "rights" are doomed to failure. Wayne
liz@umcp-cs.UUCP (07/11/83)
From: Wayne <faustus@ucbvax.UUCP>
Liz seems to think that the right to property is the most
fundamental right one can possess, as the right to life is
derived from it (I have a right to live as my life is my
property).
>Sigh!< I was responding to another person's article who did assume
that all rights were derived from property rights and arguing
pro-choice on the abortion issue. I was simply responding on his
grounds. If you do assume property rights are fundamental and that
your body is included, I was just pointing out that the unborn's
body was the thing being destroyed in an abortion... (The original
article was just posted to net.religion but with a request that
all responses be posted to net.philosophy.)
You bring up the issue of how rights are derived. The human rights
issue is a very important one in our society -- what makes us so
sure that they're correct? Why don't animals have the same rights?
(what is the justification for treating animals differently?) Is
it that they work? If so, how do we evaluate whether they work?
Since I believe in God and that rights are God-given, I don't worry
about this issue, but since many of you don't, I'd be interested
in how you look at this. It could be that there is an obvious
answer that I haven't thought of simply because I don't concern
myself a lot. If there is, please don't flood the list with the
same response repeated a lot!!
--
-Liz Allen
...!seismo!umcp-cs!liz (Usenet)
liz.umcp-cs@Udel-Relay (Arpanet)laura@utcsstat.UUCP (07/12/83)
Re: where do rights come from if you dont believe in God. The simplistic answer is to stay that rights are "the unalienable right" of intelligent, conscious life. This is not as circular as it seems, after all if only "the right to have rights" is fundamental we have at least found one a priori thing on which to rest our other conclusions. On the other hand, i think that intelligent conscious life has rights not "a priori" but because they WANT rights and have the necessary wherewithall to protect and defend those rights which they have defined. Laura Creighton utcsstat!laura
tim@unc.UUCP (07/12/83)
We don't need to postulate that there is any such thing as a
"real" right of a person. By this, I mean that we don't need to refer
to rights as given by God, inherent in the nature of mankind, or
anything else. When we talk about a grammar rule in a programming
language, we don't refer to some absolute rule that we are trying to
capture. The rule is our creation, designed to facilitate
programming.
Similarly, we create the concept of "rights" to facilitate human
intercourse. There are certain actions that we all agree are
reprehensible, such as wanton murder, suppression of another person's
ideas by force, and so on. If we just list these, though, there are
too many and the list is too inflexible. We need a basis for
determining in arbitrary situations what the right course is, and we
require that this be compatible with our inherent wishes for the
conduct of society.
The concept of "rights" is one such basis. By listing the rights
of humans, we create a means for discriminating between proper and
improper actions in all situations. We need not appeal to any
authority for this. We simply need to see that it works. My feeling
is that it does work, and my evidence is the American government, one
of the least oppressive in the world and one which has the idea of
human rights at its core (at least, that is the way the Supreme Court
has been running things in the last few decades). Decisions are made
based on the Bill of Rights which correlate with our intuitive desires
for freedom, and these do not seem to wind up hurting the country. In
addition, nearly all of the things which are assumed by nearly all
people to be heinous enough to be forbidden by law can be conceived of
as an infringement of the victim's rights -- this is a more abstract
point in favor of the "rights" model.
Here we do have to invoke certain pre-existent principles. It is
instructive to go back to the programming languages analogy. Although
the syntax rules we are discussing are not pre-existent, they will be
judged better or worse depending on how smoothly they carry out the
purposes of the language. (For instance, a rule that you have to say
"Mother, may I" at the top of any loop will be judged as rather a poor
one.) This judgment is inherently subjective. The same goes for our
selection of rights. This is a topic I could go on about, but I don't
feel like it right now. Maybe later. (Do you have any idea what a
strain it is carrying on ten discussions in different groups at once?)
In conclusion, the idea of rights need be nothing more nor less
than an abstract system used to resolve concrete problems.
______________________________________
The overworked keyboard of Tim Maroney
duke!unc!tim (USENET)
tim.unc@udel-relay (ARPA)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hillucbesvax.turner@ucbcad.UUCP (07/22/83)
#R:umcp-cs:-50100:ucbesvax:11400004:000:4381 ucbesvax!turner Jul 14 02:08:00 1983 OK, liz, let's get down to it. If the moral question of abortion is to be legislated -- note that it is not, at the moment -- what is the proper legal status of someone who then commits an act of abortion? I will accept for the sake of argument that a fetus -- no, technically that is incorrect -- rather, the product of conception (POC), is human, and therefore has a human right to life which should be protected by any just government. (I will admit to simply not knowing whether the POC is human. To date it from conception seems stretched; that event is far from instantaneous. But then, neither is the event of birth, which is what many pro-choice advocates mark as the beginning.) Now, if a POC is taken from its uterine environment and left to die (as it inevitably would, except late in term), is this: 1. manslaughter, 2. negligent homicide, 3. or premeditated murder? If, on the other hand, it is killed (by a skilled accomplice who would no longer be a doctor, but an "abortionist"), before or after being taken from the uterine environment, is this a more serious crime? Since the POC is human, and has a human right to life, does that mean that it necessarily has a right to a uterine environment for as long as that environment is needed for its survival? That is to say, does this POC not only own its own body, but also its mother's body for the duration of pregnancy? In which case, how does it come to lose it's property later, after it is born? If not, why is the mother required to provide this environment, if it in fact belongs to her? What you seem to be missing, perhaps, is that human rights can, in some situations, truly conflict, and that judgement must rest with those who are vitally effected. And, to be honest, I don't think that a judge (man or woman) in a court of law is vitally effected by a woman's choice to end the life of a POC inside her own body. The women bearing the POC, and the POC itself, are the vital participants. The POC's participation is involuntary: it did not ask to be brought into existence, and will not even address the question of whether it should exist or not until it is many years out of the womb. Thus, there is effectively one participant, one judge, over the bodies of (at most) two human beings. There is no sense in which the state is mounting a defense either of itself or of other decision-making humans when it prosecutes abortionists and women who have chosen to abort (unless it is the unlikely circumstance of avoiding underpopulating itself out of existence.) Obviously, I don't expect you to address all of these issues, but I would like to know just what sort of criminal element you think I might be dealing with when I associated with women who might have had abortions. What should the law be, and what should be the penalties compared to those meted out for the degrees of murder listed above? In the prevailing system of indeterminate sentencing, should it be 1 to 5? 5 to 10? 10 to life? Life imprisonment? The death penalty? In any case, it should certainly not be a simple fine. This could lead to a truly barbarous situation in which *rich* women could afford abortions far more easily than poor ones, and thus have a different moral standard (by default) within their own social strata. Since, for the law to be fair, it must protect equally, wealth should be no object to the protection of a POC's right to life. After all, what good is a law if it is not a means of social control? The POC's of wealthy women must be as well protected as the POC's of poor women. Which brings me to the subject of a neighborhood just about five miles to the south of here, where the infant mortality rate is comparable to that of many third world countries. But perhaps that is a good place to stop and think about your moral priorities, and the role of the state in protecting rights. If the state has a duty to protect the lives of POC's, does this mean that it should provide free health services to any woman who is pregnant? Or again, do we have a system of punishments for women who are criminally negligent in being poor when they conceive? Certainly, it is one of the tenets of the prevailing notion of human rights in the U.S. that an able-bodied person who is poor is poor by choice. Just take a look at net.politics. Michael Turner ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner
dr_who@umcp-cs.UUCP (07/24/83)
I'm sure that Liz can defend herself, but I want to deflect some criticisms
of the "pro-life" position. These criticisms are offered by Michael Turner
(ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner) in an article posted July 22. They don't work.
For more arguments that don't work, see my "How NOT to argue abortion,"
forthcoming in net.politics.
We are "accepting for the sake of argument" that a fetus, embryo or zygote
has a right to life which should be protected by any just government. The
first question:
Now, if a [fetus] is taken from its uterine environment and left to die
(as it inevitably would, except late in term), is this: 1.
manslaughter, 2. negligent homicide, 3. or premeditated murder?
Well, that all depends on your theory of punishment. The way I would figure
it, unless the law or Constitutional amendment declaring fetuses human
specified otherwise, is that it is a case of killing in ignorance. The
people who do abortions presumably don't believe that they're killing human
beings. So, their situation is like that of a hunter who doesn't know that
what he is shooting at is not a deer but a person. That makes it
"misdemeanor-manslaughter," if you want a legal label.
If, on the other hand, it is killed ...
Stop right there. This is not "on the other hand," this is the same hand.
IF a fetus is a human in the relevant sense, then forcibly removing it from
the womb IS killing it. This will be clarified in response to ...
Since the POC is human, and has a human right to life, does that mean
that it necessarily has a right to a uterine environment for as long as
that environment is needed for its survival? That is to say, does this
POC not only own its own body, but also its mother's body for the
duration of pregnancy?
IF a fetus has a right not to be killed, then it has a right not to be
forcibly removed from its original situation until it can survive such a
change. IF a fetus is human in the relevant sense, then we would seem to
have a problem saying where (physically) its rights end and the woman's
begin. Consider siamese twins, one of whom will die if separated from the
other. It seems we can say that such separation violates the one's rights,
without saying that it owns the body of the other. Of course, abortion is
distinguished by the fact that the woman came first, but is this a
distinction with a difference?
There is no sense in which the state is mounting a defense either of
itself or of other decision-making humans when it prosecutes
abortionists and women who have chosen to abort...
Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that the state should only protect
"decision-making" humans and itself? I guess we will have to repeal all
laws protecting animals, two-year-olds, ...
What should the law be, and what should be the penalties compared to
those meted out for the degrees of murder listed above?
IF abortion should be prohibited on the basis of the "right-to-life"
argument, then it all depends on your theory of punishment. Deterrence
theorists will favor stiff sentences. Character-based theories of
punishment will favor minimal penalties for women, and somewhat greater
penalties for doctors, based on the fact that they act from ignorance (that
the life they take is a human life). They might be treated like
"conscientious objectors" to draft registration were -- forced to perform
community services. Who knows? It doesn't seem to create a terrible
problem for the "pro-life" view.
If the state has a duty to protect the lives of POC's, does this mean
that it should provide free health services to any woman who is
pregnant? Or again, do we have a system of punishments for women who
are criminally negligent in being poor when they conceive?
It all depends whether the right to life is construed as a positive right,
or a negative right not to be killed. If positive, then presumably yes to
the first question and no to the red-herring question. Do we feel tempted
to answer yes to the second question just because we think two-year-olds
have a right to have their lives protected? No, even though the mother's
poverty worsens a two-year-old's chances just as much (or little).
Let's stop pretending that "pro-lifers" (or "pro-choicers," for that matter)
face any unsolvable problems due to their basic position. The only real
problems lie in the choice among basic positions. Once that choice is made,
it is simply a matter of figuring out the consequences.
--Paul Torek, U of MD College Park