cbostrum@watdaisy.UUCP (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) (07/01/83)
From liz@umcp-cs.UUCP :
I think more freedoms are risked by defining a fetus as not entirely
human -- it narrows the definition of what is human.
But on the pro-life side, abortion is viewed as killing. It is
hard to view that a person has the right to kill anything human...
PS I'm probably stiring up a hornet's nest...
An awful lot of loose talking takes place in the abortion debate.
This goes a lot farther than just abortion in its implications, down to
the very basis of morality.
Particular confusion seems to occur over the following pairs of
terms: <human, person> and <killing, murder>.
The first term in each pair is more or less a scientific one.
There are fairly well agreed upon definitions for each of these.
And yes, abortion is the killing of humans by these definitions.
Big deal! There is no normative weight to these terms on their own.
A human is a certain sort of **organism**, and killing is what A does
to B when A causes B to die.
So get off the "when is a foetus human?" and "is it killing or not?" already!
Abortion is killing a human, simple. NOW, is this WRONG?
Murder is a very special kind of killing. Unjustified killing.
So its obviously wrong. So far so good. But what makes an act of
killing murder? This is the question.
Actually, is all unjustified killing murder? of course not. Accidental
killing is not murder, although it is unjustified. Killing someone's
pet is not murder (most of us think), but it is unjustified too (unless
it is one of those noisy dogs that chases you when you are cycling).
It seems that the "right to life" is pretty important here, so as a
tentative definition:
Murder of X is infringing upon the right to life of X
by taking X's life.
Finally we get to the issue. What are the necessary morally relevant
criteria for possessing a right to life? (I take it that it is rather
simple to decide what a right to life is. Similar to a property right,
with one's body and continued health as property).
Further, what do they have to do with merely being human? I fail to
see a necessary connection here. So we are human? BIG DEAL! How does
this make us morally special?
Try this line. The possession of a right seems to involve that everyone
else be required to honor your will with respect to certain items. If
I have a property right to X, for example, this means that you have to
(within certain restrictions) respect whatever I will the future of
that piece of property X to be. *** What possible sense can this make if
I am not a being who is capable of willing anything at all? ***
Now the big question. Can a foetus will in this morally relevant sense?
I dont think it can, so I do not feel that abortion is murder and I am
not against abortion on those grounds.
But there may be other grounds. Maybe a foetus is like someone's pet.
It's still wrong to kill it. But I doubt even that, I'm afraid.
Calvin Ostrum, Dept Computer Science, University of Waterloo
...{decvax,allegra,utzoo}!watmath!watdaisy!cbostrumliz@umcp-cs.UUCP (07/02/83)
From watdaisy!cbostrum Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 So get off the "when is a foetus human?" and "is it killing or not?" already! Abortion is killing a human, simple. NOW, is this WRONG? ... What are the necessary morally relevant criteria for possessing a right to life? ... Further, what do they have to do with merely being human? I fail to see a necessary connection here. So we are human? BIG DEAL! How does this make us morally special? This is a religious question and a matter of belief. Are humans morally special in some way different from the animals in the world around us? I think most of us act like this even if we haven't verbalized the difference. The laws of the US support this in that the cause of any human death (after birth, anyway) must always be known or found out whereas if my cat dies there is no such concern. Try this line. The possession of a right seems to involve that everyone else be required to honor your will with respect to certain items. ... *** What possible sense can this make if I am not a being who is capable of willing anything at all? *** My cat is a being that has a will and she wants to live. But killing a pet is not murder. Now the big question. Can a foetus will in this morally relevant sense? I dont think it can, so I do not feel that abortion is murder and I am not against abortion on those grounds. How do you know it can't? The instinct for survival is very strong. Even if it can't, it will be able to will if it does survive. Think of someone who is comatose for a while but survives. While they are comatose, they are no more able to will than the foetus. Do they cease to be "morally special" for a while? Your argument is not really that different from other arguments about the state of the foetus not being a person (others say human) in the full sense of the word. I object to such arguments not only because they endanger the foetus, but there always seem to be some other group of people who would not have full personhood by the same argument. Such arguments endanger their rights as well -- where will the line be drawn? -Liz Allen