hawk@oliven.UUCP (08/02/84)
[Followups have been routed to net.abortion {I think}] > Lets say that you, Rick, and I are visitors from another world. (I have > a reason for starting off with this.) We come to Earth as friends on a > Holiday. We decide to go mountain climbing, and during the excursion, I > happen to fall and damage both my kidneys. You, being the good friend > you are, rush me to a hospital where the only living physician on ET > biology informs you that the only way to save my life is for you to donate > one of your kidneys to me. Its no big deal to us, your kidney would grow > back in a few months anyway, but I don't have that long. > > Now, clearly, my life depends on you donating your kidney to me. But for > whatever reason, you decide that you don't want to even though it would > mean my life. Now, we have a situation where my right to life is directly > dependent on you giving up your right to control what happens to your own > body. In this case, which right prevails? My right to life, or your > right to control what happens to your own body? In this case, 1) I have a moral obligation to donate a kidney, but 2) you have no right to demand this action from me. The problem with this analogy is that it is confusing positive and negative rights. [philosopher's sideline: a positive right is a right to have something done, while a negative right is the right not to have something done to you.] Your right to my kidney would be a positive right, a fetus's right not to be aborted would be a negative right? How 'bout this example? You and I are again creatures from another planet and have encountered one another while mountain climbing. I fall, and damage my kidneys, and due to the biology of our people, when you brush against my open wound while reaching over to help me up, a symbiotic attachment occurs (as in Siamese twins). The only way to disconnect us is through surgery or upon of our deaths. It will now take you months instead of a couple of days to climb back down the mountain so that you can reach a surgeon. Now, my right to life has become dependent on your giving up control of your body. Do you have the right to shoot me? After all, I could not survive alone and you didn't ask to have me attached to you. -- hawk (Rick Hawkins @ Olivetti ATC) [hplabs|zehntel|fortune|ios|tolerant|allegra|tymix]!oliveb!oliven!hawk