Men's Abortion Rights.

Southwind17 said:
For the avoidance of possible doubt I'm staunch pro-abortion, including for convenience, but surely human rights conferring upon conception rather than birth is the most 'sensible', albeit certainly not straight forward. I don't think straightforwardness should trump ethical and moral challenge and dilemma - that's just dodging the issue.
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How can human rights attaching at conception make any sense at all? How can something that can't think anything or do anything other than cellular division exercise a right?
 
theprestige said:
So? White male plantation owners in the Antebellum South had the most to gain, and the most to lose, on the question of dehumanizing their labor force.
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theprestige said:
The person who has the most to lose is going to be the baby, depending on how the antecedent question is resolved.
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You consider that re: slavery laws, the person with the most to gain or lose is the slave owner, vs. the slave.

Yet when you consider abortion, you assign the baby as the person with the most to lose.

I know this is a side issue (to a side issue), but why don't you think that the person with the most to gain/lose under slavery laws is ... the slave?
 
I think conception is too early and actual birth probably too late to draw the "personhood" line. Yet those are the points mentioned in the last page or so of this thread. Two biology-based options are quickening and viability, which, it is true, are also arbitrary, but they make the most sense to me. Quickening because apparently it served for centuries as a reasonable proxy for personhood. Viability, because I don't think it's going to be pushed back much further - I think it's going to be fairly firmly lodged at the present state.

In the case of near-viability terminations of pregnancy: From a public policy standpoint, perhaps the best thing to do in that case is pay a woman to carry her baby a few more weeks, vs. trying to save a very premature baby. It might rub some people the wrong way, but it might be cheaper and lead to better outcomes.

That's if the fetus is on track to become a healthy newborn and risk to the woman is low. In cases of severe health risk to the mother or likelihood of a short, painful life for a medically fragile fetus, leave it up to the woman and her medical provider.

None of this has anything to do with men's abortion rights, whatever those are.

I think civilization is or maybe should be past the point of punishing people for having sex that results in an unwanted fetus. If a healthy newborn-to-be has a good shot at a loving home with whoever then I don't mind offering incentives to facilitate this. Bringing unwanted and probably doomed infants into the world ... well, if someone is genuinely right-to-life I kind of respect that, but not with the judgmental overtones about who "should" bear responsibility etc.
 
Minoosh said:
You consider that re: slavery laws, the person with the most to gain or lose is the slave owner, vs. the slave.

Yet when you consider abortion, you assign the baby as the person with the most to lose.

I know this is a side issue (to a side issue), but why don't you think that the person with the most to gain/lose under slavery laws is ... the slave?
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It's a little more nuanced than that. There are two questions.

First, the humanity of the baby/slave is in question. The mother/plantation owner gets to decide what the answer is. They have the most to gain or lose from the question, and therefore have a conflict of interest in deciding the question.

Second, obviously, if the baby/slave is human, then they stand to gain/lose the most from the next question - should they live or die - because there's a human life in the balance now.

Obviously the slave is going to insist that they're human, and it shouldn't be up to the slave owner to decide that they're not, just because it's convenient for him.

And presumably the baby would as well, except that it has even less power in this situation. It is generally considered a virtue of our society, that we try to ensure that even the powerless and voiceless have an advocate for their wellbeing.

Giving one person the privilege to decide that someone is not human, simply to realize some convenience for themselves, seems like a bad idea.

To be clear: If the baby isn't human, then it has nothing of significance to gain or lose from the question of whether it should die. The problem is deciding who gets to answer that first question.

In the case of the slave, we might say that the slave gets to answer that question. But actually we've already agreed that the slave is human. We've already agreed that the slave owner cannot unilaterally declare otherwise. We've already agreed that he does not in fact own the slave.

We've agreed to none of the relevant stipulations about the baby. Francesca and others want to avoid the question of human life and death entirely, by simply letting the mother decide if its human or not. I think that is a mistake. No one person should get to decide if another person is human. Especially if denying the other's personhood stands to benefit them in some way. We don't do that with slaves. We don't do that with soldiers. We don't do that with prisoners. I don't see why we should do it with babies.
 
Darat said:
What's got you confused with what I posted?
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You either said that human rights start at conception and human rights start at birth in two separate posts or you put up a strawman argument in which my post said nothing about "deserving of human rights".
 
psionl0 said:
You either said that human rights start at conception and human rights start at birth in two separate posts or you put up a strawman argument in which my post said nothing about "deserving of human rights".
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Or you misread what he said. Or, more likely I think, you're reading your own preconceptions in to his words. Go back to the post where you put his two sentences side by side and read them more closely.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
WTF does that mean? I only used the word birth in one post in this thread. And it was questions about what you said about birth. Why the heck does that stop you from answering my question?
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He did, in a way. A one day old baby is commonly considered to have the right to life. But it cannot do much of anything to exercise that right, except not spontaneously die. An embryo, if it has a right to life, need not do anything other than not spontaneously die to exercise its right to life either.
 
Ziggurat said:
He did, in a way. A one day old baby is commonly considered to have the right to life. But it cannot do much of anything to exercise that right, except not spontaneously die. An embryo, if it has a right to life, need not do anything other than not spontaneously die to exercise its right to life either.
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OK. That's not much beyond trivially true though. Not sure he said that either.
 
Ziggurat said:
He did, in a way. A one day old baby is commonly considered to have the right to life. But it cannot do much of anything to exercise that right, except not spontaneously die. An embryo, if it has a right to life, need not do anything other than not spontaneously die to exercise its right to life either.
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RecoveringYuppy said:
OK. That's not much beyond trivially true though. Not sure he said that either.
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Thank you Ziggurat - nicely summarised.

But if all that is is 'trivially true', RecoveringYuppy, then similarly trivial is your rhetorical question above, to which I was responding:
RecoveringYuppy said:
How can human rights attaching at conception make any sense at all? How can something that can't think anything or do anything other than cellular division exercise a right?
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Southwind17 said:
Thank you Ziggurat - nicely summarised.

But if all that is is 'trivially true', RecoveringYuppy, then similarly trivial is your rhetorical question above, to which I was responding:
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That doesn't answer my question or clarify.

Are you trying to tell me that rights are vacuous? That's the only take away I can think of from what you're saying.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
That doesn't answer my question or clarify.
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Why - because I answered your question with a question? (Oops - there's another one!)

Seriously, you're going to have to clarify what question you believe I haven't answered yet - I thought I had.

RecoveringYuppy said:
Are you trying to tell me that rights are vacuous? That's the only take away I can think of from what you're saying.
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Not at all. My focus hasn't been on the rights per se, but on the relevance of the ability to exercise rights - a notion that you essentially introduced, and that I challenged.
 
dann said:
Since the Abyssinian house cat shares 90 percent of its DNA with humans, shouldn't it have 90% voting rights?
And since we probably share even more genes with pigs, should I remove my pork chops from the freezer and give them a proper burial?
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In all seriousness, what your satirical contribution highlights is that we shouldn't place too much emphasis on DNA, or more broadly medical science, in this debate, or otherwise that, as a race, we are overly disingenuous towards other species, and should maybe bring them into the discussion! :D
 
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RecoveringYuppy said:
How can human rights attaching at conception make any sense at all? How can something that can't think anything or do anything other than cellular division exercise a right?
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Rights are something we make up and only exists because our society agrees they exist. Problem with all the definitions people come up with that seek to say there is an objective clear none-arbitary line that makes a developing baby/fetus/zygote have human rights is that they are kidding themselves that there is some mysterious bright line/point where something become human, it's the "now human minus 1 day" v "now human plus 1 day". There is no such line, all such lines are what we use as a practical necessity so we can police abortion.
 
psionl0 said:
You either said that human rights start at conception and human rights start at birth in two separate posts or you put up a strawman argument in which my post said nothing about "deserving of human rights".
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No I didn't, I said that we recognise conception as when a human being begins, and we recognise birth as when human rights begin.
 
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