My resident troll asserts that the woman has an absolute right to kill her fetus because it has committed the unforgivable crime of being inside her body.
Important point: SHE is the one who put the baby there in the first place.
Arguing that the mother has a right to kill the baby because it's trespassing in her body holds as much water as trying to argue that a kidnapper has a right to kill his hostage because she's in the trunk of his car.
Sorry, Mr. Troll, but that doesn't cut it. Try coming up with a valid argument. You can't have a right to kill somebody for being where you put them in the first place. If you don't want them there, don't put them there.
ummm....this isn't some foreign intruder....it is your BIOLOGICAL OFFSPRING. Since when can a woman's offspring, with no control over its situation whatsoever, be at fault for simply existing in the wrong spot? "Evil, evil fetus for intruding on my uterus!" Oh, yes, being conceived is clearly your kid's fault!
ReplyDeleteThis makes womankind look bad, sister. Get used to biology, even if you don't like it, and grow up!
I think that your resident troll has done more for the Right to Life cause just by running his/her mouth.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I often let Mr. Troll's posts stand just so that we can see what passes for logic and compassion among abortion enthusiasts.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention it's nice to be able to point out to moderate prochoicers that there really ARE proabortion people.
You are wrong, and here's why:
ReplyDeleteBecause the fetus had nothing BEFORE it appeared in the woman's body.
When you put someone in the trunk of your car, that person GIVES UP something. He gives up the rights and privileges he was enjoying by being in his own car, or on public property. Therefore, you are obligated to RETURN those rights and privileges to him by letting him leave your trunk, rather than killing him, when you get tired of having him there.
In contrast, the fetus does not give up anything by being conceived inside your body. Before conception, it has nothing to give up, not even a self.
The conceived-and-aborted fetus gets to enjoy a short life from conception until abortion. That's just so much gained for it, and it does not obligate you to also give it a longer life. Just as giving a blood donation does NOT obligate you to also give the next transfusion the patient may need.
That's why the "inviting-someone-in-and-then-killing-him-for-trespassing" argument fails.
There, that's a free philosophy lesson for you. You're welcome.
--OC, resident troll.
We should pass the "It's My Body" Amendment. It would read: "Any woman who desires an abortion is entitled to have one, and further entitled to kill anyone who tries to prevent her from getting it, including police officers and politicians."
ReplyDeleteOperationCounterstrike, why does the person-not-yet-in-my-trunk have rights and privileges? I'm not being sarcastic or rhetorical, I genuinely want to know. What if the person I lock in my car is one I gave birth to, perhaps recently? Did something happen between my vagina and the car in order to confer rights? Again, I am not dismissing your arguments, I sincerely want to know your views. Your philosophy contends that the only rights he would have are not "rights" at all but privileges I decide to give to him. Thus, arbitrary infanticide or the murder of anybody conceived in me would be justified as "I gave him life, therefore, I may take it away." Am I missing something from your views or are you in favor of my right to take back what, after all, I gave in the first place?
ReplyDeleteAmelia, the person outside your body has rights and privileges because he is outside your body. Not inside it.
ReplyDeleteWhy is that? How can that be? To say the least, I have trouble understanding how a change of location from inside my womb to outside my vagina is also an ontological transformation into a being with natural rights. How can what a thing or person is be determined even in part - much less entirely - by where it is? Your "explanation" comes off as arbitrary dogma to me right now and contrary to coherent philosophical reasoning, so I am wholly interested in your reasoning and/or evidence for that claim.
ReplyDeleteIf your statement really is arbitrary, however, then your belief in fetal non-personhood is nothing more than your personal opinion, and at the very least, reasonable people may disagree about whether a human fetus is a human person. In that case, when we might in objective fact be killing a person by performing an abortion and we cannot know that we are not, abortion is criminally negligent at best and manslaughter at worst. That is still a far cry from acceptable.
Amelia,
ReplyDeleteI think your point is well taken, but you are using “ontology” in a slippery fashion. There are several different ways we can look at this problem, and I’ll start with your position: the human fetus is a person from time of conception, so the location of that person is an invalid condition for discussing the termination of that person. I think this is perfectly acceptable.
However, things become more tricky when one of the possible locations of another person is inside another person. That is the developing fetus is completely dependent on the material environment for survival (not partially dependent as some metaphors assume). Since that is the case, it seems reasonable to grant the mother some say in the process. In other words, it's not simply location that grants personhood status.
This presents a paradox. The question is thus: do we as human being have acceptable grounds to kill other human beings? The answer, although difficult sometimes, is yes. There are many examples of this. So in the end, there is no ontological change stricto sensu, that is, a human embryo does not become a new type of entity.
Chad
Chad, typically the other person has to be a dangerous aggressor before we sanction killing him. In the case of abortion, the only "crime" the fetus is committing is being where his mother put him in the first place. Might as well say all parents have a right to kill their kids if they no longer want them living at home!
ReplyDeleteChristina,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your reply. You state:
Chad, typically the other person has to be a dangerous aggressor before we sanction killing him.
Not really, and there are many examples of this. For example, police officers are not considered murderers for shooting suspected criminals, even when it is later determined that the suspect was doing nothing illegal. A similar situation exists with soldiers during combat.
My point here is that there are situations where humans are allowed to kill other humans under conditions of ambiguity – the ambiguity referring to the status of the person under attack. It is considered acceptable (or at least understandable) for the death to have occurred.
Chad
Again, the ONLY thing the fetus is doing is minding his or her own business, in a place where his or her mother CAUSED HIM OR HER TO BE. To compare this to cops and soldiers, you'd have to have a situation where a cop ordered somebody to go stand someplace, then shot him for obeying, or if a soldier decided to round up villagers, make them stand in the town square, then decided he didn't want them there after all and gunned them down. The cop would be at the very least suspended, if not prosecuted and lose his pension. The soldier would be tried for war crimes.
ReplyDeleteUnder what other circumstance is it even remotely okay to kill somebody because you don't like the fact that they happen to be where you put them?
Amelia, if you have difficulty understanding why location inside your body makes the difference, I can help clear that up for you: I will come to your home and locate part of my body (thumb) inside part of your body (eye-socket) and we'll see how long it takes before you come to understand why location inside your body makes the difference.
ReplyDeleteOC, in order for your parallel to work, Amelia would have to go to YOUR house, grab your arm, and jam your thumb into her own eye, they shoot you for it.
ReplyDeleteChad, you might just as well argue that driving drunk doesn't cause accidents. You're splitting hairs. The woman WILLINGLY does something that CREATES the embryo inside her body, then bitches about how unfair it is.
ReplyDeleteAnd again, for your cops and soldiers parallels to work the cops and soldiers would have to KNOW that the people in question were innocent, and PUT the people someplace, then kill them for being there.
THE WOMAN PUTS THE FETUS IN HER OWN BODY. To try to pretend otherwise is like claiming that boozing it up doesn't cause drunkenness.
Yes, she puts it in her body, and gives it a short life from conception until abortion.
ReplyDeleteThat short life is just so much gained for it. Doesn't justify it in demanding more. It has no basis for a complaint.
If it doesn't like the fact that she might decide to abort it, then it should go get itself conceived elsewhere.
Christina,
ReplyDeleteJudging by your answers I don’t think you understand what is being argued here. I responded to Amelia’s initial argument about the ontology of the fetus, and you have turned it into some rather odd assertions. Let me restate the point:
Amelia claimed that location of the fetus is in fact irrelevant for determining its personhood status, which makes your all caps claim of the woman “putting” the fetus there somewhat bizarre. As Amelia states, the location does not matter.
What matters in this case is if there are reasonable grounds for killing the fetus. My analogy to soldiers or police merely demonstrates that in other contexts there do exist reasonable grounds for killing someone when the status of that person is ambiguous or uncertain.
Chad
Chad, you and OC have been arguing that the location of the fetus gives the woman the right to kill it. That's not an argument Ameilia and I have been putting forth.
ReplyDeleteI'm pointing out that the location -- which you and OC hold grants the mother the right to destroy the fetus -- is a place where the mother herself caused the fetus to be. If she is responsible for the fetus being someplace, she has no right to use lethal force to remove it from that place, any more than you'd have a right to shoot as a trespasser somebody that you'd lured onto your property in the first place.
Christina, you keep missing the point, which is, that when the trespasser enters your property, he GIVES UP something (freedom) which you must then return to him.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast, the fetus does not give up anything by being conceived, so there is no obligation to return anything to it. It gets a nice, short life from conception until abortion, and this does NOT give it the right to demand more life as well.
If you continue trying to ignore this argument, we will know that you cannot answer it.
Your argument is purely asinine. You're making the Marvin Gaye's Dad argument: "I brought you into this world; I can take you out of it."
ReplyDeleteIf your argument -- she created the baby -- holds water for killing it before birth, then it holds water for ANY parent who kills their child.
Nope. It only holds when the baby is INSIDE the parent's body. Not outside. We routinely force people to give EXTERNAL THINGS--money, time--to their kids. Just not inside-the-body things.
ReplyDeleteAnd you can't win an argument just by calling the other side "asinine". You also have to explain why it's wrong. Very difficult in your case, because it's NOT wrong.
You said she's allowed to kill the baby because it didn't exist until she put it where it is. But you can say that about any child at any time.
ReplyDeleteYes, but ownership of stuff outside the body is not sacrosanct. We make people pay taxes, child-support, we make them give up all kinds of EXTERNAL property.
ReplyDeleteWe do not, however, make people give up stuff inside their bodies. That's because inside the body is sacrosanct, it belongs to the one who owns the body.
So yes, once the baby gets outside your body, it has rights. But while it remains inside your body, YOU have the rights.
This all seems very obvious to me. If you don't understand that inside-the-body is your own, try violating someone else's body-rights and see what happens. Go locate your finger in someone else's eye, and you'll rapidly come to understand this. Try it on a cop!
But the fetus does NOT place itself in the mother's body. The mother does that. If I grabbed your arm, jammed your finger into my eye, then shot you dead for "invading" my body, see how long THAT would stand up in court!
ReplyDeleteAnd if the body is so sacrosanct, the body of the fetus is just as sacrosanct as the body of the mother. She has no right to utterly destroy the body of the fetus just because she objects to him being where she put him. His imposition on her is temporary and of HER doing.
OC: "If [the human being] doesn't like the fact that she might decide to abort it, then it should go get itself conceived elsewhere."
ReplyDeleteLMFAO!!!!!!!!!!! You're such a hilarious and sadistic creep, OC.