General > Political and Religious
"Right to Privacy" Abortion Analogy
rumborak:
The problem is that driving such a hard stance is eventually nonsensical. If an unborn child is a person like anybody else, one would have to curtail pregnant women's behavior to extreme levels, to protect them from harm. What if the mother is an alcoholic chain smoker? It is massive and direct harm towards that person inside her.
No, an unborn child is *not* a full person and can not be treated as such. It is also a property of the mother, and thus the mother has certain leeway.
rumborak
Omega:
I suppose that a pertinent question to the discussion is whether the right to privacy supersedes the right to life.
Does it?
j:
--- Quote from: rumborak on April 21, 2012, 05:55:57 PM ---The problem is that driving such a hard stance is eventually nonsensical. If an unborn child is a person like anybody else, one would have to curtail pregnant women's behavior to extreme levels, to protect them from harm. What if the mother is an alcoholic chain smoker? It is massive and direct harm towards that person inside her.
--- End quote ---
That stuff all applies in some capacity to young children as well. At some point--whether because it infringes on the parents' rights or because it's simply not feasible to do so--our society has opted not to overly micromanage every decision of a parent, allowing them the freedom to do things that bring harm to their children. Such as smoking, poor nutrition, neglect, verbal abuse...the list is a mile long.
The nature of a fetus's existence are not what is unique: it is the *conditions* of its existence which are. That's what makes the discussion interesting, because it could be argued that an unborn child SHOULD be afforded some unique protections, particularly if the mother intends to have the baby. Just because a premise could lead to something undesirable like more cumbersome legislation is not a logical basis for which to reject it.
The other thing I find fascinating about this topic is that almost the entire discourse is spent addressing the rare situations at the fringe extremes: pregnancy by rape, mother's and child's life in grave danger if proceeding with delivery, willingly pregnant mothers who abuse narcotics or other drugs while pregnant, sexually promiscuous women who allegedly rely on abortions for birth control, etc. Sometimes the intent is to demonstrate a logical fallacy, but I'd say that it just as often muddles rational discussion, much like the rhetoric that's always being thrown around by both sides.
-J
Scheavo:
--- Quote from: Omega on April 21, 2012, 06:16:00 PM ---I suppose that a pertinent question to the discussion is whether the right to privacy supersedes the right to life.
Does it?
--- End quote ---
No, the right to privacy protects us from searches into our person, without due cause. You don't know why a woman get's an abortion, that reason is between a doctor and the woman involved. To step in, via the government, and say what can and cannot happen between a woman and her doctor, bypasses the line of what we consider acceptable behavior by the government, and behaves as a search of our person, and of our record.
The right to privacy argument is an argument for abortions legality - it is not necessarily an argument for an individual abortions morality. Basically, it's immoral to do with is necessarily to make immoral abortions illegal, and a side effect is that more woman are harmed, and the effect you desire doesn't happen. We throw our convicting evidence in court all the time, because the proper process wasn't respected. Even if the evidence tells us 100% for sure that person A murdered person B, it can be thrown out, and even if that means we let a murderer walk free. Abortion, under the presumption that a embyro/fetus is a human, and thus deserving of human rights, specifically life, is analogous to letting a murderer go because the evidence is improperly obtained.
rumborak:
--- Quote from: Omega on April 21, 2012, 06:16:00 PM ---I suppose that a pertinent question to the discussion is whether the right to privacy supersedes the right to life.
Does it?
--- End quote ---
The question is rather, how "alive" is an embryo? Many things in this world are alive but we don't give them any, or only minimal, protection. So clearly, there are differentiations of "aliveness". That's where I really get mostly my stance from, i.e. that a few weeks old embryo is too "barely alive" to deprive the mother of her right of self-determination. That equation of course tips over to the other side once the embryo becomes a fetus.
rumborak
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