Third Party & Independents: Archives

So, do we get to sue the chemical and energy companies for all of the unwanted abortions due to lead, mercury, chromium, MTBE, and a host of other chemicals which are showing up in blood tests of newborns and of course in all those “spontaneous” abortions?

Of course not, because the House also passed a bill which will limit the amount that can be awarded in a class action law suit. What that means is a $150,000 cap award on a chemical company that does 5 Billion a year in business and earns 400 million in profits can afford to write off a good few dozen lost souls a year as cost of doing business without breaking a sweat. And certainly paying the caps for the dead will be cheaper than cleaing up their emissions or products.

It is time to send Congress a message folks. These politicians, our representatives, trust that they can divide us on issues like gay marriage and immigration amnesty. By dividing us on these issues, they can avoid a concensus of voters coming to the polls with an anti-incumbent attitude over the big issues which they don’t have the political will to fix for the American people.

About $45 of your Social Security taxes coming out of your paycheck this Friday are going to pay for the Huge Tax Cuts to the 1/10 of 1 percent of the Richest Americans. The middle class has seen it taxes go from 13 to 15 percent since 1970 while the percentage paid by the wealthiest has steadily fallen since 1970. That’s right folks, we middle class from $30,000 to $500,000 per year income are paying more so the wealthiest pay less and less year after year, since 1970.

But will we voters go to the polls this November and throw our incumbents out of office on mass and send the message the next crew that we mean business about them taking care of OUR business, and not their own. We have a host of problems our incumbents have not dealt with and continue to refuse to solve, like honoring the Soc.Sec. contract and saving our safety net for seniors. Like, health insurance for all at lower costs, not higher costs, lower Rx costs, repairing our roads and bridges, making public education quality education, and fully funding No Child Left Behind.

David, you’re missing a key point. Individuals must be held responsible for their actions, unless they are major campaign contributors to either the Dems or the Reps. Both parties do everything within their power to ensure that corporations are never held responsible for their actions. Profits over people, you know.

Misha, this is going to sound very callous to you, but most people who are pro-choice (including myself) do not see fetuses as people, because they’re not. They are little collections of cells which cannot survive on their own. Not until sometime in the third term can this collection of cells be called a person, because it is not until then that it is able to survive outside the womb.

This is taken things too far. An unborn child cannot survive without it’s mother. If it cannot survive independently, you cannot legitimately call it another person.

Even the bible does not consider the unborn child another person, if a woman is hurt, and the child is lost, it’s restitution, not death. It’s only when the woman herself is killed that it’s considered capital.

We should do the same. The alternative legislation treats pregnancy and it’s loss as an aggravating factor in federal crimes, instead of an extra count.

I know people have the best intentions with this, but it really is a can of worms as far as legal status goes. I mean, do dead people get legal status now? They’re not really living anymore, but how can we deny them rights if we’re giving them to the unborn, who by their nature cannot be considered as living yet?

I mean, what if PETA starts charging us all with animal cruelty for taking potential birds and frying them alive? There goes the incredible, edible egg! Oh, and if our car hits a pregnant cow, do we have to pay for two beasts, and not just one? And if a man makes love to his pregnant wife, is it child molestation? I know I’m being flip here, but the fact is, you have the absurdity of considering someone a separate legal entity who isn’t even a separate biological entity yet, and who does not really possess of a separate body, as far the placental exchange goes. Our navels are a scar of that former status, so at the risk of being called a navel gazer, I’d like to suggest you consider that mark of your former unity with your mothers body, before suggesting a law that treats the unborn as separate human beings.

I have somewhat mixed feelings in regards to this issue. I do think that there should be some way to punish more severely if one harms a pregnant woman and her unborn baby, but I also realize the ramifications of such a ruling leading down a slippery slope towards overturning Roe vs. Wade.

In regards to an unborn child being a seperate person or not, I think that it should not be considered one so long as it’s not a viable entity (using reasonable means) were it not inside its mother. A 2 or 3 month old fetus is obviously not viable. One that’s 8 months old probably would be. But of course this creates an issue in determining viability of a child in a situation like in the Lacy Peterson case.

Ultimately, I see this bill as an attempt by the pro-life lobby to capitalize on an unfortunate crime to serve their purpose.

It looks like somebody needs to defend the conservative position here, and I’m a glutton for punishment.

If fetuses are not important, then would you consider the loss of a fetus due to say an automobile accident to be no problem as long at the mother was not harmed? Would this be viewed as a boon to the mother because she would not have to go the pain and anguish of childbirth and raising the child?

Alright, lets try to get to this issue with a little more rigor. the basic argument here seems to be the “viability” one- it seems that most people even here realize that its not the location of the child that really matters (that is, if the child was 8 and a half months old, then you would have no problem protecting them). So the question before you is what point of so-called viability makes an unborn child worthy of legal protection. let me suggest two options and then show how they are unacceptable:

1. True “indepedence”: this means the child can live without any sort of machines whatsoever. This position cannot possibly be defesible as a grounds for deciding whether someone deserves to be protected from being killed. After all, Stephen Hawking cannot live without machine- nor can the thousands of people who are in temporary comas, nor many thousands of babies who are born and have to be hooked up to machines I hope we can admit this is not the right answer, and that you would want to prosecute someone for murder for killing Hawking or for pulling plugs on babies in hospitals.

2. viability, in the loose sense. I think this is what people seem to mean when they try to do the trimester approach. First, technology can now keep children alive as early as 5 months (depending on the health of the child) after conception. Second, this seems to be an extremely bizzare standard and produces some crazy results. For example- say X kills a child that has been in the womb for only 4 months tomorow. Now according to you guys, X should not be punished for that murder because the unborn child is not a “human being”, because he/she cannot live seperately from its mother. Now say Y commits the same EXACT crime 20 years from now (When it is almost certain that technology will be able to keep children alive at 4 moths), is that action now MORE wrong? Does the value of someone’s life before the criminal law turn on what technology is avaliable at the time? the best technology? the average technology in the country? in the community? That seems like a rather untennable approach. Keep in mind that eventually (probably not more than 50 years away), a child at ANY stage of pregnancy will be viable under the definition you guys are arguing for (if you are indeed arguing this position and not position 1)- would the killing of unborn children in 50 years then be worse than killing of unborn children now? i cant see how one could honestly claim that it would.

And for the person who said that this is just an attempt to capitalize off a tragedy- you are completely misunderstanding the point. The reason that prolife people believe that situation was a greater tragedy than just a regular 1 person murder is the exact same reason they are pro life. there is nothing covert or cynical here, if you read the article the sponors are saying the point of this bill IS to recognize unborn children as human beings. I think this is refreshingly honest given the state of politics these days. As for this bill providing the ground for the eventual overturning of roe v. wade- if you can see the critical connection, then one of the major points of the bill has already succeeded. once we can escape the conception of roe as a “privacy” case and start talking about at what point the state has a right to protect the LIFE of unborn children, we will have a much fuller debate on this issue in america- that is one of the reasons this bill is such a good measure.

I will clarify my scenario in light of your increased rigor.

Would you consider the loss of a dependant and unviable fetus due to say an automobile accident to be no problem as long at the mother was not harmed?

You misunderstand us, Ron. Any time a mother loses her pregnancy, it is a sad event, and should be mourned. Even so, the unborn child still should not legally be considered a person until it actually is a person (ie, it’s born).

I’m all for giving stiffer penalties for harming a pregnant woman, but you cannot give an unborn child separate legal status.

Claims like (paraphrase) “scientifically it’s not disputed that fetuses are human beings” are vacuous because it’s not a scientific matter but a linguistic and legal one. Pioneering computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra said “The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of whether submarines can swim.” Both animals and subs move through water; whether we claim that subs can swim or limit swimming to something only animals can do is a matter of linguistic convention.

In law we recongize different types of persons and accord them different rights. Legally, corporations are persons, but we don’t try a board of directors for murder if they vote to disband a corporation. We recognize both 17-year-olds and 18-year-olds as persons, but accord more rights to the latter. We don’t consider chimpanzees persons (even though they are more than 98% genetically similar to humans), but animal welfare laws give chimps more rights than rocks.

Whether we call fetuses persons is immaterial to the law and is a discussion for other realms. The questions that need to be answered are “What rights, rules, and responsibilities should we assign to fetuses and people’s relations to them,” “Why,” and “What effects will such standing have?” And these questions are for each type of fetus; it seems reasonable to have the law apply differently to 9-month-old fetuses than 9-minute-old fetuses.

Clearly fetuses shouldn’t receive voting rights, should not have the right to bear arms, and so forth since they can’t use these positive rights properly. Should they have negative rights from harm? This sounds reasonable, but it requires reasoned discussion about intended and unintended effects, among other things. I certainly think that chemicals with no effect on postnatal humans but which harm fetuses should be kept out of the water supply. Should there be legal consequences for intentionally harming a fetus? This sounds reasonable. Should it be the exact same consequence as intentionally harming a 5-year-old or a 50-year-old? That seems a little extreme. Should fetuses have positive rights to life and health? Since a fetus is incapable of reasoning, positive rights like health care choices must be left to a guardian — what decisions should be left to the parent and what should be left to the state? Should we assume a fetus has a living will, so if something happens and the child would die without intervention, the mother can let it die? Or should medical intervention be mandated, even if it results in maintaining the fetus in a permanent vegetative state? Should a 20-year-old be allowed to sue his parents for improper prenatal nutrition habits? What about suits over fetal alcohol syndrome or crack addiction?

Finally, there are many unanticipated consequences that will spring up if we grant fetuses full personhood. Will a fetus count for population purposes? If you fill out your census form in May of 2010 and expect a child in January of 2011, should you add one to the number of people in your household? Should a pregnant woman need to pay for two people when she goes to an all-you-can-eat buffet? When a pregnant woman records her weight, should she subtract the weight of the fetus? Or does the fetus weigh zero pounds? Or does fetus+mom before birth weigh more than baby+mom after birth? If a woman miscarries twice, does her only child have two dead siblings?

Finally, and directly related to the bill in question, if a man intentionally kills a woman, but doesn’t realize she’s pregnant, should he be charged with two counts of Murder 1? Or should he be charged with one Murder 1 and one Manslaughter?

Robert
I like this post. The opponents and proponents of abortion never seem to actively address whether a fetus should be considered a human being. They each have their opinion and they argue like the other side is crazy. This post attempts to bridge that gap, and if any resolution is to be had, it has to be bridged. I’m arguing the conservative side because I’m conservative and because arguing is in my nature :-) Anyway, I’ll now bull ahead with my argument.

We seem to be agreed that the loss of this fetus is a tragedy. And you have also stated
I’m all for giving stiffer penalties for harming a pregnant woman
which seems to indicate that a fetus has some value.

Which brings me to the question: then why not have penalties for harming a fetus alone?

Trevor- i completely agree with you, I was only making the medical point so that people would not accuse me of assuming my conclusion and because I need some vocabulary to talk about the unborn child.. anyway… Your analysis is pretty strong,now let me answer your questions, pointing out how they bring up no real new issues to the present common and statutory law, just application on old and established principles:

1. Should a 20-year-old be allowed to sue his parents for improper prenatal nutrition habits?

I think this would be about the same kind of suite as if a mother smokes and damages her breast milk, then breast-feeds her newborn… I think, in theory, such a suite should be allowed in the most extreme case, but in many cases the issues of proof, mental culpability, statute of limitations are extremely problematic- again, this is no different from the breast milk example

2. What about suits over fetal alcohol syndrome or crack addiction?

I think this would be a more extreme case that i reffered to above. the questions are the same- breach of duty, causation (the most difficult one to prove, obvious), and damages. Just a regular old negligence tort suite. Now if it could be proved that the mother knew with substantial certainty that the harm would occur to the child (the legal standard for an intententional tort), then should could be guilty of battery, but that would happen in only the most wanton cases.

In general, that entire group of questions can be answered in the same way we apply principles of parent duty to the case of mother and infant children.

3. Will a fetus count for population purposes? I guess it depends what the census is for- for example, for the purpose of prenatal care this could be usefull. in any case, not much turns on this otuside of paperwork.

4. Should a pregnant woman need to pay for two people when she goes to an all-you-can-eat buffet?

Unlikely- i am assuing the buffet is a private business and it would be poor policy to charge extra to pregnant mothers- people would probably boycott. after all, mother can bring infants into baseball games for free, and i am sure if they want to feed their infants some buffet food, not too many places would care or try to make them pay double.

5. When a pregnant woman records her weight, should she subtract the weight of the fetus? Or does the fetus weigh zero pounds? Or does fetus+mom before birth weigh more than baby+mom after birth? If a woman miscarries twice, does her only child have two dead siblings?

I think these are questions not much turns on. If the wieght thing was different, then we would just have a new socially and medically acceptable wieght for the mother without child ect. this is much like asking what would happen if we converted from the english system of measurement to the metric system.

6. Finally, and directly related to the bill in question, if a man intentionally kills a woman, but doesn’t realize she’s pregnant, should he be charged with two counts of Murder 1? Or should he be charged with one Murder 1 and one Manslaughter?

I believe the second option is more appropriate if he truely did not know she was pregnant. The gradations of murder turn on state of mind, and therefor some version of murder that isnt murder 1 would be more apt (murder 2 might apply, depending on what jurisdiction and what definition they use).

Okay, putting viability and fetus life-defining aside, because I have my views and don’t feel like being told i’m wrong….

Say that the pro-life folks get their way, and abortions stop.

Is there a plan for what to do with all those unwanted children that are now being born? How about those that are in need of 24 medical care because of mental retardation or other such damage?

Abortion is not something anyone should do off the cuff, believe me. However, the Right seem to want to have all the children be born, yet don’t seem to have a plan for what to do after they are born. You can’t garuntee that those kids won’t be given up or abandoned or anything else.

It just seems to me that Conservatives only give a damn about some woman’s child until it’s born….

Misha, a unborn child is a human being, but it’s not a separate human being with a life of its own yet. The fact that the average premature child born must be kept alive by machines doesn’t speak so much to a lack of the moral right to live as it does the biological unreadiness for such a child for separation and individuality at that point.

Once born, human beings are separate and independent, should they survive long enough to enjoy that status. but before that, A mother and child are one. What happens to one, happens to the other.

There are ages worth of legal and religious precedent for considering the life of an unborn child to be a part of, not distinct from the mother’s.

Additionally, any such system of laws would depend on the registration of the unborn child. Births and Deaths are certified in our system. So would conception be in yours. I hope you have a good idea of just how ambiguous, how uncertain, and how fraught with corruptible loopholes such a system would be.

A system with difficult-to-establish dates, one that will be forced to intrude on personal questions of paternity, one that is itself must be subject to the vagaries and innaccuracies of medical science as to determining the child’s status, and which is dependent on the good graces of the parents to notify authorities will inevitably be exploited by the unscrupulous. You will see a whole new category of frauds, bureaucratic hassles and acrimonious legal disputes. God help those who get divorced during such a time.

Not to mention the absolute intrusiveness of such a system. I mean, you, as a libertarian should have your hair standing on end at the thought of people having to register unborn children, of them having to report miscarriages on public record. And think of what will happen if Eugenics takes hold in this society again, and this system is in place. If you think registering of guns is a bad idea, I can’t possibly concieve how you would want the government in charge of your unborn children.

Even as an opponent of abortion myself, I see this as horrible intrusion into people’s lives. This is an ugly, brute force method of getting our way on the abortion issue, and I for one think that such drastic rewriting of centuries-old law as to who qualifies as person under the law stands to create more injustice, more corruption than it will prevent.

I will say this as a Catholic, as a student of history, and as one who was born prematurely himself.

Stephen- I hear what you are saying. The thing is, as a libertarian I believe that one of the few legit goal of government is to protect human life from murder- especially those who cannot protect themselves. In fact, it might be the #1 responsibility of any government.

Your first two paragraphs are accurate as a descriptive matter, but the problem is that once you awknowledge that they do not “doesn’t speak so much to a lack of the moral right to live”, that kicks in a LARGE presumption for taking any REASONABLE steps for protecting the life of the unborn child.

I am not much one for religious considerations, and as for legal ones, those are from a time where science and technology were rather primitive and thus it was difficult to make rationale policy. Aristotle, writing about unborn children, for example, speculated that they were first vegitables, then animals than humans- not in a metaphorical scence, but in a scientific sense. We know better than that one due to advances in embreology- they had ignorance as an excuse for their views, we no longer do.

As for your other considerations, they are good ones for sure, but I do not know if they are so intractible. Could not a legislature create a reasonable system that would protect unborn life without all of this intrusion? For example, why would it not be enough to shut down all abortion doctors, and prosecute those who kill unborn children? for example, the girl at the prom who threw her baby in the dumpster- that kid was not registered anywhere, but we had no problem prosecuting her. We would not even need to go that far- just taking out the actual killers (the abortion doctors) would do most of the job. I guess I just do not see what ends registration you talk about would serve that could not be achieved through the less intrusing means most states had per-Roe.

And I think this is where we totally diverge- you say that we could not set up a system that would not balance the loss of privacy (which I think would be minimized by my proposals above) that would be “worth it” to save all those lives. I couldnt disagree more. There are currently about 1.2 MILLION abortions per year in America- i think we could stop a million of those by just shuting down abortion doctors. sure some would operate underground (but heck, we still have other kinds of murder even though its illegal- lots of it).

So I think thats the final answer. even putting aside the abortion issue- we would not want to live in a society without murder. By that I mean, we would not want to have intrusive enough police and oversite by the government to stop every act of murder (same analysis applies to crimes ranging from rape to corporate fraud- at some point the risk to liberty becomes too much).

So what do you say Stephen- how about we just shut down all abortion doctors (obviously some would slip throught he cracks, as with any law)- that does not sound too intrusive.

i honestly can’t believe i just read that last post…..

shut down the doctors…..

i’m so angry……..

I wonder if the abortion issue would be as important if little babies weren’t so cute?!

I mean, surely you can’t make me believe that all the fuss is simply over the sanctity of life!! If a life was SO important to conservatives, then why the warmongering..why Iraq? Why eliminate Social Security for the elderly? Why underfund NoChild Left behind? Why prevent unemployment extensions during these difficult times to help feed families? Why does the Bush brothers have the record for death sentences as governors? Why relax pollution standards and allow mercury to be dumped into our rivers again? Why relax gun controls that might eliminate the most deadliest of weapons? Why stonewall the 911 investigation which could ultimately make us all safer by learning from our mistakes? Why?!!

I don’t think conservatives really give a DAMN about us at all to be honest? They seemed to be most concerned with inhancing their wealth at the expense of a majority and a military to secure it! I wish sometimes poor children looked like a B-2 Bomber..they might get more attention that way!

yet, lovecraft, conservatives are evil- you figure them out- how brilliant! There are perfectly good reasons for many of those stances-

why Iraq? because he was a bloody thug that needed to taken out and many people believe that when someone signs a treaty with you and then spits on it, tries to have your former president murdered, makes a joke out of your inspectors, you need to take action. Thats not to say there arent good arguments against the war, but there are plenty of damn good ones for it.

Why eliminate Social Security for the elderly? Becuase, as i showed in my article bellow, SS hurts the working poor more than anyone else (plus its paternalism- gotta love the government telling people how they MUST plan for their old age, right?)

Why underfund NoChild Left behind? Because its a stupid plan (disclaimer- i dont agree with No Child Left Behind, i think Reagan had it right when he wanted to do away with the Dept. of Education and leave it to communities- better yet, we could allow parents some CHOICE where they send their kids by letting them into voucher programs- but that would be injecting the oh-so-evil free market into the equation and we know that the government is so much more efficient…)

Why prevent unemployment extensions during these difficult times to help feed families? because adults are responsible for their own lives, and should nto be funded by the government in perpetuity.

Why does the Bush brothers have the record for death sentences as governors? Because murderers who (1) kill and rape children; (2) kill multiple people (just to take two examples) DESERVE to die. Abortion kills innosent unborn children, the death penalty kills horrible murders. I believe rapists should go to jail, while I also believe new borns should not- is that somehow inconsistent? thought so (disclaimer: I dont really care one way or another about the death penalty- while I completely believe that the most heinous murders deserve to die, the chance of a mistake makes me pause greatly about the issue)

Why relax pollution standards and allow mercury to be dumped into our rivers again? Bush has done a very good job on the Clear Skies Initiative, and if you read an indepedent minded environmentalist like Gregg Easterbrook (who i am sure is not a bush supporter, as he always attacks his tax cuts ect), you can get a much fairer perspective on Bush envirnmental policy. I dont konw about the mercury dumping, so i wont comment.

Why relax gun controls that might eliminate the most deadliest of weapons? Some people beleive the 2nd ammendment actually means what it says. The original justification for the right to bear arms was to protect oneself from government tyrrany, should it happen, if we only allow people to have little pistols, how can they possibly do that (ok fine, that was a rather weak argument, and i do not really buy it- but the 2nd ammendment is in the bill of rights and i do not see why its fair to read the other ammendments so broadly and read that one so narrowly)

Why stonewall the 911 investigation which could ultimately make us all safer by learning from our mistakes? fine, but that is Bush playing politics. it has nothing to do with “republican” or “conservative” ideology. tell me clinton wouldnt have done the same thing and I will laugh in your face.

And this is the problem with the discourse in america today. The point of this little exercize was NOT that I agree with all of these positions, but that if you treat your political opponents with such disrespect, no wonder we have such a polarizing and fruitless debate in American politics today.

Most pro-life people believe that unborn children are being slaughtered by the millions every decade, and to say they dont actually “care” or whatever other implications are in your post is sickening.

Imagine you have a strict husband, and a pregnant woman who wants to visit a dying relative. The husband, who up to this point had been reasonable, puts his foot down, but the woman knows she will take reasonable precautions, and she does. However, during the course of the pregnancy, the fetus spontaneously aborts, as happens often during pregnancy, due to some defect in the unborn child.

Then the husband sues for wrongful death. Or maybe negligence. Then he denounces the woman as an irresponsible mother.

Or maybe the mother gets into an accident with a and the ambulance crew, while saving her life does something that kills the fetus, unbeknownst to them. Then the husband sues them for wrongful death. Or maybe he sues the driver, as helpful as he has been.

How about woman locked up in their houses, because husbands are willing to hold them legally culpable for any trouble in their pregnancies?

Giving an unborn child legal status as a full person not only contradicts the biological truth of the matter, it also opens up a whole can of worms in terms of cases that deal with the loss of life. Prosecutors and ambulance chasers alike will jump on the perjorative depiction of their defendants as baby-killers. And of course, you’ll obviously get cases of female defendants let loose for shooting at cops because they were “just defending their baby”. They may even get pregnant for the occasion.

As for that girl at the prom, the baby at least could be considered fully alive when the mother killed it. There was no question of fetal dependency- the baby was born, and was alive to be murdered.

With birth, there is a legal standard, there is a breath drawn, and viability in this world proven. Theres no scientific debate about whether the child could, or could not have survived. By being born, our children gain that instant and unquestioning acceptance of the value of their life. Birth is a test. I passed it. You passed it. It’s proof that we could survive in the world ipso facto.

I mean, wouldn’t it be just the most sickening irony if somebody finds a loophole in that law of yours? Then, by definition, you would be legally out of luck. In the meantime, your proposal would have inadvertantly undermined women’s rights, increased the viciousness of an already cutthroat legal community, and defined even non-viable children as people.

It will cause more problems than it solves.

Stepephen, again, your concerns are not that difficult to address. I am in law school and several simple realizations about our legal system would solve most of the problems you forsee. Suits on negligence for the death of third parties are limited through the legislature- I would adopt something like the standard that the criminal law uses for negligence for the example you gave- that is, it has to be gross negligence with wanton disregard for human life. so it would cover the case of mothers who take crack while pregnant and your example would never make it passed summary judgement and the attorneys who brought it would probably be sanction under rule 11.

Laws can be narrowly drawn to avoid the situations you keep trying ot bring up- and in such a circumstance anyone who files a loophole would be rather rare, ESPECIALLY compared to the million lives that would be saved every year. There would also be issues with the standing of the father to sue for wrongful death on negligence grounds- PLUS we could easily limit or eliminate their recovery in tort law in this case (after all, wrongful death recovery is extremely limited in terms of standing as it is)- we could just leave this in the province on criminal law, where none-gross negligence would not be a crime, and any such case brought by an over-zealous prosecutor would be tossed.

You see- if we allowed LEGISLATURES instead of Courts make these policies, we could have this sort of debate and draw and narrowly taylored law that would protect unborn children while addressing your worries about an overreaching government and extending tort liability into a dangerous grounds (i think your worries are a bit fanciful but I would be willing to compromise on tort liability to achieve the goal of saving more lives in a second)

But the problem is much deeper for you- neither you nor anyone else on this thread has responded to my attack on “viability” as any sort of guidepost for whether the unborn child deserve merely the right not to be killed (well one guy responded by saying he didnt like being told he was wrong :) ). You just state, a priori, that ability to live on ones own (which, as i pointed out, stephen hawking cant do) is somehow the touchstone and proceed from there. As i show above, that is a distinction that has no moral signifigance.

Viability is too easily used as an excuse to terminate the pregnancy. Many will say early on that the fetus is not viable and abortion is okay. Later in the pregnancy the fetus may be viable and therefore abortion is not an option. I think it isn’t an option at any stage. Even after the child is born it cannot take care of itself. If a parent ignores it and doesn’t care for it we arrest them if the child dies. Care for the fetus and child are interwoven. There can’t be a magic moment where the non-human becomes a human being. It all starts at conception. Even at several years of age the child cannot survive unless the parent protects and cares for it. Whether you end the life of an unborn child or one that is 3 years old, you take a life.

I’ve responded quite a great deal to your questions of viability. Can a unborn child breathe and eat on its own? No. Is its brain developed enough to deal with the flood of input from the rest of the world? No. Can the unborn child survive the death of it’s mother within the womb? No. Life does begin at conception, in the sense of being biologically active, but the fullness of human life, not come until he or she is born.

Birth is the threshold. It is from birth that every developmental landmark is laid out for the infant’s growth into childhood. It is from birth that we measure that boy or girl’s existence as an individual- the birth certificate, which acts as a universal entryway into every other phase of that person’s legal existence: Social security, Driver’s license, Marriage license, drinking age, etc.

It is that one unchanging known in any person’s life; you do not know when you will die, and obviously, as I know, we aren’t necessarily born in the regular nine months, but when we are born, it is a fixed date. Conception is a biologically ambiguous date, especially if your parents were -AHEM- active. There are no guarantees until birth occurs that the baby might have been born alive. A child can even be strangled by his own (or somebody elses) umbilical cord.

In our culture, only the most embarrassing parents remember conception, or relate the circumstances. Only the most oblivious forget the birth.

In our religions, although many regard conception as the beginning of life, few celebrate conception in particular. The state of pregnancy is applied to the mother, not the infant to be. It is only when the child is born, alive or dead, that the child is given treatment as a human individual. Baptism, naming, circumcision and other means of consecration are associated with birth. Only the conception of patriarchs, saviors, teachers and heros are given close treatment, and it is not usually extended to the unborn child by any kind of ritualized sacrament.

Culturally, biologically, religiously, and legally, the birth of a child is regard as the fulfillment, the threshold of one’s life being taken as a full human life. Laws should not be made that ignore so many of the thresholds that are dear to our people in their arrangement of legal precedent.

Find a less harmful, less destructive way of outlawing abortion. We can save all your millions of lives, as you so melodramatically describe it, without tearing away at what unambiguous points of reference this society has.

As for the rest? I know politicians, and I know what my lawyer brother has told me about the law and all it’s processes. Not only that, but I’ve lived in Texas for all my life, so I know the wonderful results of having a strong legislature and a weak governor and judges.

I know that language is quite easy to twist. I don’t need my brother for that- I’ve been writing for more than half my life. I’ve heard over my lifetime of many cases when the phrasing of laws has substantially changed their meaning. I’ve learned from my observation of news reports, and documentaries, and my reading of the newspapers and literature surrounding politics just how easy it is for changes to creep in there.

In short, I do not share your optimistic, laissez-faire idea of how intact your law will end up, how many of your safeguards will survive the lobbyists and political interests, especially the Religious Right.

That’s why I am so insistent on thresholds like this being kept in place, and on a constitutionally orthodox approach to law on all levels- I do not trust people with power over others to give it up willingly. I do not trust the government to operate on it’s own recognizance, unsupervised. I believe the American people have to keep their elected officials aware of their obligation, that it won’t just happen.

Especially not if we let them pass foolish legislation like this. The fight against abortion can be lost if we insist on winning the battles in the wrong way. This is a democracy, and if we aren’t careful to be persuasive about our policies, we might end up on the wrong end of a popular and legislative backlash. Patience may save more unborn than it allows to die.

> This is taken things too far. An unborn child cannot survive
> without it’s mother. If it cannot survive independently, you
> cannot legitimately call it another person.

To define personhood based on the viability of the creature without outside support is to destroy the dignity of the injured, ill, handicapped, etc. It’s a flaky argument. At least offer some provisions.

> Even the bible…
> We should do the same.

And to say we should do the same because “the bible says so” is a weak argument. Many may agree with you, but it’s not an argument; it’s an opinion. To say that logic always works would justify many things which you wouldn’t be too big a fan of.

> I mean, do dead people get legal status now? They’re not
> really living anymore, but how can we deny them rights if
> we’re giving them to the unborn, who by their nature cannot
> be considered as living yet?

Not to call you uninformed (just underinformed - note the difference) the bodies of the deceased do have an extent of protection under the law, and to equate the dead, decaying remains of someone who isn’t likely to spring back to life in the next few months to an unborn child who stands a far better than even chance of becoming a person if you do nothing more than sit on your hands until the delivery. Not very compelling.

> Our navels are a scar of that former status, so at the risk of
> being called a navel gazer, I’d like to suggest you consider
> that mark of your former unity with your mothers body, before
> suggesting a law that treats the unborn as separate human beings.

You are indeed unusual. (That’s not a part of my argument, by the way.)

I can say with much certainty that even after lengthy pontification on the merits and meanings of my navel I am unlikely to change my major moral views and, I dare say you imply, a major portion of my weltanschauung. Absurd, but comically so. Thank you!

> Birth is the threshold. It is from birth that every developmental
> landmark is laid out for the infant’s growth into childhood. It is
> from birth that we measure that boy or girl’s existence as an
> individual- the birth certificate, which acts as a universal entryway
> into every other phase of that person’s legal existence: Social
> security, Driver’s license, Marriage license, drinking age, etc.

Careful where you put “we” when you really mean to say “I.” These are your arguments, not that of the majority.

Morality should be defined by social custom. To some extent. But to this extent? Absurd again.

> In our culture, only the most embarrassing parents remember
> conception, or relate the circumstances. Only the most oblivious
> forget the birth.

Irrelevant. Discussing your sex life in public is obviously less socially advisable than discussing in general terms the birth, an even which occurs after nine months of buildup. Sex happens much more frequently than birth, by design. To say that importance of conception is somehow based on the magnitude of the event that caused it is to miss the point.

I remember every traumatic event of my life much more vividly than the routine experiences which have done more to shape my existence than anything else - should I base my assignment of importance on my faulty and limited memory?

Reminds me of the observation that one remembers the books he’s read no better than he remembers the meals he’s eaten - but they have subtly shaped life in ways that can’t be gauged based on that level of remembrance.

> Culturally, biologically, religiously, and legally, the birth of a child is
> regard as the fulfillment, the threshold of one’s life being taken as a
> full human life.

In typical western thinking, yes, but ask any native Chinese person about their age and they’ll count from conception. I’m not sure either side is a compelling enough argument That’s an emotional

What you’re doing here is using social customs and faulty arguments and comical pseudo-eroticism of the naval to say that an unborn is not in any way a person. However the vast majority of pregnant women would think that absurd, and probably quite insulted by it. And in the republic in which we live it’s a dangerous position to use kindergarden-logic to say that the majority is wrong in their views.

—

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. —P.J. O’Rourke

It’s nice to see, Mortimer, that you can tell the difference between a hippy wiccan from Oregon, and a Catholic rationalist from Texas. Want to hazard a guess as to which one you wrote about?

It’s also nice to see that you’re good at researching the past points of the author. I mean, if you did, you would know I’m Anti-abortion, and that my objections are not based on the idea that the unborn child is lacking in humanity or life until birth. I argue insufficiency, and it’s an argument that finds it’s roots in traditional western sources as well as a modern understanding of pre-natal development in the child.

If you call that Kindergarten logic, I’d like the number of that school, because that’s where I’m sending my kids when I have them! Even the bellybutton comment, which you immediately imply was simply a bit of spiritual insipidness was meant as a reminder that I and my reader were once connected to our mother’s bloodstream through a placenta and an umbilical cord, the Navel being a scar of that former status as I wrote earlier. The unborn child’s nutrients, fluids, and oxygen flow to it from the mother’s systems, already digested, swallowed and inhaled, respectively. It is the mother giving life to the child, not the child maintaining it him or herself. There is potential for life, and growing life there, but it is not a life just yet. When you deal with murder, you deal with the last, rather than the preceding. I mean, if potential life is your standard, then If I kick some guy in the groin, I’m a murderer by your reasoning. Absurd, no?

Just so, a guy who smashes a corpse’s head open is no murderer, just a sick bastard and a desecrator of a corpse. I never argued that an unborn child was precisely like a dead person, or that the dead person completely disappears from the eyes of the law. What I did argue is that if you choose to ignore the threshold value of birth, the same kind of biological ambiguities of what constitutes life might be brought into play at the opposite end of the lifespan.

If the responsibility is to the mother, rather than the unborn child, there is still much that can be done. We can legally restrain people from hurting themselves. We do commit people when they attempt suicide, or if they mutilate themselves. So if the child’s potential life is still unfulfilled, still linked to that of the mother’s, we can deal with abortion without having to resort to tearing at the foundations of our legal system to do so.

I think the last paragraph requires analysis of it’s own:

What you’re doing here is using social customs and faulty arguments and comical pseudo-eroticism of the naval to say that an unborn is not in any way a person. However the vast majority of pregnant women would think that absurd, and probably quite insulted by it. And in the republic in which we live it’s a dangerous position to use kindergarden-logic to say that the majority is wrong in their views.

I don’t know where your idea that I was trying to be pseudo-erotic or anything of the sort comes from. I don’t even know what precisely you meant by that. I certainly wasn’t trying to get that kind of rise from anybody, much less one of the false kind!

Throughout the comment you criticize my use of cultural, religious, and social custom as justifications for opposing the considering of the unborn as full, living persons. But how else are we to judge the situation? How does the majority form it’s views, magic? And how is it dangerous to appeal to that majority, in whatever form or composition it takes, by means of the pre-existing social, cultural, and religious norms? I would think if you wanted a stable society, that would be your source for the relevant arguments.

It would also determine the relevance. I don’t see how the traditions of the chinese would come into play in a society like ours that does not trace it’s heritage through the eastern tradition. We are part of the western tradition, and so measuring our laws by that tradition is cogent to the discussion.

I have argued very little, I feel, that a pregnant woman would disagree with- That the child inside her needs time to incubate and develop, that she and the unborn baby are connected in an substantial way, that birth is an important threshold for that baby’s new life. I did not argue against the developing individuality of the child, the presence of life, or the humanity of what grows within their wombs.

I think our discussion of this issue would greatly improve if you did not put words in my mouth, and motivations in my writing that do not have a basis in fact.