Quote:
Originally Posted by Danzig
my point about rights, be they for homosexuals or women, is that the granting of rights doesn't equate you losing any rights. do you disagree about that?
as for the %, i brought that up because it's probably a skewed number. like i said above, people don't necessarily explain why they choose to end a pregnancy.
as for the mother choosing-she's choosing whether to be pregnant or not. it's not as tho a woman has any other choice when she finds out she's pregnant. you can't move the embryo elsewhere. you either continue the pregnancy, or you don't. not everyone equates abortion to murder-your belief that it is such doesn't make it so.
as for 'rewarding', that's a strange term. no birth control prevention is 100% effective. my mother joked that my brother was born with foam on his head (they had used a spermicide, ooops). so, if a woman does everything possible, but still becomes pregnant, tough crap. i find that ridiculous. and i doubt most women have a standing reservation at the local clinic-that's also a ridiculous assumption.
and the declaration of independence..it's a remarkable document, but i'm pretty sure we go by the constitution when we make laws.
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You're correct: The Constitution is the law of the land of course. The Declaration of Independence is often cited as a key piece of the intellectual background for that document. It actually defines the origin of rights, something which the Constitution builds on. That's my reason for citing it here.
There are many non-guarantees in life. You can check your parachute with absolute expertise in observation, and if you skydive 1000 times, there is a nonzero probability that at least once your chute may fail. If you quit smoking, or have never smoked at all, you still might get lung cancer. If you invest in only blue-chip stocks like GE, IBM, Microsoft, depending on the market you still may lose money. Each of these things is a risk. If you don't want to ever get in a car accident - don't drive, and don't be a passenger in a motor vehicle. If you never want to be (or get somebody) pregnant - do the math. If you proceed anyway, you implicitly accept the risk and the consquences.
Your point about not being able to move the embryo is correct - at least today. There's an interesting philosophical argument to be had about if or when technology provides that ability -would that bring an end to the current state of abortion? Or are people as concerned about killing the responsibility along with the child. The embryo is transferred, but somebody comes to you 18 years from now saying, "Hi Mom. Can you help me out with a college loan?"
Again, I don't have a position on homosexual rights - but following your argument - this is different. The question comes down to when the embryo is alive. If it is alive, then abortion MUST be murder. If the embryo is not alive - and I don't know how we make that case since it's growing and would eventually be a human in the same state of development as you or I -then it's not a murder. The criteria for the murder definition is that simple. Through that mechanism, someone has lost their rights - not me as a fellow citizen of the country - but the individual who was murdered. That's why this is different. These are not two independent citizens as is the case in your homosexual rights argument. One is dependent on the other, and one can be killed by the other, with the victim unable to do anything about it.
In the general case where independent citizens are "pursuing happiness" as the Declaration put forward, I agree that rights granted to one segment that don't affect the other segment does not reduce the rights of the other segment. This is as long as they are truly independent. I don't think that applies when one group are the recipients and the other group is made up of providers, by force, through taxation.