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semm

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One minute a living organism whose means of survival is its mother's placenta, the next minute a living organism whose means of survival is its faculty of reason.  One minute the placental animal, the next minute the rational animal.  One minute no rights, the next minute rights.

Exactly. To take another example, how is it I can bury a human being? One minute I can't bury him, the other, I can? Well, yeah, because one minute he was alive, and the next, he's dead. It's kind of an important distinction, just like the "not born/born" distinction.

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The bit I have trouble with is how you establish the mother has a duty to the child after it is born. How is it not a violation of a woman's "right to life" to force her to care for a year old baby she no longer wants, but it is a violation when you are forcing her to actually give birth to it ?

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I've already explained in depth and at length the epistemological reasons why we must regard the unborn as essentially different from the born. I suggest you review my earlier posts in this thread before we continue.

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Insects are not people. The dependance factor is not appreciably different. The child needs to be protected, immediately in or out of the womb, and whether it is nourished by a placenta or mother's milk is not a significant difference.

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Many things are aware - but what's the hot news? and what's the relevance to abortion?

The dependance is different in kind and different in purpose: the fetus is dependant on the mother for its entire existence, while the infant is dependant on anybody who can care for it for many things which he requires, but not for his existence. At twenty years old, plenty of people depend on their parents for money for college, a place to live during off-weeks, etc - for plenty of things, but not for their existence.

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One minute a living organism whose means of survival is its mother's placenta, the next minute a living organism whose means of survival is its faculty of reason.  One minute the placental animal, the next minute the rational animal.  One minute no rights, the next minute rights.

A newly born baby does not survive via its "faculty of reason", nor is it a 'rational' animal by any generally accepted definiton of the word.

aynfan

Insects are not people.  The dependance factor is not appreciably different.  The child needs to be protected, immediately in or out of the womb,  and whether it is nourished by a placenta or mother's milk is not a significant difference.

It's not an issue of depedence per se (at least in the way you use the term). Even if the foetus were fully conscious, aware, and had all the reasoning powers of a healthy adult, the argument allowing its abortion would still hold, namely that there can be no justification for forcing the mother to incubate an organism against her will. The physical/mental status of the foetus is entirely irrelevant here.

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The dependance is different in kind and different in purpose: the fetus is dependant on the mother for its entire existence, while the infant is dependant on anybody who can care for it for many things which he requires, but not for his existence.  At twenty years old, plenty of people depend on their parents for money for college, a place to live during off-weeks, etc - for plenty of things, but not for their existence.

Assume that medical technology evolves to the point where it is possible to extract the foetus and keep it alive (say on an incubator) during the abortion process. In this way, it would develop into a normal baby regardless of any input on the mother's part. Would the mother be allowed to choose to have it killed? If not, could she be morally forced to support it, or to have anything whatsoever to do with it?

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DWP--your arguments are rationalizations, I don't care to review them.

If you wish to evade the issue, that's fine by me. But just know that in accussing me of engaging in rationalizations, you've only displayed the poor quality of your own intellect.

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DWP--your arguments are rationalizations, I don't care to review them.

How do you know his arguments are rationalizations before reading them? And regardless, there are many other people who answer your question earlier in the thread. You really should read the earlier posts, and if you still have arguments that you think are unanswered, bring them up then.

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Okay, but that's not relevant to the abortion debate.  Most of your questions, in fact, confuse two issues: whether abortion is in all cases moral (it isn't), and whether abortion in all cases is a right of the mother (it is).  I am a defender of abortion rights - not each abortion.

I will go a step further than you and say that abortion is almost always moral. It's certainly better than having a child that's unwanted (for whatever reason).

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Spearmint, a newborn baby possesses the faculty of reason and that faculty of reason is its basic means of survival. Of course it doesn't always think and act rationally, and of course its survival is not 100% and 100% of the time by means of always thinking and acting rationally, but the same can be said for everybody currently or in the past alive. But that is irrelevant to the kind of being that an infant is: genus - animal; differentia - possession of faculty of reason as basic means (ie, tool) of survival, or for short, rational.

The issue of dependance is critical in determining the kind of being a fetus is. First you observe several things, big among them dependance, and then you abstract to kind.

Moreover, "there can be no justification for forcing the mother to incubate an organism against her will" is false. The assertion is almost the same as, "there can be no justification for forcing the mother to feed, clothe, shelter, and raise a baby against her will." The important part you left out is, what kind of organism, and why.

If the doctor performing the abortion chooses to keep the baby alive, he takes full responsibility for it. The mother has none whatsoever, but if she did not consent to the doctor's wish, she can sue for breach of contract.

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One who lives life by accident is not a very admirable person.

What does that have to do with anything? We're not discussing whether abortion is or isn't admirable. However, even apart from the issue of rights - which is the primary issue - what you are refusing to acknowledge is that abortion often is the most rational choice for a woman. In some cases it may even be admirable if she has to stand up for herself in the face of parental or other pressures. In any event, whether it is or isn't, it is her choice and her right.

I'll just add in response to someone else's comment that it is entirely her choice and her right regardless of what miracles of technology might become possible in increasing the survivability of aborted fetuses. The fetus is her property and it is therefore totally her choice whether it lives or dies.

If we are talking about admirable choices, one such admirable choice might be for her to donate the fetus to medical research, especially stem cell research, which would be of great benefit to actual, not merely potential, human beings.

There is an underlying assumption in much of this debate that women's bodies are somehow community property and that they should be regarded as brood mares in the service of the human race. Women's rights are a relatively new and very rare phenomenon in human history and Objectivists, of all people, should be in the forefront of defending, not diminishing, them.

Fred Weiss

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Let me throw some more fuel on the fire, first to remind you that Rand did not feel the same way about later term abortions as she did about the 1st trimester, allowing that different precepts came into play; and also to ask about the rights of the father.

Woman do not conceive by themselves a father is involved. If this a planned birth, eagerly awaited and welcomed by the father and at some point the wife changes her mind and chooses to abort, is this fair? Despite what has been said here, birth is not solely a function of a woman's body, it involves the function of the male's body as well and his DNA.

PS-Ashram, I did read dwp's posts. He posted them to me. He asked me to reread them because he felt they were so overwhelmingly convincing that I must have missed the point. Word.

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PS-Ashram, I did read dwp's posts.  He posted them to me.  He asked me to reread them because he felt they were so overwhelmingly convincing that I must have missed the point.  Word.

Actually, they weren't to you. They were responses to minorsevenflat5 (pages 9 & 10 of this thread).

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Even if the foetus were fully conscious, aware, and had all the reasoning powers of a healthy adult, the argument allowing its abortion would still hold, namely that there can be no justification for forcing the mother to incubate an organism against her will.

I disagree. If a fetus truly had the reasoning powers of a healthy adult, and is entitled to the right to life, one could flip that argument around and say that there is no justification in killing the fetus. My friend, it is important to know if a fetus has rights.

To everyone:

I've read a portion of this thread. I've gone to abortionisprolife.com. And no, I still find it hard to form an opinion of this issue; m0zart was right to say this is the most confusing issue of objectivism.

The above-mentioned website states that man has rights "to leave his mind free to think, and his body free to act on that thinking." So essentially our rights come from our need of them as volitional beings. It goes on to state that "As a fetus does not use reason to survive ... a fetus has no rights, and no need for rights."

My question is the one posed by m0zart (which I don't think was ever answered): "Why is degree of development important in this case, when absent of violent interruption or deprivation the human being and his rational faculty will develop on its own? Why is degree in this case ... acceptlble as a standard, rather than ... the already inherent nature of the child to be a rational being (without which he would never become one -- anymore than a dog could become one since its not in his nature) when the standard is rejected by Rand and Objectivists in general across the board for almost every other conceptulization?"

I think the normal argument is that "Only volitional animals need rights, a fetus is not a volitional animal, thus a fetus doesn't need rights." But couldn't it be considered a volitional animal by nature? Whether it is genetically or something else, we've had it programmed into us from the beginning. Why wait until the inevitable actually happens?

Note bene that my mind is far from being made up. I pose these questions only to further my understanding of the topic.

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I disagree. If a fetus truly had the reasoning powers of a healthy adult, and is entitled to the right to life, one could flip that argument around and say that there is no justification in killing the fetus. My friend, it is important to know if a fetus has rights.

If this is the case then the argument given for abortion in this thread (and the general one used by Objectivists) is completely invalid. The "mother's right to choose" argument logically entails that the mother has the right to choose regardless of whether the foetus is or isnt a rational/conscious/whatever being. If you arent prepared to accept this as a consequence, then I wouldnt say that you really believed the argument.

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Spearmint, a newborn baby possesses the faculty of reason and that faculty of reason is its basic means of survival.  Of course it doesn't always think and act rationally, and of course its survival is not 100% and 100% of the time by means of always thinking and acting rationally

Give me some examples of a day old child using its faculty of reason as a means of survival.

Moreover, "there can be no justification for forcing the mother to incubate an organism against her will" is false. The assertion is almost the same as, "there can be no justification for forcing the mother to feed, clothe, shelter, and raise a baby against her will." The important part you left out is, what kind of organism, and why.

I'm not convinced that there _is_ any justification in the latter case, at least any justification whic hfollows from Rand's ethics.

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If this is the case then the argument given for abortion in this thread (and the general one used by Objectivists) is completely invalid. The "mother's right to choose" argument logically entails that the mother has the right to choose regardless of whether the foetus is or isnt a rational/conscious/whatever being. If you arent prepared to accept this as a consequence, then I wouldnt say that you really believed the argument.

That doesn't scare me away from my position. I believe wholeheartedly everything I said to you regardless of what the majority thinks. Reason -- not intimidation -- is the only way to change my mind.

So, what is this "mother's right to choose" argument you speak of? If a fetus does indeed hold the right to life, why would the mother's rights hold supremacy?

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The mother's right to choose argument would be the one outlined in this thread, and on abortionisprolife.com

Maybe I'm just lazy, but could just tell me what the big secret is? I have read enough from that site and enough from this thread, and I haven't heard anyone say they would willingly allow a person to impede on the rights of another person (assuming that a fetus has rights). I got the impression that most people here go by the argument that they don't have rights in the first place.

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the fetus is unborn. The mother isnt. Why should the mother have to sacrifice rights to something that isnt even born yet. Also, I think that it infringes on a mother's "property" rights...if you will go so far. I think the mother has the right to kick it out of her body at any time. And if it cant survive on its own (through medical help, like incubators) then so be it. I am not advocating abortion personally. But I find it a political conviction not to trample on a mother's rights to her body, just because I wouldnt have an abortion myself.

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