Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

Right to Life

Rate this topic


source

Recommended Posts

Hi. I just finished this article and placed it on my site (link in my sig). I'd just like some feedback. Thanks.

Right to Life

Huge debates today are raised over issues of the right to life. Does an unborn child have the right to life? Does a mother have the right to abort the unborn child? Should euthanasia be allowed? Do fetuses have rights? Politicians are working overtime to make a law which would ban abortion and euthanasia and cloning. Human rights organizations are performing ever more polls on whether abortion should be legal or illegal. And the Pope is screaming at the top of his feeble voice that cloning should be banned for man should not play god.

On the other side of the battlefield, already there is an ever growing number of animal rights fighters with banners like “Save the dolphins” or “We’d rather be naked than wear fur,” all skin and bone and beaten by their vegetarianism, but still with enough muscle mass to demolish the homes of scientists and doctors testing cures for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's diseases on animals.

All of them united, singing the imaginary song of theirs, which says that somehow the unborn and animals have the right to life.

They are all wrong.

In the heat of their battles (sadly for mankind, ones they can win), they have forgotten that by letting a fetus carried by some female become a child no matter what, they are restraining the mother from making the choice that concerns her own life, thus explicitly violating the right to her life. They have also forgotten that by stopping man’s testing of cures on animals, they are endangering human lives which depend on the results of such testing, and the lives of those who may have the diseases in question in the future. They are also stripping numerous scientists of their jobs and their pursuit of happiness through these jobs. In their fight to grant the right to life to the non-sentient and potentially sentient, they have taken the right to life to the living and sentient and now they are taking over the place of the judge who determines who (or even what!) has the right to life and who hasn’t. They have consciously or otherwise denied that one should make the choices concerning one’s own life and began making these choices in the place of whose they are to make.

The right to life is the right to the pursuit of values and productive achievement as an individual sees fit for his or her own existence, within the boundaries set by the means at one's own disposal; as is determined by one's own volition. It is the right to exist as an end in oneself, not as a means to the ends of others.

The right to life is not the right to be kept alive, or to become alive. At its root, it is the right to choose whether one wishes to live or not. The most fundamental question one can ask oneself is “to be or not to be.” Do I want to live or do I not want to live? If one chooses not to live, then one requires no rights. But if one chooses to live, according to the right to life, one cannot live by subjecting others to one’s whims, to have others as means to his or her own ends. One can only live within the boundaries set by the means at one’s disposal; other people are not and should not be the means to anybody’s goals, save by their own consent.

And that is what those, who fight for the ban of cloning, of abortion and euthanasia, are refusing to acknowledge; that is where they are wrong. An unborn child cannot make a choice, it cannot cry for food, it has no means for survival, save for the body of another individual – its mother. And denying the mother the right to abort pregnancy is to deprive her of choice; it means telling her that she has no right to her body and no right to her life. She is forbidden to ask herself whether she wanted to live or not, and forbidden to ask herself how she wanted to live; she MUST live, and live the way the law allows her.

On the other hand, animal rights fighters claim that animals have rights, that they have rights to life, and subsequently, that they can choose the means of their survival, and acquire them and that they are ends in themselves. The term individual rights can only apply to humans. Animals don’t need them and can’t understand them. An animal may feel pain and react to it, but would not hesitate to inflict pain, to kill another animal or even a human being. A living being that can’t understand the meaning of individual rights and has no potential of understanding them doesn’t need them. Animals don’t have the intellectual capacity necessary to comprehend the meaning of property or happiness, which means they can’t have any rights to these. And since the concept of rights is such that it must apply to individuals in its entirety, not by parts, animals can’t have the right to life either.

Every individual right is a right to some kind of action. The right to life is no exception. The right to life is not a right to simply exist – even non-living matter can simply exist – but to sustain that existence through certain actions such as acquiring food. The right to own property does not follow from passive existence, but from self-sustaining actions which are a practice of the right to life. This is exactly why right to life and right to own property are inseparable; one acquires property necessary for one’s survival – take that property away and his or her life becomes torture, or even worse, it ends.

The common misconceptions of the right to life are based on the principle opposite of that stated above; they are based on the notion that right to life is the right to passive existence not fuelled by self-sustaining action (which would be a contradiction), but by actions of others. Taxing income is the direct consequence of such notions. One earns money but according to altruist credos, one doesn’t need all of it, so it is proper that some of it goes in the hands of those who have chosen passive existence – those who don’t earn. This credo is not put into practice by consent but by force; the governments force productive individuals to part with their earnings in favor of the non-productive. If in this situation individual rights are recognized as rights to action, then it is clear that the productive are made into slaves of the non-productive. The non-productive individuals do not practice rights, but their passivity is rewarded with products of those who do; and productive individuals practice their rights, but they are continually violated in the manner that their products are taken away from them without compensation.

Another aspect of the same incorrect notion has fetus’ rights and cloning ban as its consequences. Although pope’s remarks of humans playing god by cloning living tissues are the result of altruistic views and/or pure fear of life, from the rights perspective it is nothing more than a consequence of the view of rights as rights to passive existence. These views may or may not violate some real individual rights (to action); it depends on specific situations. The very right to life, however, recognized in proper sense, as right to action, is enough to offer a good enough argument against banning cloning or even improving one’s own body or that of one’s unborn child by means of genetic engineering. The right to life is the right to pursuit of values, and if one’s own life is a value to a certain individual and if one wishes to improve his or her unborn child by improving its genetic makeup then there is no reason why he or she should be stopped. As for the right to life as a right to self-sustaining action being applied to a fetus, it is an obvious nonsense. It is only those who believe in rights to passive existence who can come up with this.

Finally, claiming rights of animals is what shows that the concept of rights is facing total ruin. As Ayn Rand put it, an individual right is “…a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context.” In which social context can actions of animals be placed? In what way do animals actively improve human society? Do animals require any sanction for their actions? Animals don’t have rights by definition, QED.

The issues raised over the right to life are in fact not issues. However, they are undermining the concept of rights and man’s freedom. The only way to fight them is to realize that rights are not arbitrary grants, but moral principles. As such, they are determined by man’s nature, not by consensus. Man’s nature is such that he or she must act in a certain way in order to survive; hence rights are rights to action.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Since you wanted some feedback, I will play devils advocate for you. Please do infer anything about my own views as a result of this discussion.

I think you are one the right track with this, but it could be better organized. It tends to ramble. A few section headings would help you with that and also make it easier for the reader.

Now to the content.

One assumption you seem to be making is that animal rights folks are also anti-abortion. I do not believe this is true or , at least, not freequent.

And denying the mother the right to abort pregnancy is to deprive her of choice; it means telling her that she has no right to her body and no right to her life.
I believe this needs clarification. You should address those who will say the woman made her choice when she 'uncrossed' her legs or failed to take the proper precautions against pregnancy, especially in an age when such precautions are very effective. You will also need to make clear whether you are advocating the option of abortion at any time during the pregnancy. Do you defend this choice for all trimesters including the moment prior to birth?

But if one chooses to live, according to the right to life, one cannot live by subjecting others to one’s whims, to have others as means to his or her own ends.
If you believe that the fetus is sentient or an individual at any point in its development, is it being 'subjected to whim' by abortion? After all a human being has no choice about how it comes into the world. It has to be carried to term in the womb of its mother. It is not a paracite. It can be argued that be argued that the pregnancy is the initial stage of the child rearing process.

Animals don’t have the intellectual capacity necessary to comprehend the meaning of property or happiness, which means they can’t have any rights to these.
There are those who will argue that an animal can comprehend the meaning of property or happiness. For example, a dog will guard his bone from other dogs, a rabbit will guard his warren, etc. Is this not an awareness of property? Animals express happiness when fed, when petted, when the master comes home from work, etc. Is it true that they do not express happiness?

In which social context can actions of animals be placed?
Animals are clearly social. They organize themselves into tribes, defend territory, and choose leaders. Can it be argued that animals, though not as intelligent as man or manifest intelligence in other ways, should be given some consideration as our 'dim', thrice removed, but no less senient cousins?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...