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semm

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I got a question for the males here. You As A Future Potential Father...You Feel It Would Be Fair For The Potential Mother of Your Child To Abort Her Pregnancy Without Noticfying You?

& How Would You Feel if that Did happen to You?

Just fine. I don't have a claim on her body.

Also, note that the senario itself really works better as an ethical analysis of promiscuous sex. That is, if you're going to risk creating parental obligations for yourself with the type of woman who wont even discuss it with you when the situation occurs, then why the hell do you deserve a "get out of jail free" card by getting a free claim to her body? The answer is really in the ethics of promiscuous sex, and not in the abortion discussion. Sex is too important, and valuable to have it with someone who you don't value and who doesnt value you. The fact that one chooses to engage in it that way doesn't give their feelings about it any more metaphysical value than any other whim.

This senario is the tail wagging the dog.

Edited by KendallJ
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You Feel It Would Be Fair For The Potential Mother of Your Child To Abort Her Pregnancy Without Noticfying You?
Is this my wife? Someone that I have a close, loving relationsip with? Or some casual sperm recipient, or ex-squeeze? Either way, my emotions are distinct from my rights. I can be personally bugged and not get all legal about it.
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Is this my wife? Someone that I have a close, loving relationsip with? Or some casual sperm recipient, or ex-squeeze? Either way, my emotions are distinct from my rights. I can be personally bugged and not get all legal about it.

What do you mean by getting all legal about it?

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What do you mean by getting all legal about it?
In asking about "notification", you've invoked legal concepts of rights, and gone beyond the realm of personal relations. When a woman has a particular kind of intimate relationshipe with a man, the question of having an abortion should be discussed between the two of them, and the woman should consider the man's interests as well as her own, because of the relationship. It it, ultimately, her decision to make, according to her values. "Notification" would be entirely inappropriate. With a non-relationship, discussion is not even advisable, and "notification" would be inappropriate. Thus, "notification" is always inappropriate except in cases of contractual pregnancy.

---

Added: there have been attempts in history to require notification of other parties when a woman seeks an abortion, and such laws are improper. I don't know if such notification laws exist for adult or minor females at present, but they clearly should not. Thus a husband is not entitled to notification when / if his wife seeks an abortion.

Edited by DavidOdden
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That is, if you're going to risk creating parental obligations for yourself with the type of woman who wont even discuss it with you when the situation occurs, then why the hell do you deserve a "get out of jail free" card by getting a free claim to her body?

Because she gets a free claim on ours in the form of paternity payments, maybe. I have no difficulty with the concept of child support when it springs out of a contractual obligation(ie marriage) but if it is in fact her body then the consequences of what she does with it(or allows to be done with it) are also entirely her responsibility.

note:I do not intend this as an argument against abortion. Only that the "get out of jail free" card that some men may want, they properly deserve but do not need to acquire though requiring an abortion on their partner's part.

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I don't know if such notification laws exist for adult or minor females at present, but they clearly should not.

How does this reasoning extend to laws requiring parental notification (or approval) when a minor seeks an abortion?

Clearly such a law would have to be capable of obviating injustices in extreme situations, such as when the minor was raped by a parental guardian or if the two parents vehemently disagree on whether the minor should have an abortion.

Anyway, it seems as if there might be legitimacy behind the argument that a minor is not fully capable of understanding the psychological consequences of an abortion and thus, a parent or guardian should be involved in the decision to prevent the minor from harming herself. However, I suspect that most laws of this form proposed today are probably motivated by creating another obstacle towards obtaining a legalized abortion. Obviously, the spirit of such a law should be to protect the minor, not to prevent abortions. I am not exactly comfortable with this reasoning to create a law either, as surely the anti-abortion rights proponents would greatly exaggerate the psychological consequences of having an abortion.

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How does this reasoning extend to laws requiring parental notification (or approval) when a minor seeks an abortion?
The parents are, or should be, acting as custodians of the rights of the child, and should make their decisions with reference to the interests of the child, not their own interests. The question is whether there ever is a situation where a pregnant minor would be acting irrationally and against her own interests in having an abortion. Only if such a situation existed should the child be prevented from acting freely. Nothing obvious comes to mind: arguments like "The girl will burn in hell" or "The girl will suffer great psychological trauma at realizing that she was a murderer and will burn in hell" have zero objective weight.
Anyway, it seems as if there might be legitimacy behind the argument that a minor is not fully capable of understanding the psychological consequences of an abortion and thus, a parent or guardian should be involved in the decision to prevent the minor from harming herself.
But I am not at all persuaded that the parent / guardian is competent to make that determination by objective criteria. The "psychological consequences" argument is nullified by the equal or worse psychological consequences of being forced to give birth. If in fact there is a rational argument of that kind to be made, I think it ought to be evaluated by a competent objective evaluator, who can determine whether the girl's choice is self-destructive.

Supposing such a situation could atually arise, then it's conceivable that a parent could have relevant testimony to give at a hearing. But it is vastly more likely that the parents would have nothing to contribute, and they could then psychologically or physically abuse the girl as punishment for her sins. In my opinion, the risks of parents acting contrary to their duty to the child far outweigh any information they might provide to the effect that this would be a self-destructive act for the girl. If we could read minds, we might allow parental notification when testimony is called for just in case the parents aren't nuts, but we can't.

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Abortion is kind of hard for me to grasp because denying something rights before it can have any is kind of crazy to me.
Huh? If something doesn't have rights, for example a non-person, then it's simply impossible to deny rights to it (and so it can't be crazy to). Do you mean "it's crazy to talk about denying rights to something that has no rights"? But then it ought to be easy to grasp.
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Because she gets a free claim on ours in the form of paternity payments, maybe.

Others (in the context of personal relationships) can steal from us in all kinds of ways if you allow it (and I mean this in a much broader context than material values alone). The answer is simple...don't get involved with those kinds of people.

One unjust law does not justify another injustice (which would be being legally allowed to prevent a woman from having a child).

Edited by ~Sophia~
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Others (in the context of personal relationships) can steal from us in all kinds of ways if you allow it (and I mean this in a much broader context than material values alone). The answer is simple...don't get involved with those kinds of people.

That same argument could(and is) used to oppose abortion. I don't think it valid in terms of politics. It s only good personal advice.

One unjust law does not justify another injustice (which would be being legally allowed to prevent a woman from having a child).

That is what I meant to say in the "note:" at the bottom of my post. I apologize if it was not clear.

Edited by softwareNerd
Fixed quote tags
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In what way? Because I did not say "don't have sex if you don't want the possiblity of a child".

The idea you present, as I understand it, is, "do not concern yourself with the justice or injustice of the law, only worry about how to avoid having to be affected by it.(which would be avoided with certainty only by abstinence since accurate judgement of character is not ever a given.)"

So I could say, "it doesn't matter one bit if abortion is legal or not...after all, one can always fly to another country or bribe a doctor and have the procedure done." While true enough, it does not detract from the injustice.

Since the discussion is about the morality of the situation, ways of circumventing its effects, are good advice personally, but not relevant to the justification of the laws.

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The idea you present, as I understand it, is, "do not concern yourself with the justice or injustice of the law, only worry about how to avoid having to be affected by it.(which would be avoided with certainty only by abstinence since accurate judgement of character is not ever a given.)"

I see. Well...no. I was responding to your response to "why the hell do you deserve a "get out of jail free" card by getting a free claim to her body". (bold mine) It was not a justification.

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Sorry if I derail the direction of the discussion here but I want to ask what you all think of my own problems I'm struggling with in regards to abortion.

I believe women should have the right to abortion... all the way up to birth and even beyond. I'm having trouble defining where beyond stops, and I think if I can't come up with a clear definition perhaps my original reasoning is bad.

I think a woman has the right to abortion because she is caring for a irrational human being who cannot care for itself, whether inside her or not. Because she has the right to decide whether to care for and birth a human or not, its emotional & physical stress.

I think once born both parents must agree to killing the child if they believe it is best.

So does a child at 3 suddenly become legally protected? Or is it 2? 4? Where is the limit, when does killing a child someone does not want to support become murder? And if protected who will care for it if the parents decide not to? It's not the governments responsibility to care for children so why should the government have the right to protect this child? If protected is a government run child protection agency no longer immoral? Is it in our best interest to protect these children? I know I would not be happy sleeping at night if something was not done to protect a healthy normal 2-4 year old child from an irresponsible parent. (COMPLEXITY!)

It also seems reasonable for a parent(s) to attempt to find a foster parent(s) or home before killing a child already born, but if this attempt is not made is it then murder? Again, who will care for the child at this point if protected?

I believe someone would volunteer but until that volunteer is found someone must care for a protected child. I know there are a lot of questions here but these are the thoughts I'm struggling with, hopefully someone can help!

Edited by Dorian
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I think a woman has the right to abortion because she is caring for a irrational human being who cannot care for itself

...

I think once born both parents must agree to killing the child if they believe it is best.

Do you think it is rationality that gives rise to rights?

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I think a woman has the right to abortion because she is caring for a irrational human being who cannot care for itself, whether inside her or not.
That's not a persuasive reason, because it implies that rights can conflict profoundly, and thus the right of the fetus to exist at all is outweighed by the woman's right to control her body. It would allow children to execute their doddering, senile parents, so something's seriously wrong here.

What's wrong is that the fetus does not in fact have rights, so there can be no conflict of rights. The key to understanding ethics is to think in principles, not a list of concrete instances. Only a person has rights, and a fetus is not a person. A fetus may become a person, and it is celularly made up of human genetic material just as a tumor is, but it is not a person. It is not in the nature of a person to exist (literally) parasitically, taking nutrition and oxygen from the blood stream of a person, living inside another person. When the fetus becomes a person, and exists apart from the womb, then as a person, it has rights. It is not required that a person with rights actually exercise good, rational judgment in order to have rights.

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I think the ability to reason is definitely a factor, because then there is no difference between an animal and a human baby. Both are alive, both lack rationality, except generally an animal can care for itself.

David, I think you have a good point about senile parents though. Personally, I think it would be wrong if children just decided to kill their parents, but is it their right? Like a baby, if the children of senile parents decide not to care for the parents who will? Is it a murderous act to not support them? Will the Government support them if the Government protects them?

It definitely sounds barbarousness to me, which is why I"m confused, but I think if a human exist and relies on another human to live, in a way that human is losing some rights.

I think there's definitely a good point to saying being a person guarantees a right to life, human rights, but who will guarantee it? I read a lot of the previous posts in the thread and there seems to be a lot of disagreement on when a fetus gains the status of a person, personally I still feel confused about that as well.

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Also some clarification.... by rationality I meant the ability to reason. The reasoning may not be good, sound, but just the ability to reason. I think I may have misused the term. For example I don't think a marxist loses the right to life for having bad dishonest reasoning (although maybe thats not a bad idea! haha)

But a baby or senile human who cannot reason, who cannot live on its own perhaps does lose the right to life. Again, I'm still trying to figure this out.

Edited by Dorian
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But a baby or senile human who cannot reason, who cannot live on its own perhaps does lose the right to life. Again, I'm still trying to figure this out.
It is important to frame this discussion in terms of principles, and the right principles. The "right to life" does not follow immediately from "the ability to reason" whereby losing the ability to reason means that you lose your right to life. How can one make a direct connection between "ability to reason" and "has rights"? I've never seen it done. The connection is more involved -- more steps, but simpler and I would say more solid steps. Very briefly and I admit, not at all complete (but in the form of extracted quotes from VOS), "Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law", "man must act for his own rational self-interest. But his right to do so is derived from his nature as man and from the function of moral values in human life", "The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals", "Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses. It is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice", "men cannot survive by attempting the method of animals", "The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others".

The main points where people seem to have the greatest problems seem to be over the fact that "rights" is a social concept, which pertains to the relationship of others to the individual. There are no concerns about rights when you are dealing with a man on a deserted island. Rights are moral concepts, meaning principles, and not a collection of unrelated concrete instantiations. They have a purpose -- man's survival, given the facts of reality. Especially when combined with the function of government (to protect rights, and use force as required), it is imperative that notions of rights be expressed in objectively stated law that says clearly what a man may and may not do, a law whose reason for existence is objectively proven.

The ability of men to correctly assess "can reason" is highly variable and IMO highly imperfect at best. (I claim that our knowledge of the faculty of reason is, scientifically, rather primitive and most important we cannot reliably distinguish expressive disorders from an actual lack of rational faculty). On the other hand, there is at least presently no serious question as to what constitutes "man" -- there are no actual man-ape chimeras. Senile adults do not become unclaimed property, there for the harvesting, when their ability to reason seems to be sufficiently compromised, because they are still men, and men have rights. It is possible that a given adult is really brain-damaged enough that they literally have no conceptual consciousness or free will, but that conclusion cannot be validated with certainty, excluding the alternative conclusion that the person does still have conceptual consciousness and free will yet suffers from severe motor impairment or memory dysfunction. Thus the government correctly has laws that limits the ability of one man to treat another as property -- it prohibits it, unconditionally.

Note, for example, that Shiavo, who was a plausible candidate for "genetic homo sapiens without a rational faculty", was allowed to die -- was not killed, or turned into propery for exploitation. Where the notion of "rights" gets confusing in such cases is that the notion of "rights" has become perverted to mean "entitlement", and extends to such attrocities as "the right to a free education, the right to health care" and in Schiavo's case, "the right to be kept alive though active medical intervention without permission".

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Hello All,

I agree that a strong understanding of rights theory is a prerequisite for this discussion. There are many challenging issues concerning the application of rights theory: abortion, tragically deformed newborns, and mentally deteriorating elderly are just a few examples.

It is true that man's capacity for rationality gives rise to his need for freedom in the social sphere. However, as David indicated, the chain of logic is more complex than "reason --> rights." Rand's theory of rights is an integration of an enormous amount of data: developments in political thought during the Enlightenment, common law, property rights, the history of America, and much more.

If one finds that he is having trouble applying a principle to a challenging issue, he might try...

- rereading source material on the principle with possible applications of it in mind.

- applying the principle to issues that appear more simple to him. Attack the problem from different angles.

- looking at what the experts have to say about it.

Good Luck!

--Dan Edge

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I think rights can & should exist without needing others/a society to guarantee them, but I think the right to life for a human that cannot reason can only be guaranteed by other humans who can reason. I guess calling it the right to not be killed would be fitting, and I agree we should all have this right but it still has some issues.

If two parents choose to not care for a baby it will most likely die unless someone volunteers to care for it. This is basically killing it, whether the parents physically kill the baby or let it starve to death I see no difference except killing it seems more humane. The baby cannot reason enough to survive. If a baby has the right to life, which means the parents can't kill it, but it can wander off and starve I really don't see much point giving a baby this right.

I think its make sense to say all humans are guaranteed a right to life because determining if someone is capable of reason may be difficult. Also thinking of the right to life as the right to not be killed does help me come to some resolution but I still have some conflict with this, but these conflicts are primarily only in unreal situations.

The most realistic scenario I have in mind is where the parents think it would be best to kill their child or a senile parent.

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If two parents choose to not care for a baby it will most likely die unless someone volunteers to care for it. This is basically killing it, whether the parents physically kill the baby or let it starve to death I see no difference except killing it seems more humane. The baby cannot reason enough to survive. If a baby has the right to life, which means the parents can't kill it, but it can wander off and starve I really don't see much point giving a baby this right.

I am unsure if I understand your position. Nevertheless, when parents make a conscious decision to have a child, they have implicitly accepted an obligation to care for that child within their economic means and physical and emotional abilities. A child who is born into a family where it is neglected or abused is a victim. The same applies for a mother who chooses to mother a child knowing that she (and possibly with a partner) cannot possibly provide for that child.

The most realistic scenario I have in mind is where the parents think it would be best to kill their child or a senile parent.

I do not understand what you mean here. Why would an adult ever decide that it is "best" to kill their child or a senile parent, barring situations where the human is entirely capable of living as a human (e.g., has a malfunctioning brain.)

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I think the ability to reason is definitely a factor, because then there is no difference between an animal and a human baby. Both are alive, both lack rationality, except generally an animal can care for itself.

Of course there's a difference between an animal and a human baby! Babies have the potential to reason, they simply haven't developed matured reasoning skills. An individual animal does not have that potential. I always run into people who are confused on this point. I don't think that rationality gives one the right to life - I think the ability to reason gives us the right to life.

That said, I agree with both what DarkWaters says - a couple who makes the conscious decision to have a child has the responsibility to raise the child until he/she can care for himself.

I also have to agree with David, especially as it applies to old people. You don't choose your parents - you aren't required to take care of them when they get older. They should be allowed the right to earn enough money throughout their lifetime to retire into a special home for elderly care, but they aren't entitled to their children's time.

Edited by Catherine
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  • 4 weeks later...

In the Tay-Sachs forum, we discussed rights applying to man. In replying to the question of how we define, "man" -- what makes a person a person, David Odden made the case that we can't deduce reality from a definition, but we must induce a definition from reality. This means starting with an identification (man, in this case) and seeking the common denominator that economically implies all the definitions of man.

Qwertz went further, saying that a concept is not interchangeable with its definition. Just because the concept "man" has the definition "rational animal" doe snot mean that a baby without a rational faculty is not a unit properly within the concept, "man" -- rights are enjoyed by all units of the concept, including those that ought to have some such characteristic or another, but for some reason lack it.

And I think I agree -- in making the concept "man," we take into account the possibilities of things that can happen to a being who is defined as being a rational animal, and we do not define the concept based on those "freak" cases. So all units of a concept enjoy rights, no matter what...

My problem is that in listening to one of Peikoff's podcasts (number 2), he talked about what falls under the concept of "man" . He went so far as to postulate that a corpse could even be considered as part of this concept (since its clearly not an animal corpse, its clearly not an inanimate object made by man). He backed this up by reiterating the notion that a concept takes into account the potentialities that could happen to the existents within it -- ie, all men eventually become corpses.

Someone please point out my disconnect, because we clearly don't give rights to a corpse. And, if we were to follow that logic through, if we were to give rights to all units of the concept, and we were considering corpses as units of the concept, why would we not consider a fetus as a unit of that concept?

Perhaps a corpse is not a unit of the concept man, because it is not living -- but a case can certainly be made that a fetus is living, especially in the later stages of pregnancy when it could be viable.

I am pretty sure I understand the argument FOR abortion on the grounds that the fetus is metaphysically dependent on the mother during pregnancy, and one's need (fetus) does not constitute a claim on another person's (mother's) life.

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