When does any medical condition become a non-serious threat? We don’t involve the government in any of that. Not even for physician assisted suicides (where they are allowed.)
You’re needlessly complicating it.
Ensoulment has nothing to do with our laws, or whether or not we allow one person to kill another.
No, we haven’t. That’s your own fabrication.
Personhood is a convenient legal construct often used to deny a human being basic human rights. It’s how this country allowed for slavery. (“They’re not persons. They’re property.”) And it’s precisely what a lot of abortion advocates rely on to deny the preborn baby the right to life.
Dabbling in “personhood” to make a pro-life argument simply plays into their hands.
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No the government doesn’t get to decide that…it left that in the hands of patient and doctor.
But that’s what the current laws do…leaves the government out of it.
No. The point was about the government deciding what is a threat to the patient.
The government is totally in the laws that state we cannot kill other human beings – except for one classification of human beings.
And you know that.
The government doesn’t decide what is a threat to patients.
That’s exactly what I said.
Restrict abortions but with an exception for a threat to the mother’s life. The question I answered (to which you responded) asked if the government should decide what is a threat. My response was that the government shouldn’t.
You’re agreeing with me.
In fact, I’m on record in multiple places on this board that such an exception shouldn’t even have to be spelled out. It should go without saying. We allow for self-defense in all our laws. And that goes for practically all of Western society.
All the complications raised by abortion advocates about drawing the line for “threat to life” are ratholes. It’s a medical decision.
Yes, but your stance is unrealistic because not everyone agrees on the definition of when human life begins. A slippery slope argument to say it’s the same argument we made about slavery.
It’s not.
Biology tells us when a life begins. I don’t understand why abortion advocates deny this.
What you would be more accurate to say is that we don’t have agreement on when PERSONHOOD begins. That’s the legal construct we use to protect or deny basic human rights.
But it is PRECISELY the argument that was made to propagate laws that allowed for slavery. Human lives were reduced to mere property, and that enabled for this nation to allow for the denial of the human right to liberty. (And in some cases even the right to life.)
Now we say the same about human lives that have not yet passed through the birth canal.
Different circumstances, to be sure, but the same principle of using “personhood” to deny the basic human right to life – with the law’s permission and protection.
It’s NOT a slippery slope. It’s already happening (and has been for decades).
Then the question of life being a biological definition is irrelevant. Cant have your cake and eat it too. Maybe try explaining things instead of always responding with assertive denials.
Does “personhood” exist outside of mental constructs? If so, please show us. Otherwise, pot meet kettle. You simply have your own convenient construct which conflicts with other’s. If personhood doesnt exist, what are ethics of abortion based on? Natural reductionism is incomplete.
My point is that it does NOT exist except as a mental (or legal) construct.
That’s the point.
We shouldn’t kill our fellow human beings.
Denying this as a matter of “natural reductionism” is bogus. It’s just liberal relativism at its best.
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Agreed. It should be between the doctor and the patient IMO.
Why not?
We’ve already decided there are plenty of times when it is indeed perfectly OK to do so…and I’m not just talking about self-defense.
All I can say is that I find this post disheartening and sad.
PS: Who are you allowed to kill deliberately and legally – except as a matter of self-defense?
Yet it isnt that simple. You choose to endorse killing people all the time via war or in self defense - even though they are biological human. Therefore you place different philosophical values on the importance of their personhood as a human. Likewise, the argument that a fetus is a “human life” in a natural reduction context is irrelevant. What is important is the meaning of the life.
Why does self defense matter in the context of a fetus? Simply saying it does, doesnt explain anything.
That’s because you immediately applied a moral judgement of me based on the question I asked instead of considering the question in its own right.
As fo people we can legally kill? That’s easy.
We have adopted an economic system where if you do not have the financial means to life-saving medicines or basic sustenance, it’s OK if you die.
We have decided that property rights are more important than any one person’s right to life.
You just don’t see it as taking human life because you are far removed from the cause and the effect.
People die because we value property rights above human life.
People die because we value territorial integrity above human life.
People die because we value “kinship” above human life.
There are any number of situations where human life is nowhere near the top of the list in importance.
I’m not saying any one of these is right or wrong or sideways…only that it is.
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