Philosophy Now Forum

1) aaalexandros: Is your point(philosophically) that when a human life depends only on one other human, then he/she has the right to end that life?

Chaz Wyman: The notion of "life" has not been established.

aaalexandros: Yes, it hasn’t been established or agreed upon. What is the beginning of life for you? Birth? On what criteria?

2) Chaz Wyman: Here's an accurate analogy. There is a boy born without a heart. The doctors have a plan to chain him to your body, with mainline blood supply. He uses your sustenance to live. You will have to drag him around all day and all night. You will have to eat extra; you cannot smoke or drink; nor can you engage in sport of any kind. Without financial compensation- do the doctors have a right to hook this boy up for up to 9 months until they find him a heart?
Yes or no?

aaalexandros: No they don’t have the right, as the rapist doesn’t have the right to insist that you will deliver his baby! You wouldn’t suggest that a woman who out of carelessness got impregnated or even worse changed her mind about the ‘hole baby thing’, fits in the same category, with a person who without any consent whatsoever, got ‘chained’ into a baby biologically, would you?
The analogy is not accurate, as it equates a woman who out of negligence created a life, with someone with no choice or responsibility whatsoever.
There is such a thing as ‘extenuating circumstances’ in a murder, and carelessness isn’t one of them..

3)aaalexandros: Does this have other implications? If, with some technological gadget, we could extract the fetus from the mother(we probably can, at some stage) and support it in a tube, then does she still have the right to kill 'it' or must she extract it from her body instead and let it grow outside of her?

Chaz Wyman: That rubric is pretty much established as a rule of thumb maximum time for a legal abortion to be done.

aaalexandros: What is that maximum time according to you?

4)aaalexandros: If we cannot extract the fetus from the mother, and she indeed has the exclusive ability to bring the fetus to childhood, is it the draining of her biological resources that gives her the right to kill 'it', or the exclusiveness of her role? Does a person that is left with an infant on a desert island have the same right as well?

Chaz Wyman: Your analogies are false. A foetus has no personhood. It is pointless trying to talk as if it is the same thing.

aaalexandros: So you claim that ‘person hood’ starts existing at the time of birth?


5) aaalexandros: I think that the answer to the question is one of 'convenience', regardless of how we want to masquerade it. Also, it seems that there is an unwritten rule of 'ownership' of a life as a result of it's 'exclusive dependence' on another life, however immoral it might seem in principle..

Chaz Wyman: A foetus created as a result of rape (through no fault of its own) has less right to continue than one not born of rape.
Here is your contradiction.

aaalexandros: It has the same right to live as any fetus and it is only due to the extremely sensitive and hurtful nature of this specific situation to the carrier of the baby, that I make the concession. I should be mentioning the extreme negligence of a woman who lets this situation develop after a rape, that will have to lead to an abortion instead of the use of a spermicide, but I won’t make the case ..

There is such a thing as ‘extenuating circumstances’ in a murder, and carelessness isn’t one of them.. but..sometimes even in a philosophical argument, emotions should be considered if they are of an extremely damaging nature. We are homo sapiens after all, not politically correct robots..

6) aaalexandros: Also, there is definitively some unwritten 'classification' of human life in regards to it's cognitive abilities, however immoral it might seem. The same arguments you make about the 'special privilege' of a mother are theoretically valid until the birth takes place. But, it is far more 'unacceptable' to kill the baby when eight months pregnant, that in the first two or three f.e.

Chaz Wyman: Of course.

7) aaalexandros: Why is that if the fetus has no ‘personhood’?

Alex:In your first paragraph, you mention that the 'extraction' option is more or less equivalent with the 'abortion' option to the mother, but ,it has to be said, that one should also consider the baby. The two options are definitely not equivalent to the baby...

AS:But the 'baby' is not a baby when it is just a few cells. It can't think or feel so it does not have the ability to 'know' anything. This is why I say the pro-life/prochoice argument boils down to aesthetics. I believe it is because pro-lifers usually 'see' a baby gurgling and gooing all powdered and pink. While at the same time conditioned to think of women as mothers who should sacrifice their lives for their 'babies'. In this case the woman becomes second rate to the "baby' by dint of aesthetics...i.e. a mother is not as as aesthetically pleasing as a newborn both in size and nature. This is especially true of the woman who would have an abortion. In a pro-lifer's eyes she is a monster. The immoral value becomes an aesthetic one in a pro-lifers eyes. But I ask you why, besides aesthetics, does the forming cells have more right to person hood than the full grown mother?

Alex: Of course, I could go on a philosophical tangent, and claim that a human life’s consciousness and knowledge has nothing to do with their rights, but since you want to talk more practically, which I respect, let’s do so.
First we must specify the time that a baby stops being ..cells. For me it is after a couple of months. What is your assessment?

Secondly, the woman doesn’t become second rate to the baby (of course we have to agree what time period qualifies it as a baby) when it is the baby’s life at stake, in comparison to 9 months of suffering.. ( in the case the mother doesn’t want the baby that is)

Also we must consider that this suffering is helped a lot by those wonderful motherly hormones!

AS: my view of abortion there are only 2 choices, side with the cells/fetus or side with the mother. In my view of things, both may be immoral...i.e side with the cells/fetus and you have forced a full grown human to do something they do not want to do or side with the mother and the cell/fetus never get a chance to develop. That being said, the immorality of an action is present in both sides. This is the reason I say it all boils down to aesthetics...it's a matter of which choice is more pleasant 'sounding'. We can talk about the 'wrongness' of an action til the cows come home, but it always boggles my mind how people would rather talk about someone else's immorality instead of their own.

Alex: You are presenting the fetus and the mother as two opposite sides, and I must admit, it is a bit disturbing to me .. But anyway, the problem with choosing sides between the fetus (that becomes human life at some point during pregnancy) and the mother, is, that bipartisan approaches lead to division and loss of rationality. Abortion should be discouraged, not legislated against, in my opinion. ‘Nature’ also seconds this opinion, since there can be complications in a pregnancy after an abortion..

But if we unilaterally side with the mother, we remove all responsibility from her. If we unilaterally side with the fetus, it will curtail sexual activities, due to the fact that contraception is not efficient 100%.

Alex:You mention the right of a woman to end a pregnancy or control her body as the factor for legitimizing abortion. What about the baby's body? Can we control that too? Does it have any rights? That is my philosophical question..

AS:Again, there is a choice to make here. And each choice is immoral. So then the only practical solution for the time being is to make a cut off date as to when abortions can be performed. An abortion in the early stages of pregnancy is much less 'immoral' than in the late stages, where I will grant you...the fetus 'becomes' a baby.

Alex: Agreed. Let’s just specify the time period.

Alex: As far as the 'abstract' concept of life is concerned, i think that, that is our unwritten concession. We classify human life based on functionality and dependence. And since we can't really make a clear distinction of when a human life becomes important enough to have rights, the endless debate of pro-lifers and pro-choicers continues..

AS: But I don't think we have to classify any such thing. Even if we say that some cells is a 'baby' it still doesn't make it right to force a woman to carry said cells. I think pro-choicers refuse to even entertain this notion and this is why I think they are thinking on a more 'aesthetic' level. There is absolutely NO consideration for the woman. She might as well be an inanimate object...like an incubator. She is a human being too...yet not one pro-lifer seems to admit that. I think that is very telling.

Alex: Again, if the woman had involvement or consent to create this life (which again, we have to agree on the time period it qualifies it as one), well, there has to be some kind of responsibility that derives from that.

If you are making the point, that some pro lifers are chauvinists or misogynists, or just extremely conservative women and men, I must agree. But there is another side to that, in my opinion. The children, or the babies, or the fetuses have been completely ignored in this ‘war of the sexes’ that has appeared in western societies. It is all part of a bipartisan approach that destroys the social fabric, although that is jumping to another topic ..

Alex:In the third and fourth paragraphs you present the chaotic practical implications of the 'extraction'. Indeed, it is convenience and practicality that legitimizes abortion. We should just admit it.

AS:I admit it. I don't see a problem here. If pro-lifers got their way and extraction was possible and thus we made extractions legal and abortion illegal, we would not have enough resources to maintain life (which is how it is going to be someday anyway...it's just that with extraction it would happen much much quicker). So then again, is it 'moral' to kill off people by way of starvation? Indeed it is not an easy solution...I just wish more thought was given toward other things rather than the 'cute adorable little baby.' As I don't think an adult would get the same sympathy from pro-lifers, in fact I know they wouldn't. Once the cute adorable baby grows up, then few care about it's welfare...in fact...some people don't mind making them into slaves, or seeing them starving in the streets, or being abused by the system. When the baby grows up and cease to be cute...the 'moral' majority seems to disappear.

O Alex: Ok, but why do you say that pro-lifers would be ‘getting their way’ if ‘extraction’ was possible? Would you prefer the option of abortion still? The killing?
If ‘extraction’ was possible, women would be extremely careful in their contraception habits, because it would kill them to have their kid raised by others when they could be raising it on their own. But you are a woman and I’m not, so I can’t be adamant in my opinion.
So, the cost of this ‘extraction’, in my opinion would get less and less. But please, don’t bring up money when we talk about the lives of babies, fetuses whatever you want to call it. In the western world, we spend like crazy, anyway..


Alex:In your next paragraph you mention the incubator as a slave, but we can extend this and ponder if we have the right to kill or neglect anyone fully dependent on us. Does this apply to infants or elders? When getting help isn't an option?

AS: No I said the woman was an incubator/slave for the ideals of the pro-lifers. I don't think you can group infants and elders into the same category as the fetus as they are separate and apart from another body. Anyone can take care of them...so I think the choice whether or not to do so is voluntary. But let me ask you something...do you think it would be moral to force someone to take care of the elderly?

Alex: If the person had a basic role in creating their existence or even more, their helplessness I would certainly suggest it..

Thanks for the food for thought, i think rationalism should replace all -isms by the way..
Cheers!

artisticsolution wrote:

chaz wyman wrote: 2) Here's an accurate analogy. There is a boy born without a heart. The doctors have have a plan to chain him to your body, with mainline blood supply. He uses your sustenance to live. You will have to drag him around all day and all night. You will have to eat extra; you cannot smoke or drink; nor can you engage in sport of any kind. Without financial compensation- do the doctors have a right to hook this boy up for up to 9 months until they find him a heart?
Yes or no?[/color]

Great analogy chaz!

Thanks.

I think the bottom line in all these moralistic discussions has to be the woman's right to choose. It has to be the trump card in this issue.

chaz wyman wrote:

artisticsolution wrote:

chaz wyman wrote: 2) Here's an accurate analogy. There is a boy born without a heart. The doctors have have a plan to chain him to your body, with mainline blood supply. He uses your sustenance to live. You will have to drag him around all day and all night. You will have to eat extra; you cannot smoke or drink; nor can you engage in sport of any kind. Without financial compensation- do the doctors have a right to hook this boy up for up to 9 months until they find him a heart?
Yes or no?[/color]

Great analogy chaz!

Thanks.

I think the bottom line in all these moralistic discussions has to be the woman's right to choose. It has to be the trump card in this issue.

Trump cards are for games, not for cases where human life is involved.(Artisticsolution also agrees that it happens before birth)

aaalexandros wrote:

Trump cards are for games, not for cases where human life is involved.(Artisticsolution also agrees that it happens before birth)

Huh? That what happens before birth? I am sorry...I am having a blond moment...lol. What did I agree to?

Ohhh...that a fetus becomes a baby before birth? Yes. I think it does become an actual 'baby' when it can breathe on its own without the mother. What is that...30 weeks gestation or so? Then I would have to say it is officially a life and no abortions should be provided after that cut off date. However, I would see no problem with a c section in that case if the mother wants.

Artisticsolution: 'An abortion in the early stages of pregnancy is much less 'immoral' than in the late stages, where I will grant you...the fetus 'becomes' a baby'

Page two on the topic of Planned Parenthood Scandal in the Philosophy Now forum..

aaalexandros wrote:Artisticsolution: 'An abortion in the early stages of pregnancy is much less 'immoral' than in the late stages, where I will grant you...the fetus 'becomes' a baby'

Page two on the topic of Planned Parenthood Scandal in the Philosophy Now forum..

Lol...yes...I figured it out. See my reply above.

What is the difference between a baby and an actual baby? If you just want to agree with Chaz Wymen, then, no problem..i am new around here i don't know the rules..

aaalexandros wrote: Trump cards are for games, not for cases where human life is involved.(Artisticsolution also agrees that it happens before birth)

But as far as human rights go...even children in grade school do not get full rights until they become adults. They cannot enter into contracts (such as buying a house or car) they cannot drink or gamble, they cannot have sex, etc. The rights of an adult female DO trump a child's and a fetus.

Alex:What is the difference between a baby and an actual baby?

AS:A baby can breathe on it's own independent of the mother. A fetus cannot do this. It would die without the mother.

Alex:If you just want to agree with Chaz Wymen, then, no problem..i am new around here i don't know the rules..

AS: No. You are doing fine.

aaalexandros wrote:

chaz wyman wrote:

artisticsolution wrote:

Great analogy chaz!

Thanks.

I think the bottom line in all these moralistic discussions has to be the woman's right to choose. It has to be the trump card in this issue.

Trump cards are for games, not for cases where human life is involved.(Artisticsolution also agrees that it happens before birth)

Have you heard of a metaphor? The point is that you can bang on about god, and the sanctity of human life but the freedom of a woman do do with her body as she chooses ends your moral argument.

aaalexandros wrote:What is the difference between a baby and an actual baby? If you just want to agree with Chaz Wymen, then, no problem..i am new around here i don't know the rules..

There ain't no rules here.

artisticsolution wrote:

aaalexandros wrote: Trump cards are for games, not for cases where human life is involved.(Artisticsolution also agrees that it happens before birth)

But as far as human rights go...even children in grade school do not get full rights until they become adults. They cannot enter into contracts (such as buying a house or car) they cannot drink or gamble, they cannot have sex, etc. The rights of an adult female DO trump a child's and a fetus.

Oh god! How can you say that? We are talking about the right of EXISTENCE , not petty privileges..

But, if you want a man's opinion, i must make a confession. Yes, due to an unwritten moral code there are trump cards. The man will try to protect the woman and the kids. But, the woman should never try to 'out-trump' the kids, because kids are the most most basic infrastructure of our society. The production of services and products is important, but the 'production' of people is more important and that is what has been ignored , in the western world. The kids are the losers of the 'war of the sexes', and society just follows after that..

artisticsolution wrote: I am sorry...I am having a blond moment...lol. What did I agree to?

Oh no, not that old excuse .

Many years ago at school, I watched The Silent Scream twice (I was in wrong place at wrong time I guess), a real time ultrasound imaging during a 12 week abortion. It is still an emotive subject for me and I hope never to be the position to make such a choice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq27UYHd ... re=related

chaz wyman wrote:

aaalexandros wrote:

chaz wyman wrote: Thanks.

I think the bottom line in all these moralistic discussions has to be the woman's right to choose. It has to be the trump card in this issue.

Trump cards are for games, not for cases where human life is involved.(Artisticsolution also agrees that it happens before birth)

Have you heard of a metaphor? The point is that you can bang on about god, and the sanctity of human life but the freedom of a woman do do with her body as she chooses ends your moral argument.

I never mentioned God. The baby is not just a part of a body. It qualifies as much more..