[quote]1. When rights come into conflict, yes, the more important right takes precedence. But usually there's an attempt to find a balance and preserve as much of both rights as possible. The more important right doesn't usually totally do away with the other rights.<hr></blockquote>
i agree. however, in this case there is no compromise. either the child lives and the woman has no right to have an abortion, or the child dies, and has no right to live. both rights are in direct conflict, and each nullifies the other. therefore, the most basic of the rights is applied.
[quote]2. There's another issue here - in this conflict of rights, one individual is an adult and the other is still a developing human, maybe just a few cells. We make distinctions like that all the time - adults have more rights than children, citizens of the US have rights that non-citizen residents don't have, etc.<hr></blockquote>
this is also true. however, there are currently no laws (outside of the unborn) where any of these groups are not given the right to live. if someone is a human by defintion, then they have the right not to be killed by another person.
to give you an understanding of just how conflicted these laws are, many states have fetal homocide laws. it makes it a felony to kill an unborn child, if the mother wanted to keep the child. if you kick a pregnant women and she loses the baby, you are charged with a crime. if she goes to the doctor and has the baby aborted, it's legal.
the only difference is the mother's desire to keep the baby. in this case, the child's right to live is not a right of its own, it is a right for the mother to give and take away.
i personally find it appalling that someone's rights as a human being can be dictated by something as frivelous as whether or not someone desires to have them around.
[quote]They're the after effects of sex, and sex is just the very beginning of reproduction. Pro-life laws would effect reproduction. <hr></blockquote>
i will concede this point. although i'm not sure that this is the case. i don't think that most people who get abortions really go into having sex (for the most part) realizing that they may actually get pregnant. in most cases, people have sex because it's fun and it feels good. the abortion is almost always an emergency fix to an unanticipated problem.
although even conceding this point does not refute the intial claim, which is that the right to life is the most fundamental right of them all. it supercedes even the right to unabandoned wild crazy sex, and the consequences that can follow.
edit just to make it a little closer to the exact situation, and to take on other analogies use in this thread, imagine now that this person needs a blood donation to live, and you're the only one who can give it. you put them in that situation, you give, they live. you don't, they die. it's your fault that they need one to live, and you're the only one who can save them. in my eyes, you don't donate, you're a murderer. [/edit]
your are wrong with that statement. If in order to save a person i have to give my blood i'll do it. But the fact to do not give it does not make you a murderer, it makes you a selfish egoist, man for sure. In France the law consider when you don't help a personn in the need, that's bad "non assistance en personne en danger : lack of assistance to a people in Danger" and you should go to jail for this, but it's not a crime like a murder.
However this statement is dangerous, it means that you have to help everypoeple in the need. It's imply that everybody should be in a list of donnor to help people with leucemia in order to give a graft (you know that there isn't sufficient donnor for grafts). When i do not reply to a letter asking to give me some bucks for vaccination in africa, i am a murderer among billions of murderer who won't give anything like me (i know in your example it say that only you can give the life)
BTW Alcimedes, i have to say you thank you because, it's always a pleasure to see people with an heart and ready to help the other, i certainly won't blame you for that. . But the fact that the other people won't do in the same way don't make them murderer, but not saint either ...
first there is a big discussion about when life start, i would not enter here because it has been deal here a lot. But you should take in consideration that many times there is in nearly 50 % of the case very early natural abortions due in most case to importants diseases, so every eggs implanted will not give a life (but we can know who will and who will not), it's a potential life that can laid to a baby after a big evolution. This potential life need a mother in order to survive, there is no life outside uterus under the age of 6 months.
To my advice abortions after 6 months is a murder (that's the case in China indeed : abortions is permitted until the birth), under this age you have two ways of thinking :
- the prolife : you have to give a chance to every potential life
- the prochoice, the uturus is the mother property she has the right to stop the developpement of a potential life , a potential life that would never exist without her.
[quote]your are wrong with that statement. If in order to save a person i have to give my blood i'll do it. But the fact to do not give it does not make you a murderer, it makes you a selfish egoist, man for sure. In France the law consider when you don't help a personn in the need, that's bad "non assistance en personne en danger : lack of assistance to a people in Danger" and you should go to jail for this, but it's not a crime like a murder.<hr></blockquote>
however, in this situation it is your driving drunk that puts the other person's life in jeprody. don't know about france, but in the US, if you hit someone with a car and they die, you will be charged with manslaughter/murder.
of course, analogies by definition are not exactly the same situation.
however, in this situation it is your driving drunk that puts the other person's life in jeprody. don't know about france, but in the US, if you hit someone with a car and they die, you will be charged with manslaughter/murder.
of course, analogies by definition are not exactly the same situation.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I am not sure that we talk about the same thing i was talking of your anology with people that won't give their blood and which are the unique donor available, i don't speak of a drunk man who drive a car. If a drunk man hit a personn and die it's a murder without intention to commit it in France.
My initial analogy was: if you don't take a car you will not have car accident : which is an evidence as dont have sexual relation and you will not get pregnant. I was simply try to explain that life imply a certain amount of risk, that you cannot live in a cocoon. Of course you have to control the best way you can this risk, in case of sexual relation you have to take precautions, and for car driving , you should have a good car, not to be drunk , be prudent .... But if you want the total safety you will do nothing in your life.
I am a surgeon if i want a 100 % safety operation it's simple : just dont do it. I have to take some risk, but i have to lesser them the best that i can do. Risk 0 bring to paralysis,in medecine it can bring to bad healths for the patient if the MD think only of his safety and not of the health of his patient.
ahh. read a bit futher up powerdoc. i have a feeling we're saying the same thing here. i was just borrowing a part of one of your analogies, and adding it on to the initial one i had made to make it fit the situation better.
from what your version of the blood donor analogy said, i agree with you. however, i took your analogy and made a few slight changes, then added it to the end of mine. that probably was the cause for confusion. sorry about that, i should have been more clear.
What are the common denominators in this debate <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" /> persuasion We as people are here for that very reason. Go here, see this, drink that ,....oh you have to try this ! And companies pay millions to get the right person to persuade you everyday. So what are we selling in abortion debate? Prolife don't want children or fetusis eliminated , just let them continue as life started. Pro-abortion want the option of elimination. Our very exsistence on this planet is to make these desisions , but not to seek others opinions on what to do. We are to seek out our own CREATOR for those answers. It's when we seek others opinions, that we comfort the decision's we have already made.
One of the things you never discuss do you consider a woman intelligent enough to take the best decision for herself or you have to control everything in her life??
But what's the real point of that rhetorical question? To highlight a kind of sexism perhaps? I don't trust a woman to do what's best any more than I trust a man to do what's best.
Ask a sexist question. Get a sexist answer. Sorry.
[quote]One of the things you never discuss do you consider a woman intelligent enough to take the best decision for herself or you have to control everything in her life?? <hr></blockquote>
we trust people to make decisions for themselves all the time. please read through some of the recent posts before asking such a loaded question. it has to do with rights, not decision making. sometimes a person's rights override another person's decision.
<strong>One of the things you never discuss do you consider a woman intelligent enough to take the best decision for herself or you have to control everything in her life??</strong><hr></blockquote>
I am sorry you have had such a bad life. But this has nothing to do with where you are trying to drag it. It has to do with saving a life that cannot save itself.
But it has nothing to do with you guys it is a woman's thing. It might me sexist but until you can carry a seven pounds baby and have people stare at you for hours while you have to spread your legs; until you are in so much pain that you cannot stand it anymore; well you do not know how it feels. And you do not know how a woman feels when she has an abortion because you are not a woman and you refuse to see her point of view; you guys on this thread in general except for powerdoc do not respect women; you think that they are stupid and cannot take the best decision in her life not in yours. A woman is not a container just there to give birth; there are a lot more dimensions to a woman than her function to give birth; you should consider this before you start judging others.
Also, those who are pro-life you are probably very religious and you should not forget that command from Jesus that you shall judge others.
Until you can go through the pain a woman goes through when she is forced to give up her child for adoption then maybe you can condemned her for thinking that she wants something better in her life that answering to your orders.
Jane, please don't misunderstand. i'm not trying to say that you're a bad person because you had an abortion. i am also not saying that women shouldn't be respected, or that all they are good for is having babies. i don't pretend to know or claim to understand what it is like to have a child.
what i am saying, however, is that no one has the right to decide that an innocent person should be killed for convienience. i also believe that the right of an unborn child to live overrides anything other than an equivelent right.
Did you see "The Cider House Rules"? -- A movie that tried to look at this whole issue without a cloud of politics. I think it's presentation was quite fair, which may explain why it was roundly ignored by both sides of the debate.
It's much too convenient to turn the abortion question into a Women's rights issue and nothing
more. It is a Human rights issue that has to account for more than just the rights of women. That doesn't preclude abortion, or otherwise morally disqualify it, but it really isn't enough to say it comes down to a woman's right.
<strong>But it has nothing to do with you guys it is a woman's thing. It might me sexist but until you can carry a seven pounds baby and have people stare at you for hours while you have to spread your legs; until you are in so much pain that you cannot stand it anymore; well you do not know how it feels. And you do not know how a woman feels when she has an abortion because you are not a woman and you refuse to see her point of view; you guys on this thread in general except for powerdoc do not respect women; you think that they are stupid and cannot take the best decision in her life not in yours. A woman is not a container just there to give birth; there are a lot more dimensions to a woman than her function to give birth; you should consider this before you start judging others.
Also, those who are pro-life you are probably very religious and you should not forget that command from Jesus that you shall judge others.
Until you can go through the pain a woman goes through when she is forced to give up her child for adoption then maybe you can condemned her for thinking that she wants something better in her life that answering to your orders.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Sigh.
Jane, I have never said anything about anyone being too stupid to make up their own mind. My point all along has been that when there is a life in the balance the choice should be clear. The life should win. Also i never said women are only a container to carry children. What a jaded view of life.
As far as that command from Jesus, "Judge not lest ye be judged yourself." (Slightly paraphrased.) That does not mean you cannot judge, it means you should not judge and then not expect to be judged by the same measure you were using to judge someone else. however, nobody here is judging you that I can see.
Comments
i agree. however, in this case there is no compromise. either the child lives and the woman has no right to have an abortion, or the child dies, and has no right to live. both rights are in direct conflict, and each nullifies the other. therefore, the most basic of the rights is applied.
[quote]2. There's another issue here - in this conflict of rights, one individual is an adult and the other is still a developing human, maybe just a few cells. We make distinctions like that all the time - adults have more rights than children, citizens of the US have rights that non-citizen residents don't have, etc.<hr></blockquote>
this is also true. however, there are currently no laws (outside of the unborn) where any of these groups are not given the right to live. if someone is a human by defintion, then they have the right not to be killed by another person.
to give you an understanding of just how conflicted these laws are, many states have fetal homocide laws. it makes it a felony to kill an unborn child, if the mother wanted to keep the child. if you kick a pregnant women and she loses the baby, you are charged with a crime. if she goes to the doctor and has the baby aborted, it's legal.
the only difference is the mother's desire to keep the baby. in this case, the child's right to live is not a right of its own, it is a right for the mother to give and take away.
i personally find it appalling that someone's rights as a human being can be dictated by something as frivelous as whether or not someone desires to have them around.
[quote]They're the after effects of sex, and sex is just the very beginning of reproduction. Pro-life laws would effect reproduction. <hr></blockquote>
i will concede this point. although i'm not sure that this is the case. i don't think that most people who get abortions really go into having sex (for the most part) realizing that they may actually get pregnant. in most cases, people have sex because it's fun and it feels good. the abortion is almost always an emergency fix to an unanticipated problem.
although even conceding this point does not refute the intial claim, which is that the right to life is the most fundamental right of them all. it supercedes even the right to unabandoned wild crazy sex, and the consequences that can follow.
-alcimedes
<strong>
.
edit just to make it a little closer to the exact situation, and to take on other analogies use in this thread, imagine now that this person needs a blood donation to live, and you're the only one who can give it. you put them in that situation, you give, they live. you don't, they die. it's your fault that they need one to live, and you're the only one who can save them. in my eyes, you don't donate, you're a murderer. [/edit]
[ 03-07-2002: Message edited by: alcimedes ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
your are wrong with that statement. If in order to save a person i have to give my blood i'll do it. But the fact to do not give it does not make you a murderer, it makes you a selfish egoist, man for sure. In France the law consider when you don't help a personn in the need, that's bad "non assistance en personne en danger : lack of assistance to a people in Danger" and you should go to jail for this, but it's not a crime like a murder.
However this statement is dangerous, it means that you have to help everypoeple in the need. It's imply that everybody should be in a list of donnor to help people with leucemia in order to give a graft (you know that there isn't sufficient donnor for grafts). When i do not reply to a letter asking to give me some bucks for vaccination in africa, i am a murderer among billions of murderer who won't give anything like me (i know in your example it say that only you can give the life)
BTW Alcimedes, i have to say you thank you because, it's always a pleasure to see people with an heart and ready to help the other, i certainly won't blame you for that.
first there is a big discussion about when life start, i would not enter here because it has been deal here a lot. But you should take in consideration that many times there is in nearly 50 % of the case very early natural abortions due in most case to importants diseases, so every eggs implanted will not give a life (but we can know who will and who will not), it's a potential life that can laid to a baby after a big evolution. This potential life need a mother in order to survive, there is no life outside uterus under the age of 6 months.
To my advice abortions after 6 months is a murder (that's the case in China indeed : abortions is permitted until the birth), under this age you have two ways of thinking :
- the prolife : you have to give a chance to every potential life
- the prochoice, the uturus is the mother property she has the right to stop the developpement of a potential life , a potential life that would never exist without her.
however, in this situation it is your driving drunk that puts the other person's life in jeprody. don't know about france, but in the US, if you hit someone with a car and they die, you will be charged with manslaughter/murder.
of course, analogies by definition are not exactly the same situation.
<strong>
however, in this situation it is your driving drunk that puts the other person's life in jeprody. don't know about france, but in the US, if you hit someone with a car and they die, you will be charged with manslaughter/murder.
of course, analogies by definition are not exactly the same situation.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I am not sure that we talk about the same thing i was talking of your anology with people that won't give their blood and which are the unique donor available, i don't speak of a drunk man who drive a car. If a drunk man hit a personn and die it's a murder without intention to commit it in France.
My initial analogy was: if you don't take a car you will not have car accident : which is an evidence as dont have sexual relation and you will not get pregnant. I was simply try to explain that life imply a certain amount of risk, that you cannot live in a cocoon. Of course you have to control the best way you can this risk, in case of sexual relation you have to take precautions, and for car driving , you should have a good car, not to be drunk , be prudent .... But if you want the total safety you will do nothing in your life.
I am a surgeon if i want a 100 % safety operation it's simple : just dont do it. I have to take some risk, but i have to lesser them the best that i can do. Risk 0 bring to paralysis,in medecine it can bring to bad healths for the patient if the MD think only of his safety and not of the health of his patient.
I expect that i was more clear that time
from what your version of the blood donor analogy said, i agree with you. however, i took your analogy and made a few slight changes, then added it to the end of mine. that probably was the cause for confusion. sorry about that, i should have been more clear.
I think we have done a great cooking with all this analogies
But what's the real point of that rhetorical question? To highlight a kind of sexism perhaps? I don't trust a woman to do what's best any more than I trust a man to do what's best.
Ask a sexist question. Get a sexist answer. Sorry.
we trust people to make decisions for themselves all the time. please read through some of the recent posts before asking such a loaded question. it has to do with rights, not decision making. sometimes a person's rights override another person's decision.
wake up and smell the reality.
<strong>One of the things you never discuss do you consider a woman intelligent enough to take the best decision for herself or you have to control everything in her life??</strong><hr></blockquote>
I am sorry you have had such a bad life.
Also, those who are pro-life you are probably very religious and you should not forget that command from Jesus that you shall judge others.
Until you can go through the pain a woman goes through when she is forced to give up her child for adoption then maybe you can condemned her for thinking that she wants something better in her life that answering to your orders.
what i am saying, however, is that no one has the right to decide that an innocent person should be killed for convienience. i also believe that the right of an unborn child to live overrides anything other than an equivelent right.
Did you see "The Cider House Rules"? -- A movie that tried to look at this whole issue without a cloud of politics. I think it's presentation was quite fair, which may explain why it was roundly ignored by both sides of the debate.
It's much too convenient to turn the abortion question into a Women's rights issue and nothing
more. It is a Human rights issue that has to account for more than just the rights of women. That doesn't preclude abortion, or otherwise morally disqualify it, but it really isn't enough to say it comes down to a woman's right.
<strong>But it has nothing to do with you guys it is a woman's thing. It might me sexist but until you can carry a seven pounds baby and have people stare at you for hours while you have to spread your legs; until you are in so much pain that you cannot stand it anymore; well you do not know how it feels. And you do not know how a woman feels when she has an abortion because you are not a woman and you refuse to see her point of view; you guys on this thread in general except for powerdoc do not respect women; you think that they are stupid and cannot take the best decision in her life not in yours. A woman is not a container just there to give birth; there are a lot more dimensions to a woman than her function to give birth; you should consider this before you start judging others.
Also, those who are pro-life you are probably very religious and you should not forget that command from Jesus that you shall judge others.
Until you can go through the pain a woman goes through when she is forced to give up her child for adoption then maybe you can condemned her for thinking that she wants something better in her life that answering to your orders.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Sigh.
Jane, I have never said anything about anyone being too stupid to make up their own mind. My point all along has been that when there is a life in the balance the choice should be clear. The life should win. Also i never said women are only a container to carry children. What a jaded view of life.
As far as that command from Jesus, "Judge not lest ye be judged yourself." (Slightly paraphrased.) That does not mean you cannot judge, it means you should not judge and then not expect to be judged by the same measure you were using to judge someone else. however, nobody here is judging you that I can see.
And for the last part of your quote,