(09-14-2010 02:37 PM)Bull_In_Exile Wrote: Fair enough... Ill own up to that one, I got off topic...
I was trying to point out that saying "sure he has the right to live, just not to be in the mother" is akin to saying "Sure he has the right to worship as he pleases, just in a way that the state says is ok"
No, it's more like saying that "sure, he has a right to worship as he pleases, but I don't have to build him a mosque and drive him to services every week."
Quote:You just watered down the unborn child's right to life to the point of being meaningless, maybe that was your intent. When two rights come into conflict the more fundamental right has precedence.
Clearly the right to live take priority over the right to someone else's comfort. So again the issue comes down to "Is it a baby and when?"
My argument does not have anything to do with watering down the right to life of a fetus who resulted from rape. Its right to life is exactly the same as the right to life of a fetus concieved in love as the right to life of a four year old child as to the right to life of you or I. The point is that the right to life, for any of us, does not require that anyone else provide us with what we need to survive. It is a negative right, not a positive one. Without an independent claim against the mother, the right to life of a fetus is not violated by an abortion, even if its life is terminated. Reasonable arguments can be made establishing this claim if the sex was consensual (that doesn't mean that everyone will agree with them). There are no such reasonable arguments in cases of rape or where the mother's life is in danger.
I'm assuming from the part about Obamacare that you do not believe health care is a right, at least not in the sense that it is an entitlement. But why not? If someone needs an expensive drug to prolong their life, why doesn't their right to life trump your property right? How is that different than arguing that the right to life of a fetus trumps the right of a woman to determine what happens with her own body?
The key is to recognize that rights don't trump one another because, properly defined, they don't come into conflict. It might be hard to decide which competing claim is correct, but only one can be.
Quote:When do you beleive *human* life (not cellular life) begins?
I'm not sure when human life, in a meaningful sense, begins. I certainly don't think it's at conception, and I'm equally certain that it's not after birth (I've seen both those positions argued). I doubt I will ever pay enough attention to embryonic development (unless I become a dad or run for office) to be much more specific than that. Regardless, there are situations where, even after I consider the fetus to be human, abortion should be permissible.