North Dakota recognizes the obvious, defeats bill to make zygotes "persons"
Offline For some reason unknown to me, very few people seem to grasp the legal insanity that would result from granting personhood to fetuses. Luckily, the North Dakota Senate recognized the danger, and struck down a bill that would have done just that.
The Senate voted 29-16 Friday to defeat the controversial House Bill 1572, known as the personhood bill, with no debate.
Sen. Curt Olafson, R-Edinburg, the only person who spoke on it, said the bill would create more serious legal consequences for the state than any bill he’s ever seen as a lawmaker.
...He said it “reaches far beyond protecting human rights” into unrelated consequence because it declares all fertilized embryos persons for the purposes of myriad laws that have nothing to do protecting human rights.A physician “faces an impossible dilemma” if needing to treat a pregnant woman for cancer that could harm a fetus or embryo, or a woman experiencing an ectopic (tubal) pregnancy, he said.
Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota released a statement Friday calling the defeated bill “poorly constructed” and which would have outlawed contraception as well as medical procedures needed to treat tubal pregnancies and infertility.
It “would have had a profound impact on the state, affecting everything from when property rights are granted to inheritance rights to access to the courts,” the organization said.
This, then, is the crux of the dilemma faced by anti-abortion lawmakers. They're faced with an internal contradiction. They have an ideological agenda which would be helped by defining a zygote as a human, but the reality is that they don't want fetuses to be people. They just want abortion to be illegal.
This highlights what I've been saying in various threads recently. Intuitively, we know that a fetus is not a person. It becomes patently obvious when we are faced with the legal realities of going against our intuition to push an agenda through. Opponents of abortion have a great emotional investment in controlling the behavior of others no matter what, but they really don't have any arguments good enough to enforce their will through reason. Instead, they are playing a very dangerous game of manipulating the definitions in our existing law.
If I were a slightly more sadistic person, I might wish that some state would go through with this insanity so I could sit back and laugh when the first Polly Homemaker was charged with involuntary manslaughter after having a spontaneous abortion. Since I care about my fellow humans more than that, I can only be thankful that reason has prevailed.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
- Login to post comments
Nothing. This is equivelant to sterilizing yourself to remove any possible pregnancy resulting from sex.
Save your sperm for future use. For female, eggs can be frozen for future use. This would be quite prudent in case there is an accident of some kind where sexual intercourse wouldn't be possible, or the female experiences menopause early.
ciarin.com
Uh...weird. You've misconstrued what I said completely. I'm saying emotion doesn't play in to it. I'm saying I don't need to think of a fetus as human or non-human to sway my opinion on it. The "is it human" debate is an APPEAL TO EMOTION.
How does having human DNA in your snot mean you shouldn't blow your nose?
ciarin.com
No it isn't. Prevention isn't the same thing as removal.
What is the zygote's natural habitat?
Actually I wasn't referring to weather or climate. Our natural habitat is a an oxygenatd environment, which Antarctica still has oxygen if I'm not mistaken. It would've been a better analogy if you had used our exploration in to space, since space isn't an oxygenated environment.
Abortion can be natural. There is spontaneous abortion which occurs on its own. There's also the natural self-preservation instinct which would compel us to have an abortion if the life of the mother and/or fetus would be in danger if pregnancy went to term.
Killing is completely natural. Murder is a legal word meaning unlawful killing which is a man-made concept.
'Natural' becomes meaningless in the context of "everything is natural". But natural has different meaning in different contexts, so it depends on the context.
Sounds like a habitat to me.
I find it odd when people compare our offspring to parasites. Does the parasite in the belly of the fish have the same DNA as the fish? Will the parasite become the fish's son or daughter?
It's as if you have to dehumanize our progeny as much as possible, I guess it's so it's easier to accept the idea of terminating a pregnancy. I've also heard people compare pregnancy to tumors/cancer, it's so weird.
IMO, "personhood" is irrelevant. The "person with rights" thing is a man-made concept.
Living thinking humans cause the zygote to be there.
I thought I already explained this. Let me see if I can clarify it. An egg isn't a life, it is never going to grow in to anything else unless it is fertilized by a sperm. You can freeze an egg and save it for later. You can remove your eggs completely. You can sell your eggs if you want. It is a component. An embryo is growing, it will be a life. Just like other beings it requires certain things to keep on living and growing. It requires nutrition, it requires a safe environment, it requires waste removal, etc. The womb is currently the best place for this to occur. And until medical technology creates an artificial womb where an embryo can thrive, it's the only place for this to occur.
Article
"CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In Wisconsin, an expectant woman can be taken into custody if police believe her abuse of alcohol may harm her unborn child. In South Dakota, pregnant alcohol and drug users can be committed to treatment centers for up to nine months.
Under a legal theory known as fetal rights, more than 20 states have enacted laws that target women for actions taken during pregnancy. What began as legislation requiring hospitals to report an expectant mother’s crack-cocaine use has expanded to laws that punish women for drinking alcohol that may harm the fetus they are carrying."
Describe what was unlawful about the abortion and I will try to give you my answer.
Except, people who are no longer sentient still have rights.
It's true we don't give animals the same rights as humans. I don't think this means we shouldn't give rights to unborn children. Any woman who thinks her offspring are unwanted animals should probably get herself sterilized.
I never said the abortion is their only source of birth control. I'm sure other form were used as well. I still do not think the reason for the abortion should be birth control.
I never said it was the case. Even if there is no risk of pregnancy, you still have STD's which condoms are fairly good at preventing.
I never said you were. I believe you support it because you don't think of embryos or fetuses to be human or a "person" so it's ok to terminate a pregnancy if it's unwanted.
I support the availability of the procedure. I just don't agree on the reason for using the procedure. I think abortion should only be used when medically necessary. I do not think it should be used because a baby would inconvenient to the mother or father.
If bringing me out of a persistent vegetative state wouldn't harm anyone, that would be fine. Just as it would be fine if you can remove an embryo or fetus without harming it.
Everyone. Everyone is harmed by abortion when it is medically unnecessary. The people that might have been, that will no longer exist, they could've contributed to society. It would be a shame if one of the aborted might've cure aids, or parkinsons, or MS, etc. Inversely one of the aborted might've been the next hitler. It's more of a philosophical answer.
Who is physically harmed by abortion? The fetus or embryo, possibly the mother.
Who is emotionally harmed? Possibly the mother and other family members.
There are your victims.
ciarin.com
You're allowed to deny something to another person, even if doing so would result in their death. In some views having a right to live includes a right to be given the bare minimum one needs to continue living. But the bare minimum one neeeds to continue life may be something they have no right at all to be given.
Hypothetically, if I was dying and the only thing that could save me was the gentle touch of your cool hand on my fevered brow, then it would be awfully nice of you to come to my house and touch my forehead, but I don't have a right to be given your cool hand on my fevered brow.
One might say that it would be morally indecent to deny a person something so insignificant as touching their brow when it could save their life. But I have no right at all against you or anyone else that they should do it for me. Of couse a pregnant woman has to give a lot more than her cool touch to facilitate the birth of another human. But the issue isn't that someone will die. The question is what exactly obligates the woman so, that she may not deny the embryo what it needs to continue living?
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
Isn't that called "depraved indifference"? And in the case of children, it would be considered "neglect"?
Rights shmights. Whether or not an embryo or fetus has rights doesn't matter to me at all. Something having rights doesn't affect my belief that a living thing should be allowed to live.
Why does it matter if you have a right?
A conscience?
ciarin.com
Not really. Neglect is when a person agrees to give adequate care and then doesn't. If a woman gives birth to a child and keeps it, that can be seen as tacit agreement to provide adequate care or at least turn the child over to someone who will. Just getting pregnant by accident isn't really agreeing to anything.
Depraved indifference is about the risk created by a person's conduct but there's still the question of whether the person is obliged to behave a certain way.
Being allowed to live and being allowed to have the things you need to live are two different things. What you need to stay alive may belong to someone else. That's when rights enter into the picture.
It matters because you might not want to give me the thing I need to stay alive. You might have other plans that don't include me or my fevered brow. Without a right I cannot demand the thing I need from you or even reasonably expect it.
From your perspective maybe. That's why I said you might think it's morally indecent. That's different from being obliged. A person isn't obliged to always do the most morally decent thing. It's further complicated by the fact that the woman is actually being asked to make a major sacrifice.
From my perspective it isn't morally indecent to refuse to make a major sacrifice so that another person can live. If you make that sacrifice then you're a good samaritan. Actually you're more than that. You simply touching my brow to save my life would be minimally decent because it doesn't really cost you anything. A good samaritan would go out of their way to help others at some cost to themselves. But giving your body and your time and your life basically, for another person is much more than would be expected of a good samaritan.
So basically you're saying that your conscience obliges you not just to be minimally decent, or even generous, but to go beyond what would be expected of a good samaritan. I think sacrificing so that another person can live makes you a very decent person but refusing to doesn't mean you're immoral or that you lack a conscience.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
If a zygote were classified as a person (ie, a rational being) I would be absolutely against abortion in the same manner that I am against murder. However, zygotes are not rational beings, and deserve no rights. They deserve only so much in the way of respect and dignity as their faculties allow. We give animals SOME rights because they, like us, have desires, are capable of suffering, and have some semblance of will and rationality. Furthermore, we give some animals MORE rights than others. We generally believe, for instance, that killing a puppy for enjoyment is reprehensible, yet killing billions of bacteria in a petri dish is just fine. This ethical boundary is incredibly important in how we define what behavior is acceptable and unacceptable. Murdering a person (a rational being) is unacceptable, because, as a rational being, people deserve the RESPECT of other rational beings. If one rational being takes another's life purely to seek its own ends, then that rational being has arbitrarily placed greater importance on itself than on others.
Hence, if a zygote is a rational being, and a mother takes the life of the zygote because it would be more CONVEINIENT for her to do so than not, then the mother has committed an ethical crime akin to murder. Zygotes, however, are not rational beings.
You cannot "scientifically classify" a fetus as a person. This is a philosophical decision. And yes, if pregancy endangered both the mother and the foetus, AND the fetus were considered a person, then it would be ethical for the mother to terminate the pregnancy; if only because the foetus is incapable of caring for its own life. But here is the crux! The foetus is INCAPABLE OF CARING for its own life. This alone means that it is not a rational being. It is not a person, and hence, the mother can do whatever she pleases to it with NO ethical ramifications. Just as a woman may cut away a tumor that endangers her life, or perform a surgery to make her life more pleasant, or even to perform cosmetic surgery for her own enjoyment, she may perform an abortion with no ethical consequences whatsoever.
Not quite. With conjoined twins, at least one of the twins is capable of caring for his own life. Unless you suppose the other twin is so "weak" that he cannot. If he cannot, he is not even a person and can be discarded without consequence. In fact, this happens very often with conjoined twins. One twin may be grossly underdeveloped, and may only be a few limbs or a malformed organ, or perhaps may remain in a semi-fetal state. In these cases, doctors will remove the other twin as if it were a tumor; and rightfully so!
The "human or not human" debate is indeed arbitrary and meaningless. The "person or not person" however, is not. Even less arbitrary is the "level of consciousness" debate. We protect non-humans from being killed because they have a certain CAPACITY FOR THOUGHT which requires our respect. Your examples of capital punishment and self-defense raise more interesting questions. I believe it is entirely unethical to punish someone with death. We SHOULD NOT be doing it. Killing in self-defense is another ethical pickle that might not be fully supported in my philosophy. After all, you have no less right to life than the person trying to kill you; and certainly he cares about his life just as much as you do. I cannot see how one would be ethically free from the consequences of killing in self-defense; but obviously it has to be looked at on a case-by case basis.
Do you value the life of say, e.coli bacteria? How about the life of any of the millions of skin cells you undoubtedly kill when you shake someone's hand? Do you value the life of the insects you kill as you walk?
There is obviously some differential here to how much you care for life. You certainly don't care for ALL life equally do you? There must be some other factor that you are measuring when you decide that you're not committing mass murder every time you scratch an itch, or take antibiotics, or disinfect a surface, or call an exterminator.
Sure. But an e coli bacteria is a direct threat and attacker, therefore it is merely self defense to destroy it.
The accidental killing of insects is actually to the benefit of insects. Helps prevent overpopulation, where insects become a threat to humanity and its concerns(and themselves), and we actually have to concentrate on destroying them. It also provides food for other insects. Furthermore, most insects that we have direct contact with attack us in some way or another. Hence, no problem. It's self defense again.
Skin cells die whether we shake hands or not. They are there as a significant portion of our self defense system. Skin cells evolved to die. It is their very purpose, if anything can be attributed purpose.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Yep. But if it's me or my loved one vs the E.coli bacteria, it dies.
uh....your skin is an organ. It's cells are supposed to die. That's how it works. Quite efficiently I might add since we don't need to spend time shedding our skin like a snake.
Yep. I rarely step on bugs when I walk, but accidents happen.
You obvious assumed my answers would be "no".
I care for all. Even the ones I eat(cause if they didn't exist, neither would I). Even the ones I have to kill in order to live. Every life matters, we are all part of an ecosystem that requires all kinds of life. From bacteria to humans, each is important. When they are no longer needed in nature, they become extinct, or they adapt and speciate to become new life.
You are right that I do not care for all life equally. I care for my daughter's life more than I care for yours. I care for my kitten's life more than I care for other cats. Our instinct for self-preservation compels us to care for our life more than those would seek to destroy it. I don't consider it a bad thing to have different degress of caring. Just because I care for my loved ones more than strangers doesn't mean I don't care for strangers.
I don't take antibiotics. I don't call an exterminator, nor do I disinfect surfaces. I don't take antibiotics because I don't like to take medicine. I don't disinfect surfaces because the more we disinfect, the better chance that supergerms develop. I don't call an exterminator because I've never needed to. If I ever needed to I would call a pest control service that would remove the infestation through humane means. If humane means were not possible then self-preservation says too bad for them.
I understand the point you were trying to make though. The fact of life on this world is that something will die, because others live. There's no possible way to avoid it. Even with jainists who sweep in front of them while they walk, they still have to kill plants in order to survive. The debt that is owed to all those that have died so I may live gets paid when I die, and bacteria, bugs and/or animals live from my dead body. It's the cycle of life.
I don't revere life because I hate death. I revere both life and death. I just don't cause death unnecessarily. Nor do I prolong life unnecessarily, which is why I support euthanasia.
also, it's not illegal to kill germs, bugs, or pests, so it's not mass murder.
ciarin.com