[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
So, lets reiterate: the right a fetus has to live supercedes the right a grown woman has to govern her own body.[/quote]
You admit with your continued use of the word fetus that you do not believe that a pre-born baby is actually a human being. This has probably been dealt with earlier, but this is a logical fallacy and is poorly thought out.
As soon as the sperm and egg join, a new life form is present. This new life form is distinct from the mother and from the father: it is unique. Having 46 chromosomes an being the result of human copulation, it is also human. Therefore, at the moment of conception, a new human being is present, one that is separate from both mother and father, and yet equal in its humanity, despite its state of development and maturity.
Your use of the term “grown woman” indicates that you believe rights are predicated on age. Age has nothing to do with “inalienable” rights, unless you deny that all humans have unalieanble rights of life, liberty, and property. Such rights are predicated not on age, or maturity, but on existence. Inalienable rights are bestowed at the moment a new human life is concieved, and exist up until that person dies.
It is interesting that you post this here, at a bodybuilding website, where most poster and readers understand that it by the choices we make that we govern our bodies, but within natural parameters. Nature has a system that we mainpulate to garner the results we want (be they body composition, strength, performance, etc); the idea you are promoting runs contrary to the natural parameters that we exist in, namely that all sexual intercourse between a man and a woman has the potential for a new life to be formed.
It is here that choices govern our bodies. Women can’t escape the blessing of fertility they’ve been given as a part of their nature…if they truly want to “govern” their bodies, they need to work within those parameters.
I would disagree with this. All people’s inalienable rights must be upheld, and it is the duty of society to ensure that, at least that is what our political philosophies have been based on since the Enlightenment (actually before if you count Aquinas as a political philosopher).
There is a reason why there are state-run agencies that investigate maltreatment of children in ALL states (at least in the US), and why there are institutions that exist solely to provide for kids who have been removed from their biological parents. The problem (at least as I see it, within the vantage point of a public educator) is that the more state-run such institutions are, the more kids slip through the cracks (in many cases because of poor staffing, lack of funds, and beauracracy).
There is that term “fetus” again. Interesting term, “fetus”. It seems that when a pre-born baby is wanted it is a “baby”, but when it is unwanted, or “just a clump of cells”, it is a fetus. At what point in development does a fetus become a baby?
Why do I bring this up? There are numerous cases in which pre-born humans are removed from a women without it dying, c-section being one of them, botched abortion another. However, when a pre-born human is removed from a woman via c-section, it is a baby (presumably because it is wanted), while a pre-born human removed from a woman via botched abortion is a fetus (and remains a fetus until it can be killed via suffocation, starvation, stangulation, or dissection, when it becomes “medical waste”).
So yeah, a “fetus” can never be removed from a woman and live, because a fetus by definition is already dead.
Wow. Straw man, much? Unfortunately, at this point its all you’ve got. Definitions of murder all include 1) killing (this means an act that is just to harm or injure that does result in death is murder), 2) a human being (animals can’t be murdered under most definitions) and 3) malice aforethought (this includes the intent to kill, maim, or harm irreparably, or in some cases not caring a lick what happens to the other person).
Under this almost universal definition (I say almost because different jurisdictions have different nuances), abortion would be murder, whereas everything that causes death to a human being isn’t. War isn’t, because both parties are a) acting in self-defense, AND b) aggressors (murder insinuates that the victim did nothing to provoke fatal violence). The death penalty isn’t because just like war, the “victim” has done things to warrant their execution (this is not a statement of support or condemnation of capital punishment, but rather stating it is not murder).
Likewise self-defense isn’t murder, because the intent isn’t the harm of another person, but your own personal safety. In addition, a hysterectomy that happens to remove a uterus with a fetus isn’t murder (or an abortion) because a intent of a hysterectomy is the removal of a diseased organ (the termination of the human life inside it is a side effect).
There is also the inclusion in many definitions of murder of “unlawful killing”, which indicates that some killing is indeed lawful. Most of these instances are state-sponsored killing, like war, the death penalty, and results from confrontations with law-enforcement. Some could argue that legally, abortion isn’t murder because it is legal.
True in a legal sense, but not necessarily in a common-law sense. (Common-law refers to extra-legal, but generally accepted statutes regarding civil behavior. Common law is based on common sense and historical precedent. Such things like war, the death penalty and other state-sponsored killings have been generally accepted, while citizen on citizen violence generally condemned…abortion would fall under citizen on citizen violence, and thus unlawful.)