Abortion is about the most fundamental human right: self-ownership

In your post #1 you said dependence was not a factor. Quote:

"Although it cannot survive without assistance, this does not affect its biological independence; it is simply the dependence that any helpless individual experiences."​

Now you say:

"To be a biologically autonomous individual means to be dependent on neither a mother nor a machine nor anything else living or not."​

You have directly contradicted yourself (and more than once). Your standards change with every post you present. You have no arguement at all.

And in your post above, you have condemned almost every living person who is dependent upon another person or medical device - children who are dependent upon their parents; the diabetic who is dependent upon the medical community to provide insulin; the person in late stage dementia who is totally dependent upon his care giver; people who are alive only because they have a pacemaker controlling their heart; the quadraplegic; the mentally ill; the person on dialysis. By your (new) definition, all of these people are not autonomous and therefore do not have a right to life.

 

I did not claim a fetus is an individual. I said the exact opposite. You have it totally backwards. Even if I grant that a fetus is an individual, equal to the mother (which I have not and do not) the woman still has a right to an abortion. No individual has the right to live inside another individual. Period. To suggest such is making the woman a slave to the fetus, which has more right to the woman's body than the woman herself. It is your position that has the same basis of slavery, not mine. Slavery held that slaves lacked the right to self-ownership. Anti-abortionists argue that a pregnant woman lacks the right to self-ownership (if she had the right to self-ownership, she could abort the fetus).

Furthermore, your study proves nothing of the sort, and I doubt you even know what it means yourself. A born child is biologically autonomous, a fetus is not, so that comparison fails as well.

Another strawman. Really--can you not read? There is simply no excuse. You are clearly being dishonest here. My point was that a human hair, despite being human, is not an individual. In the same way, a human fetus, despite being human, is not an individual. To spin my argument to suggest I am claiming human hairs are individual or human beings is completely absurd.

The fact of the matter is that you have absolutely failed to counter my argument and have resorted to ad hominem and strawmen. You said I claimed a liver is a human being. I did not. You said I claimed hair is a human being. I did not. You said I am basing my opinion on a fetus being sentient: I am not. I am not addressing your "counter arguments" because they are totally irrelevant to my actual arguments. You are countering something nobody is arguing. If that's all you are going to do, it is you who shouldn't have bothered with this thread.

 

Reading the quote, it was never said that dependence was not a factor. Biological dependence is a factor (clearly stated numerous times). Other forms of dependence are not factors, which is what the quote you listed is saying.

There is no contradiction there whatsoever. To clarify the argument: Only individuals have individual rights. In order to be an individual, something must be biologically autonomous. A fetus is not biologically autonomous, therefore it is not an individual. A fetus is not an individual, so therefore it has no individual rights.

I have done no such thing. None of those things are examples of a lack of biological autonomy. A child is economically dependent on his or her parents, not biologically dependent. You are conflating biological dependence and autonomy with all other types of dependence and autonomy.

Perhaps I need to define biological autonomy (straight from the dictionary) biological autonomy means "existing and functioning as an independent organism." It is simply insane to say a fetus fits this definition.

 

and finally where does this "necessary base" derive from, who or what is the defining factor that decides this base upon which all other rights are built?

 

**yawn**. Let's replace the word 'fetus' with child and let's replace the word 'womb' with a 'home'. Okay, so what's the difference exactly?

A child doesn't have the 'right' to live in a home, it's merely a 'privilege' granted by the parent that can be revoked at any time. That actually WAS the former position, but it's been lawfully debunked.

http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2013/05/can-parents-kick-teens-out-of-their-home.html

You can't just kick a child out of the house, said child has to be of a certain age and it's the state that grants permission. A child is a politically protected person in our society. In much the same way, a fetus has that same protection(otherwise, the Scot Peterson case would've simply been murder and not capital murder).
The case of slavery, was another human dominating another against his will. But unless sexually violated, a woman willingly embraced a man in a pro-creative act.
Knowing full well of the "consequences". To equate birth rearing to slavery is absurd. But I did ask for a different argument, so thank you.

Says he who doesn't understand the study. Look, I'll make it as stupidly simple as I can. Let's say a baby bird develops and learns how to fly. Why is that? It's because it already has the knowledge of flying. But it's not like the parent bird could teach the child per say. It developed as a part of its innate behavior.

Why is it that cells gather together around the womb? Why is it that a newborn baby is taking in oxygen, but barely a few days old? Or a year or two years old, and it's already at least trying to communicate.

What we define as "Self-Consciousness" isn't merely being self-aware, but being intellectually competent to such a range I'd say as far as maybe 5 years old.


You cannot claim that a fetus or a zygote is not a sentient being. I can scientifically argue, that if we weren't sentient, we wouldn't exist.

We wouldn't know how to breathe while sleeping, or how to survive otherwise seemingly impossible conditions. Beings can only improvise because they are sentient.

Sentient behavior is the key to survival, in birth, life and death. And its inherent in any of us, without any outside influence.


We are always sentient, we are always conscious. We may even be consciously 'aware' of our experience in the womb(now, whether we remember said experience is another matter).

(Here's an interesting study). http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/10October/Pages/Babies-may-remember-music-heard-in-the-womb.aspx

There is no terminological difference between "Human" and "Human Beings". And even if there were, a hair, or a liver doesn't qualify for either definition.

Besides, why those examples? You could've been a bit more symbolic and said the heart/brain(which actually ARE more responsible for human functionality).

But even the brain does not(and cannot) exercise any of the intelligent design that it may have without a body. Einstein might be a genius, but without his body, he couldn't communicate said genius.

There's no room for your flimsy definition to exist. A life is an organic lifeform, a lifeform that continues to develop but at no point in the development phase did it ever not exist.

If there are others who'll oblige you believing this laughable theory then so be it, but I myself anyway will continue to laugh. There's no biological, ethical or philosophical truth that'll confirm to your beliefs.

 

Still isn't, more over never was.

Ah so you too are basically nothing ore than just in favor of punishing the slut.

 

When does a human acquire rights? When it's born? When it becomes self aware? When it can feed itself? When it can fend for itself? When it moves out of it's parent's house?

A fetus is a human life. The responsibility for that life lies with those that conceived it until that time when it is responsible for itself. To end a human life is homicide, to do so purposefully is murder.

Proponents of abortion only wish to allow for recreational sex without consequences. To state that abortion is self-ownership and therefore a fundamental right is absurd. You have the right to choose whether or not to have sex, you have the responsibility for the consequences of your actions.

 

BINGO!

Has anyone disputed that? So what?

Who made you the decider?

So you too are nothing more than an advocate for punishing the slut.

 

First you would have to demonstrate that a right to life exists and define it.

Actually that is your fantasy or fabrication. What is / are unalienable rights and where are they defined?

Obviously they are not and yo wishing it do does not make it so.

Yet human population is quickly approaching unsustainable levels.

Goo, keep it and stop trying to force it on others.

You have no clue what parasitic tendencies are.

Nobody claimed it was. If you do not understand the difference why debate it?

Oh the irony....

Self praise is a sure sign of delusion and lack of intellect and argument.

 

I stand corrected. It is sad to see such uninformed posts.

Is this a debate on the ethics of abortion? Maybe you should re-read the title of the OP

And more often than not those who oppose the right of women to choose base their position and ethics on beliefs and background while clearly lacking knowledge.

More belief than fact, as I just mentioned above. But humor us, define the right to life and show us where it is enshrined?

I guess the hypocrisy of that position is entirely lost on you.

Amen to that.

You see the difference is that most of us here are pro-choice. Let me explain to you what that means. We do not care if anyone or no-one ever has an abortion. The choice should not be dictated by others but the woman should make her own choice free of coercion. So what you were or are IS irrelevant, but by making it know you managed to betray the underlying basis of your position, misogyny.

By the way, society has and will survive regardless of where you stand because people love freedom and will fight for it.

 

Interesting. It seems like you've taken a more Libertarian view on abortion, although after looking at your political views from both 2013 and 2013 I am bit surprised that Libertarianism is such a low percentage for you.

 

By what standard are you attributing birth as the moment rights are endowed to a human? Being that you seem to agree that a fetus is a human life, you must also agree that ending that life is homicide, and by doing so purposefully, abortion is murder.

I see you also don't believe in taking personal responsibility for one's actions. It's this attitude that's led to the downfall of civil society in the US. Maybe women should be more discerning of those they allow to ejaculate inside them.

 

Yet.

Sorry but this is nothing more than an appeal to belief with a little bit of appeal to fear thrown in. you have no way of demonstrating what you say is or can be correct .. in fact the complete opposite is just a likely.

False, this is not the only way it can be negated as you well know, and further more what you define as selfish may not be true for someone else. Yet again you are placing your preconceived assumptions as facts . .they are not.

what is being demonstrating is the scientific facts .. if you choose to ignore those then that is your prerogative, it still does not change them.

Relevant how?

An early term fetus is not sentient : Sentient - able to perceive or feel things - http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/sentient

A fetus has no ability to self-determine prior to viability .. it simply does not have the necessary capacity to do so.

People in coma's generally still have higher brain functions than an early term fetus, and at some point they were fully sentient.

Putting something in red letters doesn't make it any more valid.

There are no such things as unalienable rights .. unalienable rights by definition are rights that cannot be removed - not subject to being taken away from or given away by the possessor: name a single right that fits that definition.

Granting a fetus full rights does not make them equal to a woman, it makes them above a woman, simply because in order to grant those rights you have to remove some of the woman's rights . .rights that are already established for every other person.

The rights you would have to remove (or suspend) are as follows;

The right of autonomy
The right of self-defence

The only other standard people who have such rights suspended like this are criminals in prison, are you now advocating that a pregnant woman be treated on the same level as a convicted criminal.

1. If a woman remains non-pregnant she has the same rights as any other person
2. If a woman becomes pregnant she immediately loses rights that all other people have, the determination is that the fetus has the rights that are greater and over rule her already established rights, such as the right to use her body in order to sustain its life without consent.
3. Once she is no longer pregnant she regains her rights and the fetus loses its right to use her body.

Why are you advocating being so free and easy with other peoples rights?

Your position is as also about supremacy, the supremacy of the fetus over the woman.

No person can be forced to sustain the life of another. If a person stabs another to the extent that a liver or kidney transplant is required the attacker cannot be forced to sustain the other regardless of the intent caused.

Factually incorrect, a parasite is USUALLY a foreign body - look up angler fish.

Not all parasites take the life of the host, the angler fish mentioned above is an example of this.

There are numerous ways that a fetus can directly affect a woman to the extent of her losing her life, for example ;

ectopic pregnancy
preeclampsia
Embolism
hemorrhage

Exercise is always good for all people.

There is also correlation that pregnancy and child birth increases the risk of breast cancer, as well as some other forms of rare cancers. - http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Pregnancy_related_cancer

You are confusing parasite with parasitic-like.

given that your responses are based on your 'interpretation' and for the most your assertions have been shown to be false the illusion is all yours.

Sorry but you are trying to portray instinct as consciousness that is dishonest.

Any organism will retreat from noxious stimulants, it is a natural survival instinctive reaction, by your assertion that would equate to a virus being conscious purely because it retreats .. laughable at best.

 

Look up the difference between socially dependent and biologically dependent, you will find your answer.

 

Biological independence, self sustaining life functions.

As much as any living cell in our body is.

As much as scratching my behind and shedding a few cells that will die.

You are attempting to project and not well ...

The only problem is that you do not see well and I will be damned if I will let you dictate what responsibility is.

Now you are deluding yourself.

I am sure they are to the extent they wish to be, but at any rate it still is none of your business.

 

The difference between a home and a woman is obvious. A home is not an individual human being with self-ownership. It has no rights. The difference between a child and a fetus has also been stated numerously. A child is a biologically autonomous individual with individual rights. A fetus is not a biologically autonomous individual, and thus has no individual rights. Thus your analogy fails. Second, to equate involuntary pregnancy to slavery is not absurd at all. Both involve the denial of the right to self-ownership to a particular individual. In one case, slaves, in the other, pregnant women. Saying that comparison is absurd without refuting it is only further evidence that it is a valid one.

Biologically autonomous does not mean sentient. I claimed a fetus is not biologically autonomous, and in response you are claiming it is sentient. That has absolutely nothing to do with my original claim that the fetus is not biologically autonomous.

My liver is a "human liver" and my hair is "human hair." Both my liver and my hair have my own individual DNA and genetic make-up, and are identifiable as human. Like a human liver, or human hair, or a human heart, a human fetus is not a human being, despite clearly being human in nature. There is a difference, and your equivocation is blatant. Human can be used to mean a human being, or something that is of or relating to human beings. I am using the latter definition, which any honest person reading my posts would be able to infer from the context.

 

So what if the unborn aren't self sustaining? Being a person isn't defined by viability. People who are attached to life support machines are still persons.

 

I feel you have misrepresented, no one disagrees that a fetus is human(adj) life, the question is when does that human(adj) life become a human(noun) life.

Is ending life homicide and therefore murder .. seems those who support the death penalty, war and self-defence do not think so .. but of course those things are justified (legally), just as abortion is justified (legally).

Sure we do, the woman takes personal responsibility for the fact that she has a number of reason not to remain pregnant, just because you don't agree with those reasons doesn't make them wrong. I don't agree with your reasons for making abortion illegal therefore they must be wrong.

nope that can be firmly laid at the feet of those who put profit before people, poverty is the greatest reason for the state the US is in now (and not just them either)

Maybe men should be more discerning of those they ejaculate into .. funny how it is always the women who gets the blame "for opening her legs" .. sexist remarks do nothing to further your position.

 

The answer to your question is the premise of this topic, so I am not sure why you are asking it. As already stated in the OP, a human being acquires rights when it becomes a human being (meaning an individual). That happens when the fetus is biologically autonomous.

Abortion is not self-ownership--that doesn't even make sense. The woman, like all other human beings male or female, is an individual with the fundamental right to self-ownership. Do you deny that she has that right to begin with? I doubt it. If she has that right, it means she has control over her body and everything inside it.

Even if the fetus is an individual with human rights, those rights must be equal to the mother. No individual has the right to live inside the body of another individual, period. Saying a fetus has "a right to life" is a complete misnomer. The right being claimed is a right to the woman's body. And if the fetus and the woman are equals in terms of a rights, if the fetus has a right to the woman's body, the woman has a right to the fetus's body in return, and can thus abort it if she chooses.

To be anti-abortion, you must:
1. Hold the rights of the fetus above the most fundamental right to self-ownership of the mother, completely destroying the origin of all individual rights in doing so
2. Hold that a woman who has an abortion is committing first-degree premeditated murder, and imprison her or sentence her to death as with any other murderer
3. Hold that because almost everything a woman puts into her system is automatically introduced into the system of the fetus and, if the substance is harmful, it therefore constitutes assault upon the fetus on the same level as strapping me down and forcing drugs into my body. Moreover, life-endangering acts, such as parachute jumping, would place the unconsenting fetus in unreasonable danger. If the woman has no right to kill the fetus, she can have no right to jeopardize its life and well-being. Thus, if the fetus has rights, it is not merely a matter of prohibiting abortion; it means that the woman is criminally liable for harm befalling the fetus on the same level as she would be for harming an infant.

The anti-abortion position's consequences are absurd as its foundation. You are granting a non-individual individual rights, and then stripping the most primary individual right away from the mother, who is an actual individual. Nothing could be more anti-libertarian.

 

Where is it written that individuality is non-revokable? You may say that a fetus is not an individual, but you can't claim that the woman is not. No, clearly at that point it is a symbiotic mix of two humans. And what of siamese twins? Do they have no rights until separated? Only then do they become individuals. The act of cutting the umbilical cord is the division. Until it is cut, neither mother nor child can be called individual, by definition.

/thread

 

A highly philosophical question which will have nearly as many answers as there are philosophers. Where do any rights derive from?

 

Then in reality there are no fundamental rights only rights we choose to render to ourselves

 

If there are rights at all, then there are certainly fundamental rights. The right to life is a base upon which all other rights are inherently built. You can't even claim a right to self-ownership without first having a right to life, thus proving the title of this thread false. The most fundamental right is NOT self-ownership, logically, because the right to self-ownership is necessarily built on top of the right to life.

 

However I am not defending the OP.

The right to life is a fallacy . there is no right to life, and as you stated if there is no right to life then there are no other rights, to that I agree.

 

So a pregnant woman is no longer an individual. Are you sure you want to go down that path? I must first note such a contention is on very shaky grounds, for the mother is biologically autonomous from the fetus. She is in no way dependent on it. The relationship is clearly not symbiotic by any stretch of the term. Also, if you argue the mother is not an individual while the umbilical cord is in place, then she has no individual rights until it is cut, either from a philosophical or legal standpoint.