re: Nebraska: Women overwhelmed with joy and in tears, after abortion ban bill fails

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Personally, I see this as metaphysical nonsense, so my personal analysis skips past that notion. Over time, I have come to believe that it is "consciousness" or "sapience" that should serve as the delimiter for the assignment of legal rights.

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You typed those sentences back to back and you don't even see the irony.

What is wrong with just being responsible, and taking the moral issues of killing a baby or fetus or whatever you want to believe out of it? Lazy arse people who want no personal responsibility for their actions. Abortion is just an easy way out.

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rhar61

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wt3 asked me a polite question, and I provided him with a polite response. It is called a "discussion."

What is your problem? Are you threatened by two people with different views nonetheless having a reasoned and civil discussion?

Sorry for the later reply...I kind of lost the thread. Things move around this board pretty quickly.

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The first question is whether an embryo (or any pre-born human) is entitled to be vested in legal rights. Philosophically, I find that to be a fascinating question. WHY should any organism have rights, where others do not? Why does Donald Trump have legal rights, whereas the wild pig that I shot in the hay patch yesterday does not?

Some (the religious) will argue something about a "soul," and those people almost uniformly think that a human body acquires a "soul" at or near the time of conception and is thus entitled to legal rights from that point. Personally, I see this as metaphysical nonsense, so my personal analysis skips past that notion.

Others contend that meme membership in the species Homo Sapiens sapiens should be adequate to confer legal rights, but I see no objective reason that this should be the determinative factor. I don't think that the presence of 23 chromosome pairs is a reasonable standard.

Over time, I have come to believe that it is "consciousness" or "sapience" that should serve as the delimiter for the assignment of legal rights. If Klaatu were to land his saucer in Central Park tomorrow, I would argue that he is entitled to legal rights, because he is sapient. If a dolphin were to swim up to my boat and start communicating with me in Morse Code, I would argue that she is entitled to legal rights, because she has demonstrated sapience.

An unborn human DOES present a conundrum. At that 6-week point, it clearly does NOT display ANY indicia of intelligence, yet we DO know that (absent something catastrophic) it WILL eventually develop those traits (set aside for now the fact that a LARGE percentage of 6-week fetuses NATURALLY will not survive to term). Left to its own devices, it will become "sapient" or "conscious." Only a very disingenuous person would base his analysis on any other premise.

Thus, I start from the premise that there are TWO sets of actual or potential "rights" involved in this discussion. The (entirely-theoretical) future rights of a pre-sapient organism that has not yet even been born, and the rights of a sapient, pregnant woman. Those "rights" are in conflict." Absolute protection of the "rights" of the embryo necessarily infringes the self-determination rights of the pregnant woman. How do we reconcile that?

My resolution is to give the woman a reasonable time to protect her own rights, after which those rights will be deemed to have been waived. What is a "reasonable time?"

Some states seem to think that "6 weeks" meets that criterion, but I submit that is ridiculous. True, the embryo really IS not much more than the rhetorical "clump of cells" at that point and CERTAINLY had not yet developed to the point of displaying any indicia of sapience. But most women do not even realize that they are pregnant at that point. By choosing that point, you are NOT "balancing" rights. You are completely abrogating the woman's rights.

Science tells us that the human nervous system (brain) STARTS to develop to the point of being able to display the earliest forms of "consciousness" late in the second trimester, so it seems to me that the "cutoff" cannot reasonably be AFTER that point. ARticle in Scientific American

The typical (facile) response it that human brains are not fully-developed until twenty years of age or so, and that this analysis would allow wholesale slaughter of any human less than that age. This is a silly response, because I am not saying that rights cannot vest until the brain is FULLY developed. To the contrary, I am saying that it makes sense to start PROTECTING the potential rights of an embryo/fetus once it STARTS to display the early signs of sapience. Once a brain has developed to the point of being ABLE to amass memories and experiences, it seems to me that this brain now belongs to an "individual."

So, where should the LAW (as opposed to philosophy) "draw the line" and preclude abortion? Personally, I think that 16-weeks is a good compromise, because it is WELL before the fetal brain is even CAPABLE of consciousness while giving the pregnant woman a reasonable time to protect her own rights. But I would be convinced of 12-weeks.

The problem (in my view) is that too many people address this issue by seeking a biological answer to an inherently-philosophical query.

Does that address your question?

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Yes, thank you.

A few questions;

1. You say that sapience is your threshold and that you would confer rights to a dolphin who communicated with you in morse code. A few things about that—first, several animals have the capacity to communicate with humans using various methods...apes use sign language and I have seen a woman who trains dogs to use a device to communicate. There is evidence that they are using real language. Do dogs and apes get legal rights? If not, why not? I understand that their level of intelligence is limited, but so is the level of intelligence possessed by a person with Down's Syndrome, for example, and I am not aware of anyone campaigning to strip those people of rights or set a minimum IQ for retaining legal rights.

2. I understand that sapience is your threshold, but what isn't nearly as clear to me is why. It honestly seems as random a criteria as those you have rejected. Can you expound upon that reasoning (and I will try to respond in a timely manner)?

3. In discussing the conflict of the rights of individuals opposing each other, is there no consideration given to the relative importance of the rights in question? In other words, isn't the right to life arguably more fundamental and therefore more important than the right to vote, for example? I agree that the mother's rights are being curtailed by limiting the ability to abort, but it seems to me that the right to life is the most fundamental right possible without which any other rights can be exercised, and it seems to me that must be taken into consideration. I'm glad that you acknowledge the "inevitable future basis" for an unborn human's rights, btw.

4. I took a philosophy class many years ago that was basically a survey of different prominent philosophers and their views on various subjects. I can't remember which classic philosopher it was, but I remember one of them rejecting the idea that animals were entitled to rights. However, his concept was that—while animals shouldn't/don't have rights, humans have an ethical obligation to not abuse them that—in his opinion, at least—rises to the level of being codifiable. He felt that whatever his criteria was for deeming humans worthy of rights in the first place necessitated an ethical code that included—by deduction—that sort of obligation.

Even if we conclude that a 6 week embryonic human doesn't have rights, don't we have an ethical obligation to preserve her life anyway under the same reasoning as that philosopher, given the inevitable future recognition referred to above?

Thanks again for the discussion and I will try to better keep up with it.

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wackatimesthree

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All good questions.

1. Koko was a perfect case study for this discussion. Most estimates put her IQ equivalent somewhere between the 60s and very low 80s. Even the lowest estimates are higher than profoundly-retarded humans, and the highest estimates would have put her in the second standard deviation among humans. If every mountain gorilla were capable of basic reasoning and of communicating (as with her simplified sign language) at her level, I think that it would be almost mandatory to confer basic rights upon the species ... but that does not seem to be the case. By all indicators, Koko was the Stephen Hawking of her species. So, the question arises as to whether we should confer legal rights to an entire species, based upon the marginal sapience of its most-exceptional member. Honestly, I don't pretend to have a definitive answer to that question, but my impulse is to say that such cases would be handled on an ad hoc basis. If you've not read " Jerry was a Man" by Heinlein, I highly-recommend that you do so. It is a fascinating study of this question in "short story" form, and you can probably read it in 15 minutes or so.

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"What is a man? A collection of living cells and tissue? A legal fiction, like this corporate ‘person’ that would take poor Jerry’s life? No, a man is none of these things. A man is a collection of hopes and fears, of human longings, of aspirations greater than himself—more than the clay from which he came"

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As far as profoundly-retarded humans are concerned, we "strip" them of rights all the time. It is not remotely unusual to see them declared non compos mentis. Of course, that is a far cry from saying that it is acceptable to kill them.

2. It seems to me that "rights" are not just something that one "has," but rather something that one can "exercise." I just don't see any way that an organism lacking either consciousness or sapience can "exercise" a right.

The struggle is to find an indicator that would "cover the bases." Simply being a member of Homo Sapiens sapiens does not do that for me, because I feel that the calculus MUST include the possibility of other intelligent species somewhere, whether we are discussing mountain gorillas, dolphins or Klaatu and his people. It would not be inherently unreasonable to say that "rights" should vest in any member of a species in which the eventual development of consciousness/sapience is the norm, but that brings us right back to the question of conflicting rights between two members of the same species. See your point 3.

As an example, G.R.R. Martin examined in Sand Kings a species that does not develop consciousness/sapience until several years after birth (hatching, in his example). John Ringo posited something similar in his Posleen series, as did Turledove in his WorldWar series. The adults of the species actually ATE the hatchlings, assuring in a Darwinistic way that only the most-capable hatchlings survived long-enough to DEVELOP sapience. In both cases, this was biologically-normal for the species. Would humans chauvinistically try to ignore the entire evolution of those species and confer rights upon offspring that would EVENTUALLY demonstrate consciousness/sapience?

3. I think that we DO assign relative levels of importance to different "rights" ... once those rights have vested. I think that you MAY be suggesting that different "levels" of rights might vest at different times. e.g. a right to drive at 16, to vote at 18 and to consume alcohol at 21. You seem to suggest adding a negative right not to be killed, vesting at "conception." There is nothing inherently unreasonable about that notion, either. It is just one that produces results which I do not see as being acceptable.

It seems to me that the question reduces to "what is the essence ... the gestalt ... of a 'person'?" A religious person might call it a "soul" and insist that it is magically conferred by a deity at conception. I tend to believe that it is something which develops over time and which only begins to come into existence when the neural system (the hardware) has developed to the point of being able to SUPPORT it.

If we look at the question from that angle, I would HOPE that you can acknowledge that it is not unreasonable to think that an organism which LACKS that hardware (and therefore lacks that essence or gestalt) would have no inherent entitlement to legal rights.

4. The protection of animals is not really a matter of "rights," despite the misuse of that term by animal lovers. As you say, it is really more a matter of "obligation." It can arise from a variety of different considerations. For example, we might prohibit DDT because it destroys the eggs of raptors, and we want to be sure that we have raptors on the planet. On the other hand, we might prohibit humans from torturing dogs because that sort of behavior tends to engender similar behavior to other humans.

So, do we have a similar "obligation" to preserve the life of an embryo or of a fetus? There is no objective answer to that question, as far as I can see.

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You really are a child. Please have a seat and let the adults talk.

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You're evil. I think babies are human and you do not

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You really are a child. Please have a seat and let the adults talk.

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You're evil. I think babies are human and you do not

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Hence the term “child.”

You do not even understand the issue.

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we need to discuss whether we should allow doctors to perform these abortions?

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Ok. Would you allow for any exceptions? Rape incest, and the real sticky one fetal abnormalities? What about invitro fertilization that involves the destruction of embryos?

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Not a good looking woman in the group

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Granted, this took place in Nebraska.