Libertarian666 wrote:
1. Since the fetus didn't have any option not to be there, it is clear to me anyway that its rights (whatever they may be) don't depend on whether it is there due to consensual sex or rape.
Accordingly, if we are to be consistent, we must have the same position regardless of the source of the impregnation.
2. No human being has a right to live in another human's body, since human beings are by definition not property, and that would make the host(ess) effectively the property of the fetus.
3. However, equally there is no right to kill a human being other than in self-defense or similar limited situations.
4. Therefore, my solution to the abortion issue is this:
a. The prospective mother has the right to expel the fetus from her womb. However, she does not have the right to use unnecessary force in so doing. Thus, if the fetus is viable outside her womb, she may not kill it in the process of removing it but must have it removed alive.
b. Any outside person who wishes to take possession of the fetus and undertakes to raise it may then have it.
c. However, due to the exception for self-defense, if carrying the fetus to viability would seriously endanger the health of the mother, then she has the right to kill it if necessary when removing it.
I'm sure this won't satisfy everyone.
I agree with you 100%.
If "it" is alive, then take it out, put it on the table, and let it be alive there, outside of the woman's body who doesn't want "it" inside her.
If "it" "dies" upon removal, then it wasn't really alive to begin with.
The problems with the abortion arguments are:
1) People who believe God instills life and a soul into every living being. Thus, the soul is infused at conception and "it" is alive when it's a fertilized zygote.
2) People who confuse anatomical features with "human life". If "it" has defined fingers or a heartbeat, then people are uncomfortable aborting "it". What these people don't realize is pre-born animals of all kinds look very similar to pre-born humans.
3) People are uncomfortable with the fact that "it" could grow up into a human. These people blur the causation logic line. There "could" be a human grow up if I have sex with a random girl on the street. If I don't have sex with that random girl, no one would argue that it's murder of an unborn child. Where does the blurry line make it "okay" to perform an action that results in a person who isn't yet born to be not born? If a woman takes the morning after pill and "it" can't bind to her, then she's preventing a life from being born. But, it's no guarantee. She might have miscarried regardless of the morning after pill. Similarly, there's no guarantee me having sex with a random girl will result in pregnancy and viable offspring therefore me abstaining from sex is no guarantee that I "murdered" a possible human.
Is it a statistical thing? If a woman has an abortion 1 day before the baby would be born, then there's a 99%+ chance that had she not taken the action of getting an abortion, there would have been a viable baby born. If I abstain from having sex with a random girl, there was maybe only a 1 in 10,000 chance that sex would have resulted in a pregnancy and viable birth. My action of abstaining from sex was statistically much less likely to prevent a birth. A woman taking the morning after pill might have a 1 in 100 chance of having a viable baby if she didn't take the pill.
Consider a spectrum of time between conception and birth whereby the likelihood of viable offspring increases exponentially as the 9-month mark approaches. In the early stages, miscarriage is likely and could simply be caused by failure to bind inside the woman. People who believe in a statistical argument would have to create a dividing line. Perhaps at the 2 month mark there's a 50% chance of delivering to term. Then any abortion after 2 months would have a greater than likely (more than half) chance of preventing a human life. Does that make it not okay?
In conclusion, there's logical fallacies in play by each and every persons who argues against abortion. The only argument against the morning after pill is because God infuses a soul into the zygote at conception. The belief or existence of God and/or the use of God in any argument is a logical fallacy in and of itself. Anyone who believes abortion is permissible up until a certain point in the development cycle is guilty is one of the other two logic problems above.
The only answer is what Libertarian666 proposes. It's the only answer that's "fair" to the woman and is also based on pure science of what "life" is. If you remove "it" from the woman, and "it" "dies" then it wasn't really alive to begin with so there's no problem. If "it" continues to live after "it" is removed, then "it" didn't die, so the abortion was not murder.
Few people who knew the both of them would have given him too much grief about it.