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Mango wrote:
Your first point, so now you are saying that a person that has to use a dialysis machine is not a human being. Or has to use any mechanical device to breath, proces nutrients etc. Basically, anyone that has a surgery, until they heal completely, is not a human being.

The first two are moderately intriguing cases, the last is simply absurd. Surgery leaves a person biologically autonomous, it does not relate at all. Dialysis and 'iron lung' patients would be included in the same way as premature infants. Both are biologically autonomous, but require mechanical support. Just as a normal term infant is biologically autonomous with mechanical dependencies.

Mango wrote:
A newborn is completely unable to care for itself. A 3 year old child might be able to feed itself, or drink unassissted.

Obviously.

Mango wrote:
however a three year old has no idea how to provide the food in the first place.

Ideas are irrelevant to this discussion. We are discussing the physical capacity to survive.

Mango wrote:
So again, is dependent upon another for survival.

But not biologically.

Mango wrote:
Also, apparently walking is a precondition for being a human being by your definition. Since you clearly state that once a child is able to walk it becomes self sufficient. Are amputees and parapalegics now no longer human beings? (I know that the walking part is not what you meant, but I was using that point to illustrate how arbitrary your definition is or can become)

Self=sufficiency does not define one as a human being, biological autonomy does. Walking is a form of mechanical autonomy.

Mango wrote:
As for miscarriage, that is not the same as deliberately killing something. If a person dies from a heart attack, society doesn't generally put anyone on trial for murder. If someone shoots a person in the heart, society does try them for murder. "natural causes" compared to "murder."

Of course murder is also a natural cause, as human action is quite natural. Your distinction is no more arbitrary than mine.

Mango wrote:
An embryo is an immature human being. It is undergoing cell division, cell differentiation, it has it's own distinct biological boundary, either a cell membrane, or later skin. It is capable or becoming capable of respiration, either through absorbing the oxygen fed to it, or later unassisted. If removed from the womb, yes it will die. But the key is how it is removed. If the woman's body spontaneously removes it, that is "natural". If someone shoves a needle into it first, that is unnatural. if someone takes hormones for the express purpose of "spontaneously" aborting the fetus, that is deliberate.

Nope, still natural. Unless you believe man exists outside of nature, which would be a ridiculously arbitrary belief.

Mango wrote:
If abortion is not killing something, then why have an abortion? If it is not really a living being, and is instead a choice, then no actions would be needed to terminate its existence. When a choice is made to terminate somethings life, you are killing something. What exactly are you killing if not an immature human being?

I clearly stated abortion necessarily involved killing something. The debate is over what that thing is. But, to answer your question, a cell collection nominally referred to as blastocyst.

Killkrazy,
You can't seperate the question of what is human and what is not from the discussion of abortion. It is the very crux of the question. If it is human, it is murder. if it is not human, it is not.

You can sepeerate the question from the death penalty. Then you are arguing if it is justifiable to end the life of a human being for an offense against society.

dogma wrote:

Mango wrote:
Your first point, so now you are saying that a person that has to use a dialysis machine is not a human being. Or has to use any mechanical device to breath, proces nutrients etc. Basically, anyone that has a surgery, until they heal completely, is not a human being.

The first two are moderately intriguing cases, the last is simply absurd. Surgery leaves a person biologically autonomous, it does not relate at all. Dialysis and 'iron lung' patients would be included in the same way as premature infants. Both are biologically autonomous, but require mechanical support. Just as a normal term infant is biologically autonomous with mechanical dependencies.

Mango wrote:
A newborn is completely unable to care for itself. A 3 year old child might be able to feed itself, or drink unassissted.

Obviously.

Mango wrote:
however a three year old has no idea how to provide the food in the first place.

Ideas are irrelevant to this discussion. We are discussing the physical capacity to survive.

Mango wrote:
So again, is dependent upon another for survival.

But not biologically.

Mango wrote:
Also, apparently walking is a precondition for being a human being by your definition. Since you clearly state that once a child is able to walk it becomes self sufficient. Are amputees and parapalegics now no longer human beings? (I know that the walking part is not what you meant, but I was using that point to illustrate how arbitrary your definition is or can become)

Self=sufficiency does not define one as a human being, biological autonomy does. Walking is a form of mechanical autonomy.

Mango wrote:
As for miscarriage, that is not the same as deliberately killing something. If a person dies from a heart attack, society doesn't generally put anyone on trial for murder. If someone shoots a person in the heart, society does try them for murder. "natural causes" compared to "murder."

Of course murder is also a natural cause, as human action is quite natural. Your distinction is no more arbitrary than mine.

Mango wrote:
An embryo is an immature human being. It is undergoing cell division, cell differentiation, it has it's own distinct biological boundary, either a cell membrane, or later skin. It is capable or becoming capable of respiration, either through absorbing the oxygen fed to it, or later unassisted. If removed from the womb, yes it will die. But the key is how it is removed. If the woman's body spontaneously removes it, that is "natural". If someone shoves a needle into it first, that is unnatural. if someone takes hormones for the express purpose of "spontaneously" aborting the fetus, that is deliberate.

Nope, still natural. Unless you believe man exists outside of nature, which would be a ridiculously arbitrary belief.

Mango wrote:
If abortion is not killing something, then why have an abortion? If it is not really a living being, and is instead a choice, then no actions would be needed to terminate its existence. When a choice is made to terminate somethings life, you are killing something. What exactly are you killing if not an immature human being?

I clearly stated abortion necessarily involved killing something. The debate is over what that thing is. But, to answer your question, a cell collection nominally referred to as blastocyst.

Dogma,
Ordinarily you arguments are thought out and reasoned, even if I don't agree with the reasoning. However this last post of yours borders on the chilish and absurd.

Your last point however does deserve a response. You are nothing more than a bunch of cells. You just happen to have more than a blastomere. So are you still human?

Mango wrote:Killkrazy,
You can't seperate the question of what is human and what is not from the discussion of abortion. It is the very crux of the question. If it is human, it is murder. if it is not human, it is not.

....

All instances of killing a human being are not murder, e.g lawful war, termination of life support, etc.

Abortion is not considered murder by the Law.

Neither in the UK nor the USA has abortion ever been considered a crime of murder, though in one statute it was defined as manslaughter. Most penalties have been much less stiff. (As far as I have been able to determine based on a short period of research.)

Very interesting discussion and am intentionally staying out of it.

However, to make a correction KK.

Multiple states in the US did indeed count abortion as murder or lesser charge.

UK considered abortion a criminally prosecutable murder or lesser charge after "quickening."

Frazzled wrote:Very interesting discussion and am intentionally staying out of it.

However, to make a correction KK.

Multiple states in the US did indeed count abortion as murder or lesser charge.

UK considered abortion a criminally prosecutable murder or lesser charge after "quickening."

But not before quickening (see the whole argument about the timing of abortion) plus, until the 1850s there were none or few anti-abortion laws in the USA. They were gradually tightened up after that, often with suitable modifications such as avoiding the use of quickening as a definition of an abortion time limit. Roe vs Wade was a few years after the 1967 Abortion Act but clearly shows the influence of a more liberal attitude as perhaps the legislation of the late 1800s (similar to some extent in the UK and USA) was obviously influenced by more conservative social attitudes.

As a lawyer, perhaps you are aware of cases where a mother was prosecuted for murder for procuring an abortion.

There were multiple cases. However you are correct in your trend analysis. There has been much written about the harm caused by SCOTUS in RvW as US society was already addressing the issue through the ballot moving to change the requisite laws after consensus had been reached via voting, where all social changes should be wrought.

wow, I stay away from the OT forum for a while and this doozy appears. So many tangents and opinions.

First, on the death penalty itself. Well, calling it stupid out of the gate isn't the most diplomatic way of starting a discussion, but I get your point. The death penalty is a morally neutral thing for me. Killing a person is wrong, but the state has the duty to protect itself and it's citizens and the monopoly on force to enable executions. For most of human history, executions were really the only good alternative to simply letting a person go, as prisons were expensive and a drain on resources.

That all said, as a government initiative in the modern era, the Death Penalty does nothing it claims to, and costs more than a less intrusive alternative. Normally, as a liberal, I'm on the pro-government boondoggle side of things, but from a pragmatic view it seems that the death penalty costs a lot of money and accomplishes very little, aside from making people feel better. Throw in the procedural concerns, ranging from the disproportionate usage against poor and minority defendants or, more strikingly, the disproportionate use when the victim was white, female, or middle class; all the way to the high rate of wrongful convictions, and I think there are some valid concerns.

Most of the ideas for death penalty reform seem to fixate on limiting appeals, which sounds good but ignores the fact that this country has a constitution which garuntees due process. The right to appeal is part of that due process, and while judicial reform in streamlining the process is possible, a death penalty case has the highest possible stakes, and every possible litigation technique is going to be used, regardless of cost. You can't deny them a lawyer, as that makes the process grotesquely unfair.

As frazz points out, the primary purpose of the state is the security of it's citizens. I take security to mean a bit more than he does, as I think that the power of the state over the citizens is just as real a threat to security as criminals and terrorists. When a justice system cuts corners on due process for some people, it's easier to slowly expand that, particularly when the criteria is so amorphous. I'm sure many of the people in this thread feel that they can tell the real monsters from the wrongly accused, the evil from the desperate, but I don't have a lot of faith in that sort of discernment.

As for abortion, asking when a being becomes human is a fine example of a heap paradox:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heap_paradox
I'm pro-choice, although I think that a nationwide effort to encourage and condone proper contraceptive use would help to reduce the number of abortions organically. That an embryo or fetus should have some rights seems natural, there's a high probability that the fetus at least will become a person. The problem is that those rights are entirely dependent on another person, the mother, to come to fruition. Unlike an infant or a preemature birth or a person on life support or a dialysis patient, a fetus depends not just on another person, but on one specific person and no other for survival. At some point in any serious discussion, the rights of a person to control her body, and to decide what it can be used for have to come up. The rights, clearly, are in conflict. Not to be flip, but I think tie go to the person who is actually there. While the Fetus has some rights, it simply doesn't have enough to be able to control entirely what a person can do. To tie the two topics together, Abortion rights are cheap and effective, reducing demand for education, health and human services, welfare benefits, and according to at least some studies resulting in lower crime rates.

As for why abortion is legal and infanticide is not, you can simply give the infant up. A pregnant woman in the second trimester cannot simply give up her fetus.

I agree with that.

The idea of allowing abortion as a privacy rights issue (that's how I understand the RvW decision frmo my meagre reading) seems a little... expedient.

Frazzled wrote:There were multiple cases. However you are correct in your trend analysis. There has been much written about the harm caused by SCOTUS in RvW as US society was already addressing the issue through the ballot moving to change the requisite laws after consensus had been reached via voting, where all social changes should be wrought.

I agree, although given the line of cases preceding it in Substantive Due Process RvW would have been shocking to go the other way. It's hard to reconcile the holdings in Yoder, Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, and Griswold with a refusal to strike down abortion laws. Given the court at the time and the momentum of the precedent, I can't see Roe going any other way.

And social change should be wrought through the people, but it's the job of the Courts to strike down laws that are unconstitutional. And, for better or worse, SCOTUS gets to determine what constitutional means. Keep in mind that for 50 years of the lochner era it was conservative judges regularly striking down laws that were passed, things that today we take for granted (workplace safety, minimum wages, etc.).

In a perfect world, the court would have simply refused Cert on Roe, and side stepped the issue to give the states more time to liberalize, but the Burger Court was not exactly the high water mark for SCOTUS competency.

Kilkrazy wrote:I agree with that.

The idea of allowing abortion as a privacy rights issue (that's how I understand the RvW decision frmo my meagre reading) seems a little... expedient.

Well, it's called privacy, but really it's about a right to autonomy: the idea that every person has the right to do what they want, when they want. The central tenet of autonomy is the right to use ones body as one wishes. I can give a kidney to my brother, or refuse: no law can stop or coerce me. I can give blood, get a tattoo, gain weight, lose weight, or whatever I wish with my body. From that perspective, the rights of non-autonomous person, which are dependent on an autonomous person, aren't enough to compel a person to remain pregnant against their will.

Polonius,
Good to hear from you again. Nice bit about the heap paradox, but for one thing. You are starting the argument from the assumption that you have a pile of sand to begin with, and then start removing one grain at a time. It is different if you go the other route, and start with one grain and add one grain at a time. A heap of sand is not a discreet organism. While a living cell that splits and grows, is.

Your point about which has more rights, the mother or the fetus is a good one. But think of it this way, especially since you are a self professed liberal. Isn't the point of being a liberal ostensibly to ensure that everyone is treated equally? So if the mother has more rights than the child, isn't that unequal protection?

Mango wrote:Polonius,
Good to hear from you again. Nice bit about the heap paradox, but for one thing. You are starting the argument from the assumption that you have a pile of sand to begin with, and then start removing one grain at a time. It is different if you go the other route, and start with one grain and add one grain at a time. A heap of sand is not a discreet organism. While a living cell that splits and grows, is.

Hehe, I suppose that's technically true. My point was that we have term we're comfortable with (person) that is hard to judge. We know it happens somewhere along the way, but we don't know where. I wasn't saying that an embryo isn't alive, but rather that an embryo would fail most definitions of person, while a fetus at 30 months probably would. It's hard to judge exactly when a few grains of sand become a heap, and it's hard to tell when an embryo becomes a person.

Your point about which has more rights, the mother or the fetus is a good one. But think of it this way, especially since you are a self professed liberal. Isn't the point of being a liberal ostensibly to ensure that everyone is treated equally? So if the mother has more rights than the child, isn't that unequal protection?

Well, classic Liberalism began the process of seeking equality under the law. As a social liberal, I think that government should encourage practical equality, as well as equality under the law. Yes, legal abortions treat the fetus differently than they do the mother, but that's not a paradox, because not allowing abortions treats women differently from men. Now, there's a natural difference between men and women that allows such a gap, but there is simply no time the government ever denies forces men to incubate a child. While it's true we don't draft women, that's by choice, not be necessity.

By law, rights are extended in many ways to non living, or non-natural persons. Corporations have rights against search and seizure, the deceased still have rights to be undisturbed. Other natural persons have abbreviated rights: the incarcerated, minor children, the incompetent, the contagious. Virtually all definitions of human rights assume that a person is alive, adult, and competent. Everybody else gets a sliding scale of rights. Children enjoy far fewer rights than adults, why wouldn't the unborn have even fewer?

Now, if you want an interesting analysis of the rights of the mother vs. the rights of a child, compare the reasoning and anlysis in Casey v. Planned Parenthood to the reasoning in both Lochner v. New York and Dred Scott v. Sandford. Scalia points it out in his disssent in Casey, that Dred Scott and Lochner were both decided on the grounds that fundamental rights (the right of a slave owner to his property, the right of bakers to freely contract their services) that overrode the rights of an aggreived party (the right of the Slave Dred Scott, the rights of the New York Legislature to govern for the general welfare). The argument is that much like those two cases were overturned (although lochner was a genuine case of judicial activism, and a far worse legal decision than dred scot) so should Casey be overturned.

The problem is that Casey is distinguishable on two grounds. 1) the right in Casey is one of autonomy and the ability to control ones body, a far more central right than the property and contract rights in Scot and Lochner, and 2) While Dred Scot was a person that was aggreieved, in Lochner it wasn't the bakers whose rights were impeded, it was the legislature of New York. In Casey, it wasn't unborn children that were infringed upon by the court, it was the legislature of Pennsylvania. Unborn children have no standing to sue, so any rights granted would be unenforceable. Casey is a legally sound ruling based on the precedent, because it's the job of the Court to tell governments their laws infringe on a person's rights. In Lochner, they went too far and substituted their own judgment for the Legislatures.

Anyway, it's also important to always keep in mind the difference between the legal and the moral arguments against abortion. while I would wholeheartedly agree that fetuses have moral rights, there is no real precedent for giving them legal rights.

Polonius,
Oddly enough I am reading a book that talks about two of those cases. The third might be mentioned later in the book, I will have to look it up.

But dredd scott is a prime case of why the supreme court is fallible. The biggest mistake the court made was in determiing that Mr scott was not elligible to bring a suit because he was not a person. The same holds true for for an embryo from a legal standpoint. That is why I believe we need a definition of what it is to be human.

As for your legal theory, that law needs to provide practical equality as well as legal equality, that leads itself to all sorts of abuses, primarily, it allows for the same law to be applied to two people dependant upon the whim of the judge. That is called rule by man, not rule by law.

Legal and just are two different things. It is legal to have an abortion. That does not make it right or just. Much the same as it was legal 40 or 50 years ago to segregate mionorities and have miscegnation laws. Because it was legal, did it make it right?

A person has rights. When one persons rights infringe on anothers, we have a problem. I would say that the right to life trumps all others in this case. If a woman will die as a result of continuing a pregnancy, then yes her rights would trump the childs. This is because if they do not, both the mother and the child will die. But if the mother will not die as a result of the pregnancy, then in my opinion, the childs right to life would trump the mother's right to privacy. In legal cases, a greater right is a legitimate concern. Take for example secured vs unsecured creditors during bankruptcy.

Mango wrote:Polonius,
Oddly enough I am reading a book that talks about two of those cases. The third might be mentioned later in the book, I will have to look it up.

But dredd scott is a prime case of why the supreme court is fallible. The biggest mistake the court made was in determiing that Mr scott was not elligible to bring a suit because he was not a person. The same holds true for for an embryo from a legal standpoint. That is why I believe we need a definition of what it is to be human.

And that was actually a legal error even then. There was no precedent for that decision, and at the time many black men were considered citizens and could vote in northern states.

There is extensive precendent in the common law that an embryo is not a person, and does not have legal rights.

As for your legal theory, that law needs to provide practical equality as well as legal equality, that leads itself to all sorts of abuses, primarily, it allows for the same law to be applied to two people dependant upon the whim of the judge. That is called rule by man, not rule by law.

Whoa, whoa. The law is not interested in practical equality, I said merely that government should be. Things like good public education, health care, enforcement of civil rights laws, etc. Everybody is the same in the eyes of the law, white/black, man/woman, rich/poor.

Legal and just are two different things. It is legal to have an abortion. That does not make it right or just. Much the same as it was legal 40 or 50 years ago to segregate mionorities and have miscegnation laws. Because it was legal, did it make it right?

You're confusing just with fair, or even right. It is just to allow abortions, as long as they are all allowed or denied equally. Justice is precision, not accuracy. A just system provides the same result every time, regardless of who is involved. A fair system, well, that's getting into another area all together.

A person has rights. When one persons rights infringe on anothers, we have a problem. I would say that the right to life trumps all others in this case. If a woman will die as a result of continuing a pregnancy, then yes her rights would trump the childs. This is because if they do not, both the mother and the child will die. But if the mother will not die as a result of the pregnancy, then in my opinion, the childs right to life would trump the mother's right to privacy. In legal cases, a greater right is a legitimate concern. Take for example secured vs unsecured creditors during bankruptcy.

I agree, I just think that your argument rest on granting an embryo, which is not a legal person, the same rights as a person. You've clearly made up your mind about the issue, and it's one that can operate fairly consistently, but there's just no real precedent for it. It's one that to claim that a person isn't a person just because he's African (even though the Taney court really just held that he couldn't be a citizen), as that's utterly preposterous to our sensibilities. It's possible that as time moves forward, earlier and earlier fetuses and even embryos can be viable outside of the womb, but right now I'm not comfortable calling a fetus that's utterly reliant on being in utero for survival a legal person. It's human, sure, but in terms of biology it's pretty indistinguishable from the mother.

You said that abortions are ok when the mother could die, what about a woman that is 8 months pregnant, but the pregnancy is now life threatening? The child might be able to live, but an abortion would be safer than a C-section. Would the child's rights still outweight the mothers?

What about victims of rape or incest? If the discussion becomes one of moral rights, how is it remotely fair to force a woman to carry her rapist's child to term?

If emotional connection and empathy are requisites for the definition of what a human is, then anyone that is hard to relate to would be non-human.

For example murderer/rapists. You cannot exactly seriously see yourselves committing a murder other than in self defence, and almost no one can reasonably see themselves actually commiting aggraveted sexual assault. I can't relate to that, you probably cannot relate to that. What we can relate to is the fear of getting killed/violently raped. Thats why mnay people are so indifferent about the death penalty.

As for whether the death penalty is for punishment or detterent; its in the name. A penalty is a punishment for a broken rule. It may help you not to break that rule, but that is its secondary function not its primary one.

It does matter. Until fairly recently, (1864 or thereabouts in this country) Black people in the US were not recognized as human. They were considered partial humans. It took a fairly bloody war to stop argument on that question (among other questions at the time). If you cannot define a person, then you cannot define a crime committed against that person. If, to use my example, blacks had been defined as humans from the get go in US history, then it would have been much easy to say slavery was illegal.

For a rather long time in Canada women were not considered persons under the North American Act until the 1900's.

The point of punishment is to deter potential offenders, not to punish.

Kilkrazy wrote:The point of punishment is to deter potential offenders, not to punish.

Criminal sanctions have many purposes. The actual philosophical underpinnings to criminal law are complex and fundamentally unsatisfying. Most sanctions are a combination of punishment, rehabilitation, deterrence, and simply removing the person from circulation. While the death penalty doesn't accomplish the second, it does a really good job of the first and the last.

Not so much the last. But if I steal a cookie and my grandma slaps me for it. Thats a punishment. She could have sat me in the corner and had a discussion with me on the reasons of why I stole the cookie and the reprecussions of my actions. Or she can just slap me and do it quick. Ill either learn eventually or I won't be allowed near cookies for the rest of my life. (A punishment worse than death.) But some crimes are so bad that they do not deserve that second chance to get slapped. Say I stole that cookie from my brother and he dies of starvation as it was the last cookie on earth and thats all he eats. My Grandma should then kill me and make an awsome ratbarf stew to feed more people.

PS: Though admittedly eating deathrow inmates may not be that appetizing.

Ratbarf wrote:Not so much the last. But if I steal a cookie and my grandma slaps me for it. Thats a punishment. She could have sat me in the corner and had a discussion with me on the reasons of why I stole the cookie and the reprecussions of my actions. Or she can just slap me and do it quick. Ill either learn eventually or I won't be allowed near cookies for the rest of my life. (A punishment worse than death.) But some crimes are so bad that they do not deserve that second chance to get slapped. Say I stole that cookie from my brother and he dies of starvation as it was the last cookie on earth and thats all he eats. My Grandma should then kill me and make an awsome ratbarf stew to feed more people.

PS: Though admittedly eating deathrow inmates may not be that appetizing.

Ok. I still don't see why she needs to kill you when she can send you away to a place where you can't steal anymore cookies.

Because if we are starving (hence my brother dying from lack of cookies) it would be a waste of needed resources.

Ratbarf wrote:Because if we are starving (hence my brother dying from lack of cookies) it would be a waste of needed resources.

But, to continue your tortured analogy, killing you actually costs more resources than merely sending you to the corner until you die, eliminating that as a valid reason.

how so? simply beating my brains in with her foot and then consuming my carcass would be a positvie calorie situation. And I don't consume any more food plus I provide some with my death.

Ratbarf wrote:how so? simply beating my brains in with her foot and then consuming my carcass would be a positvie calorie situation. And I don't consume any more food plus I provide some with my death.

Well, you're using your example as a metaphor for our current society. In the US, due to federal case law, you simply can't execute a person cheaply. There are mandatory appeals, which cost time for the judges, the prosecutor, and the defense (often court appointed). There are almost always appeals to the state supreme courts and at least an attempt to get the SCOTUS to grant cert. There's no way to eliminate these without violating all kinds of due process. Add in the increased cost of housing and guarding death row, and it's not cheaper.

My point was, if there was not tangible benefit to killing you, would it still be wise for your grandmother to do so?

That's my whole point: if there was a government program that cost money and produced no tangible benefit, why wouldn't we shut it down? It's a bit of a dispassionate view of the matter, to be sure, but that's not always a bad thing.

Well, you're using your example as a metaphor for our current society.

Not entirely, it was more of a metaphor as to why we should have the death penalty. We have already debunked the whole "its more expensive to kill people" thing because that is a problem with its application. If they wanted to kix that maybe they should have all death penalty cases reviewed by an enlarged Supreme court. That would cut down the cost of multiple appeals and save time. Though it may be a misallocation of Supreme Court resources it would certainly speed things up and as long as they spend less each year on the new process than the old one its viable.

Damn power outages to hell!! I had a nice little post finished and then the power went out right before I hit submit. Oh well, it gave me an reason to go jogging.

Ok, second rant. Until I figure out how to do the sub quotes, I have to make do with this method. My apologies.

Polonius,
Your quote:
"And that was actually a legal error even then. There was no precedent for that decision, and at the time many black men were considered citizens and could vote in northern states.

There is extensive precendent in the common law that an embryo is not a person, and does not have legal rights."

Unfortunately, a bad precedent is just as legally binding as a good precedent. Dredd Scott case in point. That is why people are trying to set precedent granting embryo's more rights. For example, some states allow for a person to be tried for a double homicide if they kill a pregnant woman.

Your quote:
"Whoa, whoa. The law is not interested in practical equality, I said merely that government should be. Things like good public education, health care, enforcement of civil rights laws, etc. Everybody is the same in the eyes of the law, white/black, man/woman, rich/poor."

After reading that, I read your post again. I admit I misunderstood your statement. Altough, I wouldn't mind debating this point in another thread. Not the equality under the law part, but the rest of the statement.

Your quote:
"You're confusing just with fair, or even right. It is just to allow abortions, as long as they are all allowed or denied equally. Justice is precision, not accuracy. A just system provides the same result every time, regardless of who is involved. A fair system, well, that's getting into another area all together."

I agree with this part. That is what I was trying to get at, but worded it poorly.

Your quote:
"I agree, I just think that your argument rest on granting an embryo, which is not a legal person, the same rights as a person. You've clearly made up your mind about the issue, and it's one that can operate fairly consistently, but there's just no real precedent for it. It's one that to claim that a person isn't a person just because he's African (even though the Taney court really just held that he couldn't be a citizen), as that's utterly preposterous to our sensibilities. It's possible that as time moves forward, earlier and earlier fetuses and even embryos can be viable outside of the womb, but right now I'm not comfortable calling a fetus that's utterly reliant on being in utero for survival a legal person. It's human, sure, but in terms of biology it's pretty indistinguishable from the mother. "

Yes my argument rests on granting an embryo the legal rights as a person. Again, just because there is no precedent, does not mean it is not valid. Every precedent starts somewhere. In terms of biology, it is very easy to seperate it from its mother. For one, it has a unique genetic code. That code is different enough that the mother's immune system has to supress itself, otherwise it would attack the embryo and kill it. For second, even though it derives sustenance from the mother, it has to biologically make use of those nutrients on its own. Third, it has a seperate and distinct boundary that seperates it from the mother. Either a cell membrane at first, or actual skin later.

Your quote:
"You said that abortions are ok when the mother could die, what about a woman that is 8 months pregnant, but the pregnancy is now life threatening? The child might be able to live, but an abortion would be safer than a C-section. Would the child's rights still outweight the mothers?

What about victims of rape or incest? If the discussion becomes one of moral rights, how is it remotely fair to force a woman to carry her rapist's child to term? "

This part of the question does become more emotional. I did actually bring up the rape part earlier, but did not answer.
I would say that yes the embryo that results from a rape or incest would have the same rights as any other. The embryo is blameless. It is the result of a crime, however had no part in the committing of the crime. Yes it would be an exceptionally diffulcult thing to ask of a person, to carry their rapists or relatives child. But society does have a long history of asking it's members to do diffulcult or unpleasant things. For example the draft and fighting in a war. Would I personally want to carry my rapists child? (if it was possible) No. Did I want to commit acts that I otherwise would normally not want to do while serving in the military? No. But do them I did.

As for the 8 month pregnancy bit. If only one could survive, then the one that the doctor's deemed most likely to survive would have the most rights. If it was the child, then save the child. If it was the mother, then save the mother. Medical personnel make these decisions frequently. If they have two patients, and they can't save both, the pick the one most likely to survive and devote their time to that one.

Ratbarf wrote:

Well, you're using your example as a metaphor for our current society.

Not entirely, it was more of a metaphor as to why we should have the death penalty. We have already debunked the whole "its more expensive to kill people" thing because that is a problem with its application. If they wanted to kix that maybe they should have all death penalty cases reviewed by an enlarged Supreme court. That would cut down the cost of multiple appeals and save time. Though it may be a misallocation of Supreme Court resources it would certainly speed things up and as long as they spend less each year on the new process than the old one its viable.

So, you're saying the death penalty is easy to fix, we just need to completely overhaul the judicial system of the United States and every one of the states to make it work better. I gotta be honest, I'm not impressed with the elegance of the solution. Teh problem isn't at the SCOTUS level, they don't take very many cases a year, and only a handful are death penalty cases. I mean, that's the whole point: the death penalty just isn't used much. If the use were increased, the cost would go down, but you're still relying on juries to unanimously vote to put a person to death: not an easy thing.

Even if the cost were lowered, there's still a pretty limited benefit. I suppose if the cost of executions were brought to less than the cost of life imprisonment (or it's average), than the state is saving some money, I suppose. I guess I think it's easier to eliminate an obscure punishment than to overhaul the judiciary, but that's just me.

I didn't say it was easy, I said it was simple.

Ratbarf wrote:I didn't say it was easy, I said it was simple.

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for it. If Congress can't get around to creating a dedicated Tax court of appeals, I doubt they'll be leading the charge.

Oh I by no means expect any of the ideas sounded here to come to fruition. Its just fun to debate on the internet.