The Dawn Treader

The Audi Green Police ad was great parody and social/political commentary!

The Tebow ad went a long way toward showing that many leaders among the pro-choice movement are not so much pro-choice as pro-death.

My favorite was the bark collar commercial for Doritos, with the Brett Favre 2020 press conference being #2. I did enjoy the Green Police Audi ad -- I was in a room full of liberals (one exception) and we all laughed heartily.

The Tebow ad was fine in and of itself, but CBS' policy of rejecting "issue ads" but then making an exception in this one case is upsetting to me. Remember, this is the same network that turned down this ad:

I don't see how that's any more offensive of controversial than the Tebow ad. (From where I sit, neither ad is controversial at all.)

Otherwise, I don't see how matt curtis's conclusion follows from the commercial or the hubbub surrounding it. After all his griping about logical fallacies at my blog a while back, it's surprising to see him go for the twofer here (ad hominem and non sequitur).

"Many of the leaders of the pro-choice position, such as the current president of NOW, condemned the Tebow ad before even seeing it."

And this makes them "pro-death?" Setting aside that you've now attempted to add guilt-by-association to the fallacy list, if slapping the label "pro death" on a group of people isn't some form of ad hominem, then I guess I don't know what is. And I fail to see how it necessarily follows that leaders condemning the airing of an issue ad (when they knew full well that any counter-ad they submitted would be summarily rejected) leads us to "they're pro-death," hence the non-sequitur.

As to what they were condemning, it was the simple fact that a network with a long history of rejecting controversial ads and ads from controversial organizations decided to break that policy to air this one. The ad was sponsored by Focus on the Family, whose position on legal abortion is no secret, and whose positions on a myriad of other issues are fairly described as controversial. If it makes one "pro-death" to oppose FOF's positions, or to oppose making an exception that, say, Planned Parenthood couldn't get, then I guess I'm "pro-death," too.

Now you might argue that PPH is more controversial than FOF, an objection I won't grant, but even if I did, what about the United Church of Christ?

A sometimes-wise man once wrote, "[I]t doesn’t matter to me, nor should it to anyone, which “side” it is that is relying on a particular fallacy. Fallacious arguments reflect poor reasoning regardless of who is using them. The goal here should be to discover truth, not to win in spite of the truth."

That's hard to do when you're too busy demagoguing the opposition to engage in honest debate.

Tom,

It was apparent from many of the protestations that some within the pro-choice community were concerned about the Tebow message: the choice of life rather than abortion. Yet the freedom of choice ostensibly relates to allowing women to choose one or the other without restriction or condemnation. Here, however, it was plainly obvious that some on the pro-choice side were biased against the choice of life; ergo, pro death.

And that's not ad hominem. Ad hominem is a type of red herring argument, where the goal of the ad hominem attack is to misdirect attention from the substance of the argument to an irrelevant, peripheral issue. My argument here was that for some the pro-choice argument is not really about choice at all; rather, it is an argument for abortion - for death.

As far as any assertion of guilt by association, that was not my intent. In fact, that was why I referenced "many of the leaders" instead of "most" or "all". I don't think, nor did I intend to convey, that everyone (or even most) who describe themselves as pro-choice are promoting only the choice of abortion.

And, really, is there any question that some of the early proponents of abortion, such as Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and other eugenicists were admittedly pro-death - at least for those considered by them to be inferior?

Next, re: a non sequitur, I was not including in my argument those who opposed the airing of the Tebow ad because of the timiing of the ad, prior CBS policy concerning such ads, etc. I could have been clearer on that point.

Also, although the refusal to air the United Church of Christ ad, or some competing Planned Parenthood ad would be a valid topic for debate, such a refusal was not relevant to my argument.

Finally, let me be clear with respect to my position on "freedom of choice." I don't believe there is any legitimate freedom to take the innocent life of another. I don't think that we, as a society, should any more permit abortion than we should permit infanticide. Both violate the right of each individual to life and rightfully should be outlawed.

Tom,

We can argue about what I said versus what I meant to say versus what you thought I said but that really isn't very productive. The long and short of it is that I did not, nor did I intend, to lump in all pro-choicers with some of the loudest of that group who protested the Tebow ad. So, if that's what you took my statement to mean, then I apparently phrased it poorly.

Moving on, you suggest my argument is that some on the pro-choice side "pressure" women to have abortions. While I suspect I could find some examples of such pressuring, that was not my argument. Instead, I would simply say that many on the pro-choice side advocate for abortion, and I will readily acknowledge that groups like Focus on the Family strongly advocate for life and against abortion.

Next, you appear to have a different definition of the right to life than I do. The right to life, like the right to property, is often characterized as a negative right. A right to affordable, quality health care, for example, is a positive right. (I don't happen to care for these characterizations as positive rights should not be considered an actual right; however, use of these two labels may be useful here.)

Negative rights refer to those things that cannot be done against you. Your right to life means that someone cannot purposely take your life. Your right to property means that someone cannot purposely take something that belongs to you. Positive rights, on the other hand, refer to what someone else must do for you; what you may demand of another. You undoubtedly see the the inherent conflict between negative and positive rights. For example, if you have the positive right to demand that one person give you their property, then you have extinguished their right to property.

In your argument above, you frame the right to life as a positive right (the right to a life-saving kidney from an unwilling donor) in order to conclude the right to life cannot be absolute. Once you've established that such a positive right to life cannot be absolute, you apply it to abortion. If you were to frame properly the right to life as a negative right (or, more correctly simply a right), then you would not have established it's not an absolute right. Thus, your mischaracterization of the right to life as a positive right is critical to the validity of your argument.

But let's go on with your argument a bit further. First, even if we accept your characterization of the right to life as a positive right that is not absolute, you have not demonstrated why it should not protect the unborn child. Why does the unborn child have a lesser right to life than the minutes old baby?

Second, you baldly state that an embryo/fetus is "NOT the same thing as a baby." As a strict matter of definition, you are essentially correct, much as we could say that a juvenile is not an adult, or a teen is not a geriatric. But, in this case, you have not established that there is a distinction with a difference. What is critical to this moral question is that the fetus is undeniably a separate human life.

Third, you argue that because an in utero (in the womb) baby "cannot continue to live without an ongoing physical obligation from one specific human being," that baby does not possess the same right to life as its mother. You argue that once a baby is delivered, then it can rely on "ANY capable adult" and that, therefore, there is no involuntary support being demanded. But that too is a distinction without a difference.

Whether in the womb, or delivered into the world, an infant cannot care for itself. It will only survive through the assistance of others. Following the logic of your argument, an infant's mother and father may morally and rightly abandon their born child and leave it to die. Or, more similarly, they may affirmatively kill the newborn infant rather than provide for it. Expand it further: the infant is born into a small town and neither the parents nor anyone else in the town agree to voluntarily provide for the needs of the child, would you argue that the parents, or the town as a whole, could kill the infant?

Our country and others have regrettably treated other groups of people as something less than human, as less deserving of the same rights enjoyed by the majority. I fear we will one day look back in horror at what we have sanctioned.

Tom,

You keep wanting me to paint with a broader brush than I am. I'll say it one more time and leave it at that: "SOME not ALL of the pro-choice leaders demonstrated with the Tebow ad that they were not so much free choice as pro-death." So, let's move on to the substance of the debate.

"Which brings us to your positive/negative rights argument. According to your argument if the right to life is a "negative" right, meaning that nobody has a right to take your life, that means there can be no circumstances under which it is justifiable to take another human life. I seriously doubt you hold such an extreme view."

You are correct that I do not take such a view. An individual may forfeit their own right to life by purposely seeking to take the life of another; the right to life includes the right to self-defense. It does not, however, include the right to take the life of another who unintentionally puts your life in jeopardy.

Based upon your post at Lean Left, you believe abortion is moral if the mother is either unable to care for a newborn or care for herself. Essentially, you are suggesting an abortion in those circumstances constitutes a mercy killing - that it is more moral to kill the child than it is to subject it to a difficult or impossible life. This sounds suspiciously close to eugenics. How do you justify the position that one human can take the life of another innocent human because by some undefinable standard the innocent's death will be better for her than life?

"In your next line of argumentation, you seem to assume that I think abortion is morally allowable right up until the moment of live birth...."

Actually no. My assumption is that you draw some essentially arbitrary line at "viability". Although not universal, that has been a common position for proponents of abortion rights. For purposes of my argument, it doesn't matter where you draw that line because my position is that abortion is never morally justified. I'll certainly listen and consider any argument you have for why an unborn human life should be protected at one point in the pregnancy but not in another.

"You also seem to conflate dependency on nameless OTHERS with PHYSIOLOGICAL dependency on ONE SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL. If you can't see that this is a hugely important difference when figuring the moral calculus, then there's probably not much left for us to discuss here."

I'm not conflating the two; there is undoubtedly a distinction between a direct physiological dependence and a more general, indirect dependence. I do not accept, however, that that distinction matters to the question of abortion. I don't see that you've laid out an argument to support the relevance of that distinction. For example, I suspect we would both agree that a parent has a distinctly greater responsibility to the welfare of his own child than does some "nameless other." But I expect we would also agree that that distinction would not provide justification to the parent to the exclusion of the "nameless other" to kill his child (or vice versa). So, show me why you think the distinction you've drawn matters to this argument.

"It is morally reprehensible to bring a baby into this world if you don't intend to care for it. So, as I mentioned in my other argument, if you don't want a baby, DON'T HAVE A BABY. If that means having an early-term abortion to prevent bringing an unwanted baby into this world, then that's what it means."

This point is addressed above (mercy killing).

"It also means that by pressuring women to give birth to babies they don't want, the "pro-life" movement is actively advancing an immoral option (though I'm sure you'd view this to be LESS immoral than abortion)."

Again, you'll have to support your argument that it is immoral to give birth to an unwanted child. I disagree. Thus, I don't agree that the pro-life position advances an immoral option.

Now to your numbered assertions:

1. The first half of your statement does not follow logically from my position because it does not allow for the acceptance of responsibility, or a change in the desire for children, at some point after intercourse. I don't know that the second half logically follows from my abortion argument - the abortion argument would be seemingly still true regardless of whether this statement of yours is true. Setting aside whether it necessarily follows from my abortion position, I agree with the position stated in the second half.

2. I agree that this statement necessarily follows from my position on abortion. There is no justification for killing the innocent child in response to the wrongful act of another.

3. This statement does not at all follow from my position on abortion. Presumably your argument here is that adoption cannot be moral if it is a moral imperative that one accept responsibility to deliver and care for the child resulting from any act of intercourse. The two, however, are independent acts. The immoral act of stealing from another does not render a later decision to return the stolen good also immoral.

4. I agree that the first part of your statement necessarily follows from my position on abortion. I disagree, however with your conclusion that it follows from my argument that the life of the fetus supersedes the right to life of the mother. Neither individual's right to life conflicts with the other's. This is so because of the very nature of the right to life: that one cannot purposely take the life of another unless the other voluntarily forfeits their own right to life. Let's look at an analogous situation.

Consider a father and son climbing Half Dome together. Father and son are roped together and are hundreds of feet above the Yosemite Valley floor when one, then another piton break free of the cliff face, and the father and son are left dangling from a single, remaining anchor. The father knows the anchor cannot continue to hold both of them and that they will both die if he does nothing. I do not accept that, because the very presence of the son has put the father's life in certain jeopardy, the father is morally justified in cutting his son free to fall to his death on the rocks below . But that is the logical implication of your argument that the mother may kill the innocent human life who unintentionally jeopardizes her own life.

"Skipping ahead to your half dome scenario, you're arguing that the only morally correct response is for both people to die? That the outcome in which both die is morally superior to the one in which one lives and one dies? I'm frankly stunned."

Moral behavior is defined by acts, not outcomes. Thus, the moral analysis in the Half Dome analogy does not come down to simply a mathematical determination of what potential outcome has the greatest utility. By such determinations of maximum utility, we could justify some pretty horrendous moral choices. The question here is not which choice produces the greatest utility, but whether the father may morally kill his son in order to save himself. Do you mean to suggest that morality is simply a question of utility?

"In a broader sense, I'm surprised at your qualification that killing someone in self-defense is only justifiable when that other person is /intentionally/ putting your life at risk. If it's unintentional, then I guess it's your moral responsibility to let them kill you. Seems like an odd position to stake out."

Why is this an odd position? Are you suggesting that you are morally justified in killing someone who unintentionally puts your life at risk? May you morally kill the man who is unintentionally blocking you from the fire exit during a raging fire? May you kill the man who possesses the crust of bread either of you needs to survive?

"This [mercy killing] does not follow from what I'm arguing. In fact, what kind of life the (eventual) child will or won't have isn't terribly relevant to the moral calculus here."

It may be that I have misunderstood your argument then. Your affirmative statements at the LeanLeft post were (paraphrased): (1) It is immoral for a woman to give birth to a child who she is unable or unwilling to care for; and (2) It is immoral for a woman to give birth to a child when she is unable to care for herself. It seems that in both these cases, you are considering the future welfare of the child - it won't be cared for if the mother is unable or unwilling to care for it, or she is unable to care for herself. If that is not your argument, then you're going to have to explain what it is.

"A common straw man to erect among the anti-abortion movement, but not a substantive one. If there's a slippery slope of any kind from "don't have kids if you don't want them" to "let's use forced abortions to eliminate all of the undesirable people," I sure as heck don't see it."

As I recall, Sanger didn't expect force would be necessary to decrease the birthrates of what she considered were "undesirables". Rather, by making abortion readily available to her "undesirables", they would themselves limit their population growth. But the larger point here is that eugenics is largely a utilitarian argument - the ends justify the means.

"I do indeed draw just such a line, but I dispute the notion that it's in any way arbitrary. On one side of the line the rights and interests of the fetus are NECESSARILY in DIRECT CONFLICT with those of the woman carrying it. On the other side of the line, that's not the case."

Please explain why the point of viability is determinative. Both pre and post viability, until the child is delivered, it is still physiologically dependent on a single, specific woman. Moreover, we still ultimately end up with the situation where, even after viability, the infant still requires support from someone in order to survive. It seems your argument eventually boils down to the following: (1) It is immoral, and the state cannot intervene, to prevent a woman from killing the human life within her, pre-viability, because one human cannot be made to unwillingly support another. (2) But, after viability, it is moral, and the state can require, the mother and/or some other individual or group of individuals to unwillingly support another (the child).

"It would be long and drawn out, but it boils down to the idea that an embryo is not a fetus is not a person, and that killing one is not morally equivalent to killing another, or even close to it. You clearly reject that distinction, and this is a matter on which I suspect we will absolutely never see eye to eye."

The problem is that you have not offered any justification for the distinction and why it matters to this question. If the embryo or fetus is not a unique human life, then there is no reason to put any restriction on abortion. On the other hand, if either one is a unique human life, then it becomes necessary for you to justify treating it differently than we treat other unique human lives. You insist that the distinction between an embryo, between a fetus, between a newborn is one that matters to this argument, but you have offered no support for your contention.

"Let me illustrate my point with a question. Is it moral or immoral (or neither) to heavily pressure a woman who does not want children to become pregnant?"

I fail to see how this question has any bearing on this debate. Please explain.

On the numbered points:

(1) There are also a lot of people lying, overeating, murdering, stealing, coveting, etc. But let's deal with eating as its the most closely analogous. Eating is often very enjoyable and is, of course, necessary. At a point, however, it can become too much of a good thing and actually self-destructive. Couldn't the same thing be true of sex?

(2) Do you have an argument for why it would be morally permissible to kill an innocent for the wrongful act of another?

(3) I fail to see how it's immoral, if a woman determines she's unprepared to care for a child, to ask someone else to care for the child (adoption). If no one is willing to do so, then she has a moral obligation to care for the child whether she wants to or not. Again, the initial decision to have sex may have been immoral because of an unwillingness at that point to accept the responsibility for any child resulting from the sex, but that does not taint some future decision.

(4) Because the right to life is only the right not to be intentionally killed by another. The unborn child is no more intentionally taking the life of the mother than is a pregnant mother who drives too fast and has an accident that results in a miscarriage.

Matt:

"Moral behavior is defined by acts, not outcomes."

This is where we're going to disagree, quite strongly, I suspect.

"Thus, the moral analysis in the Half Dome analogy does not come down to simply a mathematical determination of what potential outcome has the greatest utility. ... Do you mean to suggest that morality is simply a question of utility?"

Not /just/ utility, no, but neither can utility be ignored. It absolutely factors in to the moral calculus. Which brings us to this:

"The question here is not which choice produces the greatest utility, but whether the father may morally kill his son in order to save himself."

This is a case where circumstances matter. In the example you've painted, the son is already dead, /no matter what/ the father does. So for the father, it's not a question of "either he dies, or I die," but rather a question of "either he dies, or we BOTH die." Because the son is dead no matter what else happens, he's irrelevant to the moral calculus -- there's nothing anyone can do to save him anyway.

It's no doubt still a terrible dilemma to be faced with -- I'd have a difficult time even imagining having to live with such a decision -- but I fail to see how both people dying is self-evidently the morally correct choice. Presumably, there's a mother at home or down on the ground somewhere, and maybe other children, all of whom love and depend on their father and brother. Is it really morally superior to have BOTH their husband/father and child/sibling die, rather than just the child/sibling? Why so?

Now if, instead, you had painted a scenario in which the father can spare himself by killing his child, but if he doesn't do so his child will be just fine, then that's a completely different scenario, and one for which I suspect we'd agree: the father can't rightly kill his son in that case. If the son's pointing a gun at the mother and/or other siblings, then you bet the father has a moral right to kill the son, even though the father's own life is in no immediate danger at all. So again, circumstances matter.

"By such determinations of maximum utility, we could justify some pretty horrendous moral choices."

I could say precisely the same thing about strictly rules-based morality. "I was just following orders" and all that.

"Are you suggesting that you are morally justified in killing someone who unintentionally puts your life at risk?"

If he's putting your life in immediate danger, and killing him is the only way to remove that danger, then yes, you are so justified (which should answer your two hypotheticals: raging fire, maybe, if you can't just push him out the door; crust of bread, no). I don't even think that's a particularly controversial position to hold. (I find your rejection of that position quite interesting, as it puts you seriously at odds with other libertarians I know on that matter.)

"It seems that in both these cases, you are considering the future welfare of the child - it won't be cared for if the mother is unable or unwilling to care for it, or she is unable to care for herself."

That factors into the argument, but is not its entirety. The welfare of the woman, the potential child, and society as a whole are all considerations. It is immoral for the woman to dump such a huge responsibility on unwilling others, even if those unwilling others would take fine care of the potential child. Obviously, it would be far better for her not to have gotten pregnant in the first place, and we should all be doing everything in our power to encourage her to avoid that outcome. But in the event that such an outcome should occur, she should abort, the earlier the better, before any kind of advanced brain function develops.

"As I recall, Sanger ... "

Guilt by association. Really? *rolls eyes*

I suppose I can just go right ahead and lump you and all abortion opponents in with Scott Roeder, since we're heading down that path.

Oh, and Hitler endorsed high-speed limited-access highways, too, so anyone who supports the Interstate Highway System sounds suspiciously like a Nazi to me.

"Please explain why the point of viability is determinative. Both pre and post viability, until the child is delivered, it is still physiologically dependent on a single, specific woman."

Because post-viability, there exists a new option that didn't exist before: she can deliver the baby early (through induced labor, a C-section, or whatever) and transfer the responsibility to somebody else. And because assuming she doesn't live in a state where abortion opponents have set up all sorts of artificial hurdles one must jump before obtaining an abortion (not really a safe assumption any more), she's had plenty of opportunity to abort pre-viability.

"Moreover, we still ultimately end up with the situation where, even after viability, the infant still requires support from someone in order to survive."

But again, at that point it can be /any/ "somebody," or, as you note, even a large group of somebodies.

"It seems your argument eventually boils down to the following"

Delete the naked spin, and that's more or less it. Of course, in the latter case, there may well be people who are more than willing to take on that responsibility. In the former case, nobody else could assume the responsibility /even if they wanted to/. Now, you can ignore these differences all you want, but this doesn't make them go away.

"The problem is that you have not offered any justification for the distinction and why it matters to this question."

No more than you have offered any justification for why we /shouldn't/ make such a distinction. In this case, I find it illustrative to argue by absurd anecdote (as you did with your Half Dome example). Suppose there's a building on fire, and inside the building are a cryo-tank with 100 frozen embryos and an unconscious two-year-old girl. You only have time to get one or the other out of the building. If the 100 frozen embryos are just "unique human lives" like any other, then the obvious choice would be to rescue the tank of embryos. But I can't imagine /anyone/ making that choice. To me, the obvious choice is to save the girl.

Why is this so? Why would we so quickly and instinctively make such a choice? Because deep down, we /know/ that embryos aren't the same thing as living, breathing children. The girl likely has a family who knows her personally and loves her deeply. The embryos do not. The girl is capable of suffering, and the embryos are not. The girl is self-aware, and the embryos are not. These are all obvious and important differences.

Once implanted in a fertile uterine lining, and assuming no complications or serious problems, would an embryo eventually /develop/ all those traits? Yes, it would. But it doesn't have them yet, and has never in its existence had them up to this point, so it's clearly not the same thing as a "living human being" as most of us would understand that term.

"I fail to see how this question has any bearing on this debate. Please explain."

It leads to a broader question: is it moral or immoral to heavily pressure a woman who does not want children to have children? Given that you have pooh-poohed utility as an important moral factor, your answer cannot be "it depends." It must be a simple "moral" or "immoral."

"But let's deal with eating as its the most closely analogous. Eating is often very enjoyable and is, of course, necessary. At a point, however, it can become too much of a good thing and actually self-destructive. Couldn't the same thing be true of sex?"

Ugh. The risible C. S. Lewis "Mere Christianity" argument? Really? The simple answer is "yes," as with anything else, too much can be self-destructive, but we're left with an argument about how much is too much, not to mention one about what the purpose of sex is (or if it has multiple purposes). From a strictly biological perspective, eating is virtually guaranteed to fulfill its objective, whereas if one views procreation as the sole objective of sex, it's far less reliable.

Of course, I'd argue that procreation is NOT the sole purpose of sex. Strengthening relationships, for example. This is especially relevant for a couple that already has children but doesn't want any more. A healthy sex life helps maintain a healthy, loving relationship, even if there's no intent to procreate (further). And if the "family values" types are to be believed, there's nothing more important a couple can do for the children they've already had than to build a healthy, loving relationship.

"Do you have an argument for why it would be morally permissible to kill an innocent for the wrongful act of another?"

Nope, but this gets back to my rejection of your premise that any embryo/fetus is the same thing as "an innocent child."

Then again, I can just as easily ask you why it's morally permissible to force an innocent individual to involuntarily take full, ongoing responsibility for the wrongful act of another.

"I fail to see how it's immoral, if a woman determines she's unprepared to care for a child, to ask someone else to care for the child"

It's not, as such. However, it IS immoral to PRESSURE her into bringing into the world a child she's unwilling or unable to care for (hence the question you deemed irrelevant) when no willing replacement caretaker has been identified.

"If no one is willing to do so, then she has a moral obligation to care for the child whether she wants to or not."

At this point in your argument, I see it has become convenient for you to ignore the "unable" part of the equation.

"Again, the initial decision to have sex may have been immoral because of an unwillingness at that point to accept the responsibility for any child resulting from the sex"

Right. I see this attitude from "pro-life" folks all the time, and it always mystifies me. A child is not a blessing to be cherished, but rather the consequences one must face as punishment for engaging in the sinful act of sexual intercourse. (Actually, they generally try to have that cake and eat it, too, pretending that those two are somehow not contradictory.)

"Because the right to life is only the right not to be intentionally killed by another."

So no rights are violated when someone is unintentionally killed, as through reckless behavior or negligence? By that standard, a person who puts their young children into a car without putting them in car seats or seat belts and then gets into an accident that kills the children has committed no moral wrong, because he didn't INTEND to kill his children. Sure, he could have taken simple precautions that almost certainly would have saved their lives, but there was no INTENT on his part, so it's all good. Right? (Wrong, of course. Intent matters, but it's not the be-all and end-all.)

Again, this seems an odd position to stake out, one I don't think I've ever encountered before.

Mr. D:

"Is it a human being? If not, what is it?"

See above.

It seems to me that the fundamental banter thus far, has been one of morality. While the definitions can be debated, what seems to be the most essential question is: when is abortion moral or immoral.

On the one hand, there are those who contend that circumstances are never appropriate to condone abortion. While on the other, the morality is conditionally dependent. This point strikes me, especially in the form of several comments:

Re: the Half-Dome (Tom) - “It's no doubt still a terrible dilemma to be faced with -- I'd have a difficult time even imagining having to live with such a decision [to sacrifice one’s child for one’s own sake] -- but I fail to see how both people dying is self-evidently the morally correct choice.

First, I think it would be a nightmare to witness the legal system sort out a scenario where a father cut his child’s rope, even in the face of his own impending death. But putting our justice’s system’s response aside (because that certainly isn’t a reliable indicator of morality)... This statement seems to ignore the fact of natural consequences. What I mean by this is that life is full of cause and effect. In society, these causal chains become much more complex, but necessarily remain intact.

In the context of morality, then, it seems counter intuitive to label as “immoral” something that is an inevitable consequence of prior actions. In the case of the Half-Dome, a neutral event, equipment failure, placed both the father and son in a dilemma. How is it “immoral,” as Tom seems to imply (according to utility), that they face the consequences of such an event (i.e. both men die)? On the other hand, it does seem possible for the father to sacrifice himself for child, or the child for the father, in a great act of selfless morality.

Causal sequences have no moral standing.

The way I see it, the natural consequences of a sequence of events is not moral or immoral. Decisions alone hold that potential. If the father decided to save himself at the cost of his son, however noble his intentions, it still seems entirely reasonable to say that the father actually killed his son, an act of immorality. To say that the son’s death was already sealed is an irrelevant point, in that, 1) no one can predict fully the future and 2) the end does not justify the means, for in the end we all die, and such logic can undeniably lead to horrific outcomes.

Re: morality of adoption vs. abortion (Tom) – “It is immoral for the woman to dump such a huge responsibility [a baby] on unwilling others, even if those unwilling others would take fine care of the potential child.”

More to point, in the case of adoption vs. abortion, I would argue that it cannot be immoral for the mother live with the consequences of her pregnancy. It may have been immoral decisions that initially put her in the situation, but it is not immoral to live with the consequences of those prior decisions. As Matt pointed out, the morality of a prior circumstance does not bear weight on the morality of a present situation.

This can be evidenced by the numerous examples of negative consequences that are suffered as a result of imprudent, immoral, or unintentional decisions. For example, suppose an accident leaves a boy mentally handicapped. He no longer has the ability to perform every-day tasks of survival without immediate supervision. This situation happens all the time, but we do not question whether it is immoral that the boy’s family, friends, or SOMEONE is forced to take responsibility for his care. The family or boy’s guardians are forced to accept the consequences of the sequence of events which resulted in their situation. This, we consider, is the moral obligation. It would be inconceivable, at least in my mind, to forfeit this impaired boy’s life due to his inconvenience.

The morality of a sequence of events can only be judged by the decisions made. Therefore, only a decision made that is contrary to the moral alternative can be “immoral.” If no decision is made, as would be the case to continue a pregnancy, then there can hardly be a claim to immorality made.

What I am talking about here is not justice. Of course, immorality should be held accountable, but the intervention of justice does not negate the moral neutrality of sequences of events. If you consider a basic example, one man shoots another. My point is not to say that there should be no penalty for the murderer. But would it be “immoral” for a close relative of the deceased to suffer this trauma, without requiring restitution from the killer? The answer, I believe is, no.

Mr. D:

A homunculus? I kid. More seriously, it depends on how one defines what a "human being" actually is, which is considerably more difficult than you might think. What I can say it (an embryo/fetus) is /not/ is a moral person. There's a decent 10,000-foot summary of this question here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/philosophical/moralperson.shtml

Ubermensch:

I don't think we're as far apart as you might think. Things which are inevitable are essentially irrelevant to the moral calculus. On that, I'm willing to agree. But in matt's rather extreme example, ONLY the death of the son is inevitable. The father's death is not. Whether he lives or dies CAN be controlled and changed in that circumstance, and thus his death is not the "inevitable" consequence of his prior actions. It's still contingent upon current and future actions.

" If the father decided to save himself at the cost of his son, however noble his intentions, it still seems entirely reasonable to say that the father actually killed his son, an act of immorality."

I don't think that's a fair assessment if you're talking about the situation that's been posited, one in which the son dies irrespective of what the father does. In a hyper-technical sense, yes, the father kills the son by cutting the rope, but the son was already dead anyway. So what, exactly, is the father accomplishing by allowing himself to die along with his son? He helps absolutely no one, and he arguably hurts the surviving members of his family who are dependent upon him.

Again, it's a terrible, terrible scenario to contemplate, but I still fail to see how anyone could think that having both die (when one death is preventable and the other is not) is the clearly morally correct answer.

Adjust the scenario slightly, and remove the father's decision from the equation. Instead, insert a neutral, non-interested party who has two choices: intervene to save the father, or do nothing and allow both to die. (He cannot possibly reach the son in time, so there's nothing he can do to save the son.) Just to simplify things, let's say for the sake of argument that this third party can somehow disconnect the father from the rope without actually cutting the rope, such that the son is still tethered until such time as the rope inevitably fails. I think everyone here would agree that in that circumstance, "save just the father" is clearly morally preferable to "do nothing and watch both die." If the death of the son is truly inevitable, there's no reason not to save the father. I don't think that moral calculus changes substantially contingent upon whether the person doing the saving is a neutral third party or the father himself.

"To say that the son’s death was already sealed is an irrelevant point"

When that point has already been stipulated by the person positing the scenario, it's entirely relevant. If the son's imminent death /can/ be avoided, and there /is/ a chance to save him, as I've already stipulated, that alters the moral calculus substantially. Context absolutely matters.

"As Matt pointed out, the morality of a prior circumstance does not bear weight on the morality of a present situation."

[digression] An excellent argument against the death penalty if ever I've heard one! [/digression]

"It would be inconceivable, at least in my mind, to forfeit this impaired boy’s life due to his inconvenience."

But this is true, at least in part, because in that circumstance we are not bound to a binary choice between "force Specific Individual X to be physiologically responsible for the other" and "eliminate the other." To once again use the death penalty as an example, I'll borrow a page from Catholic doctrine: as long as there's a way to prevent the convict from committing further harm against others, executing the convict is not morally permissible. If, however, the convict cannot realistically be prevented from further harming others, then (and only then) is execution warranted.

Now I'm by no means saying that a fetus is like a convict or that an abortion is like an execution (though I suspect most here would think the latter IS an apt comparison), just that the situation is illustrative: the action is moral in those specific circumstances ONLY because it is the less-bad of the available choices. Once other options become available, the moral calculus is substantially altered.

Tom,

"Because the son is dead no matter what else happens, he's irrelevant to the moral calculus -- there's nothing anyone can do to save him anyway."

There's a real problem with relying in whole or in part on determining moral questions by weighing the utility of the possible outcomes. Ubermensch at least hinted at some of those problems.

For example:

(1) How imminent must the son's death be? Let's say that the son hanging from the rope on the face of Half Dome has cancer and will not live past 18.

(2) How certain must the father be that he and his son will both die if he doesn't cut away his son? Is 75% certain enough? How certain must he be that the anchor will hold if he cuts the rope?

But let's apply your utility argument to another current issue: torture.

(1) Is it morally permissible to use sleep deprivation on a terrorist believed to know of other attackers and future plans for an attack?

(2) Is it morally permissible to waterboard the top military planner for Al Qaeda when he is strongly believed to possess information concerning a nuclear attack on NY? How imminent must an attack be? How many lives must be at risk? How certain must the interrogator be that the planner has the relevant information?

Why is it the choice, rather than the outcome that matters? Consider this. One man, incorrectly believing himself to have been terribly wronged by another plots the other's death. As the other man is about to enter an apartment building, the first man strikes and kills him. Unknown to the first man, the killed man was headed into the apartment building with the intent and the means to kill a family on the 3rd floor. If utility is the sole measure, then the homicidal first man acted morally by averting a mass killing by the second man. If it is only a partial measure, then the first man would have acted more morally than the second man.

Or consider the man who makes the choice with the greater utility without any recognition whatsoever of either the moral question involved or the potential outcomes. Has he acted morally, or has he simply acted?

It is the choice that matters and upon which the moral question must be decided.

"I could say precisely the same thing about strictly rules-based morality. 'I was just following orders' and all that."

No, you really can't say the same thing. There's no room in my position for an argument that one's action was moral because he was simply following orders. Each individual is a moral actor - excepting those mentally incapable of making such decisions.

"Because post-viability, there exists a new option that didn't exist before: she can deliver the baby early (through induced labor, a C-section, or whatever) and transfer the responsibility to somebody else."

So, you would force her against her will to continue to provide support to the child or undergo a C-section? Solely because post viability someone else can care for the delivered baby?

"But again, at that point it can be /any/ "somebody," or, as you note, even a large group of somebodies."

And if no one is willing to, will you let the child die or compel someone to care for it?

"If the 100 frozen embryos are just "unique human lives" like any other, then the obvious choice would be to rescue the tank of embryos."

But that's only because you are judging the morality on the basis of utility (or at least in part). As either choice would be moral, there would be no reason not to choose the young girl.

"Right. I see this attitude from "pro-life" folks all the time, and it always mystifies me. A child is not a blessing to be cherished, but rather the consequences one must face as punishment for engaging in the sinful act of sexual intercourse."

Where did I say, imply, or suggest that the pregnancy and resulting child is punishment? It's certainly a consequence of intercourse, but there's no reason to infer from that that it's punishment.

What if I grabbed the embryos? What logically follows? -- that the child is not human? No. Nothing logically follows from me being stuck on the horns of a psychological dilemma.

I disagree. If you believe that the embryos are 'proper' human beings, you have one of two choices, both of which are informative:

1. You save the embryos. This could mean that while letting either grouping die is immoral, letting the many embryos die would be more immoral. Or it could be purely utilitarian; either option involves a moral wrong (and hence, in a sense, one is bound to 'fail'), so one should save the greatest number.

2. You save the girl. That could be because you don't really think that the embryos are proper human beings, though you could still think of them as more than mere collections of cells. Or it could be purely utilitarian; either option involves a moral wrong, but the girl is capable of suffering, so one should save the person(s) who would otherwise suffer most.

So putting aside practicalities such as not being strong enough to carry the cryo chamber), which you choose tells us something very interesting about your sense of morality and/or utility.

On another tack, the embryo isn't a human being, it's an embryo. If you want to know what type, it's a human embryo. The hair I just discarded from my desk was a human hair (I assume!) Neither of these things was a human being. With just a little more work on cloning I'd imagine either one could *become* a human being, but as tgirsch points out above, in the normal course of events neither one would actually become one; the former would become a miscarriage, the latter would remain a hair.

Paul,

Re: the analogy of the cryo chamber and the young girl, Mr. D. is quite correct. The fact that there are two choices, either the 100 human embryos or the young girl, does not necessarily mean that one choice is morally right and the other morally wrong. Two conflicting choices may both be morally right, or they may both be morally wrong. If both choices are morally correct, then I see no reason not to consider utility (though no two people are likely to go through an identical utilitarian analysis).

Do you really mean to suggest that a human embryo is no more a human being than is a human hair? Please justify your contention that a human embryo is not a human being deserving of the same protection accorded to other human beings.

Matt - Yes I do. For now at least it has more *potential* than a human hair, and I willingly admit that gives me some pause. But it appears that's only a temporary issue; as I alluded to, we're not so far away from being able to clone a person from a human hair or other cells. At that point the embryo doesn't have more potential.

Putting that aside, why would I think an embryo is a human being. It has human DNA, but then so does a human hair. Aside from that I'm struggling for anything it does have. No nervous system, no thoughts, no awareness, no ability to express, no reaction to anything, and in the normal course of things it won't develop any of those characteristics either (except perhaps the very beginnings of a nervous system).

It can't love, nor can it of itself inspire love - the *idea* of a baby in the making can, but if I showed a hopeful couple a horse embryo and told them it was theirs they'd react just the same as if it was a human embryo.

It has no characteristics - it's not funny, or compassionate, or grouchy. It even lacks the most basic characteristics; so far as I'm aware you can't position a new embryo upside-down, because it has no 'top'.

So there are only two characteristic it possibly has that an actual human being possibly has. The first is the belief of others, i.e. it is a human being because that's what someone believes it to be. I don't consider that to be a defining characteristic of a human being, and in fact I find the idea disturbing (see the personhood discussion above).

The second, hypothetical, characteristic is a soul. I disqualify that because it's never been demonstrated that a human being that everyone would acknowledge to be a human being has one, so it seems irrelevant to try to apply it to an embryo.

OK, I took a shot at explaining my belief. Your turn!

Paul,

I think my task is considerably easier.

The human embryo represents just a single stage in the development and life of a human being from conception to death. From the moment of conception, barring some defect, disease, or outside intervention, the human embryo will be born, cry, celebrate her 13th birthday, dance with her father on her wedding day, welcome her own child into the world, and one day close her eyes and leave this world.

Throughout that lifetime, she will have varying degrees of consciousness, of brain activity, and of physical development and, ultimately, decay.

From the moment of conception, a new, unique and separate life exists. It is undoubtedly human.

"13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

Psalm 139:13-16

Ubermensch:

"The length of time remaining in the boy’s life should not factor into the moral calculus. Whether the boy has 10 minutes, 10 years or 100 years – I think that taking a life is a clear cut as that."

OK, we're just never going to agree on that. Among other things, it rules out the possibility of a morally correct mercy killing. Someone whose only choices are a slow, extremely painful death with great suffering and no joy, or a quick, painless death, is hereby relegated to the former.

I can also assume that your "time is irrelevant" logic is fairly specific to this example. Because it's quite problematic if you go back to my "my son is threatening to kill my wife and other children example." In that case, timing is everything. If he's pointing a gun at them RIGHT NOW, that justifies a vastly different set of moral actions than if this is something that he's going to do in two weeks or two months or two years.

"Regardless of this, sometimes the price of “doing what’s right” is very high. I realize that this logic will have no effect on you if your standard of right is entirely utilitarian."

As noted above, I'm not a "pure" utilitarian. Context matters, as I keep saying. And sometimes in life there simply is no "right" option -- there are times when we're only presented with an array of bad choices.

"I think that the ultimatum does not factor into the morality of the actions, they remain moral or immoral, just the same."

Again, if I read this correctly, you're arguing that an action is either moral or it isn't, and the circumstances surrounding the action are irrelevant. That's yet another thing about which we're simply never going to agree.

As to your responses to Mr. D's questions, I agree with your ultimate conclusion that you spilled a lot of virtual ink without getting much of anywhere. What surprises me is that you go through all that tortured reasoning, but then conclude with the just-so statement that "human-ness" [my term] is sufficient to warrant the (presumably unconditional) protection of life. Which leads me to ask how you feel about, say, capital punishment, or killing in self-defense. It also makes me wonder if you think it is uniquely HUMAN life that is worthy of such protection, or if it's ALL life, or somewhere in between. And in all cases, I'd like to see you justify your answers. :)

matt:

"From the moment of conception, barring some defect, disease, or outside intervention, the human embryo will be born, cry, celebrate her 13th birthday, dance with her father on her wedding day, welcome her own child into the world, and one day close her eyes and leave this world."

Of course, none of this follows. I mean, to pick off a couple of easy ones, she may actually be a he, she may never get married, she may be unable or simply unwilling to get pregnant, etc., so nothing after "cry" strikes me as anything close to inevitable. But far more importantly, per Wikipedia, roughly 25% of detectable pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion within the first 6 weeks, and nearly half of those embryos are without detectable defect. Not to mention the large number (I've read 75-80%, but can't find the link now) of fertilized eggs that fail to implant in the uterine lining in the first place, most probably due simply to poor timing.

So if human life begins "from the moment of conception," then we know that the overwhelming majority of human lives end in death within at most a few weeks of that moment. As I mentioned earlier, this would be a human tragedy on a level that absolutely dwarfs the number of such lives lost to induced abortion.

And, of course, if one doesn't happen to be a Christian, they're utterly unlikely to be compelled by your psalm. Even if we do consider scripture to be authoritative, we could very easily get into a cite war about when life begins or whether an unborn baby counts toward the "life for life" calculus. Let's spare the thread and not go there. :)

Tom,

Are you really taking issue with my argument on the basis that the embryo may be male rather than female, etc? I'm guessing your criticism in that respect was in jest, but I really can't tell from your post. Where you do definitely seem serious is with respect to the number of miscarriages, but I fail to see how that has any bearing on whether from conception on there exists a unique human being.

Do you mean to suggest that high infant mortality rates in some countries mean that the infants who do survive are not human beings?

matt curtis:

"Please justify your contention that a human embryo is not a human being deserving of the same protection accorded to other human beings. "

Why is that ball always in someone else's court? Why don't you justify your contention that a blastocyst has an overriding "right" to develop into an embryo, and then into a fetus, and EVENTUALLY eventually into a baby, and that the rights of the woman who must sacrifice 9 months of her life for this to happen are entirely irrelevant? Why not justify your implicit defense of forced pregnancy?

"I fail to see how that has any bearing on whether from conception on there exists a unique human being. Do you mean to suggest that high infant mortality rates in some countries mean that the infants who do survive are not human beings?"

No. I mean to suggest that if a "human being" exists from the moment of conception, and that human being is worthy of having its life protected at all costs, then by zeroing in on abortion, which accounts for only a tiny portion of "pre-born" deaths, you've clearly got your priorities wildly out of whack. It's akin to spending all your effort working to eradicate Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease while ignoring malaria, which kills several orders of magnitude more people.

But out of sight, out of mind, I guess. Those embryos may be just as worthy of protection, and there may be many times more of them, but doing something about that would be HARD.

Mr. D:

"You are certain because you use circular reasoning to justify your certainty."

Please explain. In what way is my reasoning circular? Are you suggesting that it is your belief that an embryo that has not yet developed a brain or nervous system /is/ capable of experiencing pain and suffering? Or are you suggesting that this is simply irrelevant? Either way, I fail to see how my reasoning on the matter is circular.

"Redefine people you don't like or who inconvenience you as non persons, and presto, you can kill them with no more guilt than swatting a fly."

Kind like how if you redefine women as just baby-making machines with no rights or interests of their own, you suddenly won't see anything wrong with forcing them to go through with unwanted pregnancies? Come on, we can play the demagoguery game all day long, but it's not going to get us much of anywhere. (Though I am now curious whether your overriding concern for the sanctity of life applies equally to war and capital punishment.)

"Mengele was wrong to redefine Jews as unworthy of life because he thought they were not persons. He saw them as human non-persons. Same reasoning was used against Dred Scott. Same reasoning is being used against pre-born children."

To swipe a phrase from a children's television show, one of these things is clearly not like the others.

"I predict the same reasoning will be used against the old and sick who are too costly to keep alive."

So how much it costs to treat the elderly and the sick is irrelevant to whether or not they should receive treatment? Good to see you coming around on health care reform and the public option! :)

"dogs don’t possess self-awareness."

Mine would beg to differ. Anyway, are you suggesting we should outlaw the euthanasia of stray dogs, aging pets, etc.?

"Listen, the issues of killing in self-defense and euthanasia etc etc are all interesting moral questions … and completely ancillary to this thread."

I don't see how they're completely ancillary. They're directly relevant, because the reasons sufficient to justify them either apply equally to a fetus as to a fully-developed person, or they do not apply at all. After all, per the standard you're trying to establish, a fetus is no less human than we are. So if it's ever acceptable to kill another human being, then it's conceivably acceptable to do so to a fetus, since it's the same thing, according to you.

Ooh, this is fun, let me try:

For the purpose of discussing whether human beings in the embryonic stage of life should have their life protected or not, I have yet to hear a moral argument in favor of protecting their life that amounts to anything more than hand waving and “Just because I say so”.

See how easy that is?

"The first question we should all ask before killing something is, what is it?"

Once again, I'd like to see you apply these questions to war and capital punishment, and see just how far you're willing to go in defense of this universal, no-exceptions right-to-life you're arguing for.

I think that the general opinion against which you are debating on this blog is not that

"her uterus and its contents are more important that she is"

but rather that

her uterus and its contents are JUST AS important as she is

There is a big difference here, and I think to ignor it is to simply "fight a strawman" so to speak.

"Why is that ball always in someone else's court? Why don't you justify your contention that a blastocyst has an overriding "right" to develop into an embryo, and then into a fetus, and EVENTUALLY eventually into a baby, and that the rights of the woman who must sacrifice 9 months of her life for this to happen are entirely irrelevant? Why not justify your implicit defense of forced pregnancy?"

Tom,

First of all, I have made quite clear that I don't believe the mother's rights are irrelevant; rather, my argument is that she possesses no right - nor does anyone else - to take the life of another who is not intentionally jeopardizing her life (and I should have previously stated, jeopardizing the life of another innocent). Next, the only case in which it is a "forced pregnancy" is rape, and the forcing is by the rapist. The wrongful act of the rapist, however, does not provide justification for the taking of an innocent human life. Thus, I disagree with both of your characterizations above.

On your charge that I should be the one to justify that a human embryo is deserving of the same right to life as the newborn, as the 3 year old, as the teen, as the adult, or as the geriatric, I have made quite clear my position and the argument in support of it. However, by the very nature of this argument the ball must be within your court. Here's why:

(1) We agree that the human embryo is just that: human.

(2) We agree that any human after birth possesses the right to life (at least to be protected from those who would kill, with selfish purpose and not in self-defense).

(3) You agree that at least by the time of viability, the fetus (unborn baby) acquires that right to life.

(4) Your argument is that up until viability, that separate, unique human organism is not deserving of the right to life.

(5) Thus, a necessary premise of your argument is that there must be some justification for treating that separate, unique human organism differently from all other separate, unique human organisms.

(6) You are essentially asking me to prove a negative; i.e. prove that there is not some justification, as yet unspoken by you, that exists for treating the pre-viability fetus (unborn child) as something other than a separate, unique human organism or one which is somehow not deserving of the right to life.

As to the reason we zero in on abortion, it is because laws are intended to target voluntary acts, not illnesses, diseases, etc. Moreover, abortion involves not only the death of the unborn baby, but the voluntary act of killing that baby. The law traditionally recognizes the wrongness of the act, not just the consequences of the act, as punishable: e.g. punishment for attempted murder even where no victim is harmed.

matt:

You may disagree with my particular phrasing, but as far as I can see, you're not disagreeing with the underlying substance. To wit: the right to life of the embryo/fetus trumps the woman's right to self determination, and a woman who does not want to be pregnant but is has no moral choice but to carry out that pregnancy, no matter what the surrounding circumstances may be. Nothing you have written has contradicted either of those basic positions I have attributed to you.

And contrary to your protestations, I'm not asking you to "prove a negative"; accepting your premises solely for the sake of argument, I'm asking you to make a positive case to support your arguments, namely that person A's right to life necessarily trumps person B's right to self-determination even in those cases where the two are in direct conflict, and that it is unconditionally wrong to intentionally harm another person who poses an imminent threat to harm you unless that imminent threat is intentional on the other person's part (i.e., your only right to self-defense is a right to defend yourself against someone who INTENTIONALLY puts your life in jeopardy).

"As to the reason we zero in on abortion, it is because laws are intended to target voluntary acts"

I'm really not sure why you suddenly brought the law into the debate, which was previously about morality and ethics (far from the same thing), but don't think you really want to introduce that aspect, as it undermines your repeated points about the importance of intent. The law does not make exceptions for those who UNINTENTIONALLY broke the law -- it may allow this to factor into the severity of the crime alleged and therefore the punishment meted out, but lack of intent does not absolve one of responsibility. Just because you killed someone accidentally, for example, doesn't mean you bear no responsibility for their death.

Applied to abortion, then, if abortion is legally akin to murder, then a miscarriage is legally akin to manslaughter, and we should investigate miscarriages as such if we are to be morally consistent. A woman who miscarried through no fault of her own might be spared punishment, but those who disobeyed doctor's orders during their pregnancy and subsequently miscarried, or whose miscarriages were otherwise preventable had they taken different courses of action, ought to be subject to punishment.

Even setting that aside, I question your implicit premise that outlawing abortion is the best way to reduce the actual number of abortions. And I also think that it completely dodges the question of why little or no concern is given to the orders-of-magnitude higher number of potentially preventable prenatal human deaths NOT caused by abortion.

"You may disagree with my particular phrasing, but as far as I can see, you're not disagreeing with the underlying substance. To wit: the right to life of the embryo/fetus trumps the woman's right to self determination...."

Tom,

I am most certainly disagreeing with you. The right to self-determination (a fancy way of describing liberty but which also tends to carry with it some incompatible baggage) does not include any right to kill innocent human beings. Thus, there is no right being trumped.

"...and a woman who does not want to be pregnant but is has no moral choice but to carry out that pregnancy, no matter what the surrounding circumstances may be."

Yes, for the same reason stated above.

"I'm not asking you to 'prove a negative'; accepting your premises solely for the sake of argument, I'm asking you to make a positive case to support your arguments, namely that person A's right to life necessarily trumps person B's right to self-determination even in those cases where the two are in direct conflict...."

First of all, as noted above and several times previously, I do not believe there is a conflict of rights here. One's liberty right, or even one's own right to life, does not extend to the taking of innocent life. I do not accept that I may kill an innocent human being in order to save my own life. E.g. I cannot strangle my life boat companion so that I might survive on what little food and water is left in the boat. I don't accept that I can kill, even if I possessed the means, the driver who has fallen asleep, drifted across the center line, and is now coming head-on toward my family and me in order to prevent the collision that will likely kill at least some of my family. But, I've made that argument repeatedly - that was the basis of the Half Dome example - so I'm not sure what more you're asking other than to prove there are no possible exceptions to the rule I've set forth.

On the other hand, you are arguing that despite a human embryo being human, that separate, unique human organism does not acquire a right to life and legal protection until it reaches viability. At that point, it seems, you are quite ready, under your formulation of the rights at issue, to trump the mother's right to self-determination with the fetus' right to life. That argument, frankly, does not stand to reason because, among other things, (1) you have not defined what the fetus is prior to viability (in other words, how it is not a separate, unique human being); and (2) you have not demonstrated why the mother may be imposed upon post-viability for a period of some 3 months.

"I'm really not sure why you suddenly brought the law into the debate, which was previously about morality and ethics (far from the same thing), but don't think you really want to introduce that aspect, as it undermines your repeated points about the importance of intent. The law does not make exceptions for those who UNINTENTIONALLY broke the law...."

Your points here are irrelevant to the question at hand. You had made an argument that rather than focus on abortion, we should focus on those things that lead to a far greater number of spontaneous abortions (miscarriages). My point was merely that it is quite proper to address voluntary acts such as abortion. In the law we do not outlaw disease, and we most certainly do not accept the idea that we should disregard protecting individuals from murder because far more people will die from malaria.

"Applied to abortion, then, if abortion is legally akin to murder, then a miscarriage is legally akin to manslaughter, and we should investigate miscarriages as such if we are to be morally consistent."

This too is a red herring. We don't investigate every death as a possible murder. In most cases, unless we have some good reason to be suspicious, we treat apparent deaths by natural cause as just that and nothing more. There's no reason to treat miscarriage any differently.

"Even setting that aside, I question your implicit premise that outlawing abortion is the best way to reduce the actual number of abortions."

That's not at all one of my premises, implicit or otherwise. There's no reason we can't tackle the problem a number of ways, nor even that outlawing abortion will have a greater impact on reducing the number of abortions than other approaches we might take. But it does not follow then that we should not outlaw abortion. Should we attack the violence arising from some drug use by targeting only the drug use and ignoring the related killings?

Ubermensch - why do you say you'd investigate women if spontaneous abortion became more prevalent. If miscarriage is potentially murder, shouldn't all of them be investigated, regardless of how many there are compared to expectation?

Matt:

"On the other hand, you are arguing that despite a human embryo being human, that separate, unique human organism does not acquire a right to life and legal protection until it reaches viability."

Among other reasons, because it has literally no ability to live on its own. Even a newborn baby could survive for potentially several days with nobody taking care of it. The argument that an embryo or fetus has a right to life that incurs unavoidably responsibilities upon the woman who carries it is akin to demanding that person A give up one of their kidneys in order to allow person B to continue to live.

"At that point, it seems, you are quite ready, under your formulation of the rights at issue, to trump the mother's right to self-determination with the fetus' right to life."

Not necessarily, though I certainly acknowledge that at that point the issue becomes more complicated. In a way, I /wish/ I could see the world in the perfectly simplistic black-and-white-and-no-grey way you do, but alas, I can't.

"(1) you have not defined what the fetus is prior to viability (in other words, how it is not a separate, unique human being); and (2) you have not demonstrated why the mother may be imposed upon post-viability for a period of some 3 months."

Well, a big part of the problem here is that we're simply talking past each other. We're not disagreeing about whether or not the embryo/fetus is "human," but about whether or not that's the only relevant fact here. You claim it is, and I claim it's not.

It's not that I haven't made the case for my point of view; it's that I haven't made the case for my point of view in a way YOU find convincing. But frankly, I'm okay with that, because that's simply not possible. On this issue, your mind is closed, and no argument anyone can make could sway you. (I suppose the same accusation could be leveled against me.)

"In the law we do not outlaw disease, and we most certainly do not accept the idea that we should disregard protecting individuals from murder because far more people will die from malaria."

Again with the law. I'm not talking about the law, and I've never been talking about the law. But if you want to talk about the law, then fine: the law is that abortion is not murder, and in fact is not even a crime. It's perfectly legally acceptable in almost all cases.

In any case, you're still dodging the issue. But I'm willing to let this point go. If you think it's "irrelevant" that you stand idly by while many millions of "human beings" die as a result of spontaneous abortions while you obviously spend far more time worrying about a far smaller number of deaths that AREN'T out of sight and therefore out of mind, then fine.

" We don't investigate every death as a possible murder. In most cases, unless we have some good reason to be suspicious, we treat apparent deaths by natural cause as just that and nothing more. There's no reason to treat miscarriage any differently."

Right, so not EVERY miscarriage should be investigated, but MANY of them should, and any women who miscarry who did things that are known to increase risks to their pregnancy should be prosecuted.

"But it does not follow then that we should not outlaw abortion."

Not in and of itself. But that's the step that seems to get all of the attention in the anti-abortion community, even though it's known to be one of the least effective things you can do. For whatever reason, things like actively promoting birth control and comprehensive sex education are non-starters for most abortion foes. Why, it's almost as if sex itself is a worse transgression than abortion.

Uber:

"the murder has full responsibility over his actions in exactly the same way that a women engaging in sexual intercourse does. "

OK, so you're leading off by equivocating murder with sexual intercourse. By all means, DO go on. (Side note: so if a woman doesn't choose to have intercourse, does that change the moral calculus? Do you disagree with matt about cases of rape?)

Oh, wait, I see you addressed that:

"Even in the case of rape: a bad sequence of events does not exempt one from living with the consequences of their situation."

So it's not even about the consequences of ACTIONS any more, just about the consequences of SITUATIONS. That's remarkably fatalistic.

"Even if the fault is not the mother’s, one thing can be sure, morally, the fetus should not be penalized. Therefore, eliminating the option of abortion, the mother dies. Yes sad; immoral? Hardly."

Yeah, it's abundantly clear that we're just never going to agree on any of this. I've been trying not to go down the slave-to-her-uterus road, but you're making it really, REALLY hard for me. And you're making me really, REALLY glad that I'm a man and not a woman, because if people like you ever get into power (again), it's going to suck royally to be a woman.

"See above."

I did see above, and I didn't see any contradiction whatsoever of my basic point. In any conflict of interest between a woman and the live embryo/fetus she carries, the woman loses. You can prove me wrong by giving me just one counterexample. Without that counterexample, I don't see how it's unfair to say that the rights of the fetus/embryo trump those of the woman as far as you're concerned.

Me: “Lack of intent does not absolve one of responsibility.”
You: "Exactly my point. I couldn’t have said it better"

Right, so a woman who unintentionally becomes pregnant with a child she does not want and has no intention of taking care of has a responsibility to terminate that pregnancy. Since the responsibility is hers alone, the choice of whether to accept or forgo that prolonged responsibility must be hers and hers alone. The rest of us would do well to butt out. :-)

More seriously, I should have phrased it a little better: lack of intent does not NECESSARILY absolve one of responsibility. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't, depending on other circumstances.