Women have a responsibility to more than themselves

Receiving a blood, marrow or kidney DONATION does not alter anyone's legal standing as a person. No individual rights are being impacted by either the donor or the recipient therefore that fails as a justification for overturning the current legal definition of personhood.

For the sake of argument let's examine a hypothetical scenario where a fetus is granted full constitutional rights at conception. That would immediately negate any 1st and 2nd trimester abortions and place the life of the woman concerned as subservient to her fetus. The life and rights of the fetus are considered to be paramount in that instance and that is where things start to unravel. What if the woman commits a cold blooded murder and confesses to the crime. A lawyer for the fetus would argue that she cannot be incarcerated since the fetus has done nothing wrong and it should not be forced to endure the penalties of imprisonment. So a murderer is free to go about in public at least until she gives birth. What if a young married couple from the Lebanon were to honeymoon in Disneyworld and she falls pregnant. Her fetus is automatically a US citizen now. Can a fetus sue the woman for abuse if she fails to maintain a proper diet and exercise routine that would give it optimum health?

We can go through all kinds of legal "what ifs" in this manner and find these sorts of inconsistencies that would cause legal mayhem just because the fetus have been deemed to be a person at conception.

The law of unintended consequences will come up with instances that we probably can't even think of now but suffice to say that the Constitution as we know it will be history in the Theists States of America.

 

Three things: 1) according to this then chaos in society is bad (e.g. anarchy) - hence by this account society ought not to promote chaos. This is still an ought claim. Still a moral claim in the classical sense of term. How should we live? Not chaotically. 2) Social order is not always good. If disruption is bad, then the civil rights movement was wrong - (wasn't MLK called an agitator? - this is the same claim made against the civil rights movement. - Are you saying that African Americans screaming loudly and forcing "their morals" on to racists was wrong? Do you think the pro-choice movement was wrong to push for change, or the woman's liberation movement, or the student protest movement in the late 60s and early 70s? Do you think women are wrong to loudly push for equal pay against a well ordered patriarchal system (in order to impose their vision on others)? I would say all of these were in the right. That they advocated just and good changes.

 

BZZT Wrong!

That is a moralistic fallacy!

Some laws cause harm to others (e.g. eminent domain) so to claim that they are based upon morality is specious. The example you gave of prohibiting drug use is another. Literally millions have been incarcerated because of the idiocy of attempting to legislate behavior. Certainly someone using drugs harms themselves but that is their individual right. Forcing them to change their behavior purely for sake of "morality" is bad law. Furthermore the harm to society caused by Prohibition and the phony War on Drugs far exceeds any "moral" greater good".

 

Okay, but these are separate issues. The issue right now is whether dependency can grant personhood. Just to use your own language for a minute, a woman who is kidnapped forced against her will (because she is the only compatible donor in the world) and forcibly connected to her 23 year old sister in order to give her a bone marrow transplant would certainly raise significant moral questions - I don't dispute that, what I dispute is that her sister would no longer be a person because of it. One can still be a person and be biologically dependent. Whether or not the dependency must be maintained is a different question. Now does then mean that the fetus is a person - no. But the question of what is and is not a person seems to turn on different types of considerations - namely, what properties must something have for it to be wrong to kill?

 

I doubt many people, no matter what their morals are, wouldn't like to live in the chaos brought about by rampant murder, discrimination, and other crimes.

Discrimination caused the chaos. Protestors rectified that.

Laws against abortion and lack of equal rights for women brought about chaos to women....legalizing abortion and giving all Americans equal rights resolved the chaos.

...and getting back to the topic, no, women only have responsibility for themselves....

 

No, the 23 year old sister is born, she is already a person. That can't be taken away . And she can be connected to anyone who is compatible (social dependency).

If she forces her sister to sustain her, her sister can use self defense to stop the harm. SHE didn't lose any rights.

There are no morals to discuss. Harming another without their consent is against the law.

 

No this isn't the moralistic fallacy. I'm not claiming anything about the good in nature or that what is, is assumed to be objectively moral. I'm saying that the validity of law is defended by appeals to moral perspectives (not that those perspectives are themselves right or good). In other words, the argument for drug law is based on utilitarian considerations (whether or not these utilitarian justifications are good reasons is an altogether different story) - so, no not a moralistic fallacy.

On the other hand, of course the war on drugs has lead to unjust incarcerations, but again that also turns on a moral argument - libertarianism - people ought to be able to live their lives free from influence, is a moral claim about what ought to be the case. Although one would be hard pressed to argue that society should allow for the sale of crystal meth to 3rd graders no?

 

In my example, she is connected physically to the only person that can save her. The relationship of the dependency is defined in biological terms - she is using the physical body of another to sustain her life. There are no other people who are compatible.

That is a separate issue to the question of what constitutes personhood.

But what makes killing wrong?

 

Generally, a good law allows people to exercise free will until their free will creates significant imposition on the free will of others. Much of this is common sense and agrees with traditions that have been followed by many religious groups, but when people talk about "legislating morality" they are generally talking about laws that attempt to force a person to follow some religious doctrine (like abstinence from sex or alcohol) without sufficient justification. Some laws (e.g. taxes) exist for practical reasons (not moral reasons). In order to provide services (e.g. maintaining roads or a standing army) the government collects money from its citizens.

For example, Prohibition (of alcohol) was initiated because many people believed it was immoral to drink alcohol. This was an attempt to legislate morality. It failed because there was not overwhelming agreement that the government had the right to intrude to this level in controlling individual free will. Now we have more reasonable laws (for example, restricting people from driving while intoxicated) representing a better balance between freedom and risk.

I believe anti-abortion law is a similar attempt to legislate morality. Some people believe it is wrong to interfere with pregnancy at any point after conception, so they want the government to enforce that belief on the rest of the country.

 

A 3rd grader is not an adult and cannot give informed consent so that is an inane deflection that merely weakens your position.

Laws are determined to be "good or bad" based upon how they serve We the People.

Let us take the instance of the SCOTUS overreach in Citizens United where they made the "Dred Scott" ruling that corporations are "persons entitled to free speech" rights. That was "bad law" because corporations are not "persons entitled to rights". Corporations cannot vote or be imprisoned or suffer from cruel and unusual punishment.

Under the Law of the Land a person is someone who was "naturally born", period. A fetus has not yet been born and a corporation can never be "born". The legal definition of a person is foundational to the Constitution. We the People are "natural born" persons who united for our own General Welfare. It is those who want to destroy the very basis upon which this nation was founded who seek make these disingenuous attempts to undermine and thwart the Law of the Land for their nefarious agenda.

 

I don't think anybody here is claiming that the dependent nature of the fetus makes it a non-person. The dependent nature of the fetus places undue burdens on the host, and thus represents an attempt of the fetus (if you choose to call it a "person") to impose upon and take advantage of the host (who is clearly a "person"). If you agree that the fetus is not yet a person, then it is entirely up to the host to decide if she wants to complete gestation when she discovers that she is pregnant.

 

We generally consider killing wrong because it forces the termination of a person (a self-aware entity). Without a functional brain there is no person. We do not automatically withdraw personhood from a person in a coma because (1) they have already crossed the threshold into personhood and (2) they may be able to resume normal function at some point without losing the personhood that they started.

When we are convinced that the brain is no longer functional, we allow the body to be killed.

When unequally conjoined twins have only one functional brain, we allow the body of the lesser twin to be removed and destroyed.

At some point, I imagine it will be possible to transplant a brain from one body into another. If Joe's brain is transplanted into Jim's body, I imagine we would destroy Joe's old body (or use it for organ transplants) because Joe's personality is now in Jim's body.

It is not the body that is important, it is the continuity of the self-aware mind that is the significant component of personhood.

 

The move to discuss the 3rd grader was to move to a point of mutual agreement - 3rd graders are not rational (and as such they can't be informed), so they are not prohibited from behaving in certain ways. Likewise, no one is allowed to sell to these children because of the harm it produces. Now we can work back from a position of agreement. Given that reason, those who are not rational, would not have certain freedoms to act (e.g. the insane). But of those who are rational, shouldn't society insure that they are informed (e.g. by forcing corporations to supply information labels). What about in cases such as Krododil (the alligator drug) - do people know what it does? The short life-term expectancy, the necrosis it creates, etc. Do you think banning some drugs that have far reaching consequences, which produce devastating and some cases irreversible physical harm, is justified paternalism? What about meat inspection and meat regulation - is this not a type of paternalism? Isn't it justified?

To say that laws are good and bad based on how they serve the people is a moral claim - saying the people ought to be served well.

But to be able to vote or be imprisoned or suffer cruel and unusual punishment would be to have experiences. So persons must be the kind of organisms that can have experiences. If a baby is born premature at 23 weeks and a fetus is carried past term, say 42 weeks, surely the 41 week old fetus is more intellectually developed, has more defined ability to feel pain, process experiences correct? So if birth is the criteria then the issue must be one of dependency not of capacities or capabilities of the organism. And for reasons I list above, this seems problematic.

Lastly, I'm not using morality in religious sense. I mean it as - what ought to be the case? Clearly your position above is a moral position making a case for what ought to be - even making good and bad evaluations of law.

 

Well there are those who have explicitly claimed birth grants personhood. For the reasons I have listed above this is problematic.

Quite right. This is what so much of the disagreement has been about - IF the fetus is a person, what consequences follow? But just getting to this point has proven elusive. Of course this is where the different perspectives come in.

Yes, I absolutely agree and this is what I have been saying over and over. If the fetus is not a person, the entire discussion about abortion is irrelevant.

 

The abortion discussion is not irrelevant as long as there are those who insist the fetus is a person...and there still are people like that.

 

Agreed. But when that occurs becomes the focus of discussion. Famously self-awareness in Michael Tooley and Peter Singer (and even Mary Anne Warren) have put the moral permissibility of infanticide on the table - and famously in the case of Singer - removed all sentient animals from the table (no pun intended) - since they too would be moral persons (beings to whom we have obligations toward). The farther up you move self-consciousness to remove animal sentience - the higher the age for infanticide - 8 month old vs cow? -the cow wins. The more you move down (intellectual capacity of 40 week old fetus) -the more animals you include in your definition. Warren tries to escape this issue of justifying killing infants, by saying that you can't deny potential parents the opportunity to adopt a newborn - but that seems problematic for a number of reasons (particularly when read in light of viability claims).

 

For starters it appears as though there is no drug called Krokodil here in the USA. Secondly it is an illegal drug so expecting drug dealers to provide "information labels" is ludicrous.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsu...ng-zombie-drug-swept-the-nation/#4d16d8f52e28

Laws requiring legal drugs to carry labels pertaining to side effects are not because it is "moral" to provide such information. Those laws were written because legal drug makers failed to warn people of the side effects and thus people were harmed. The law deals with the harm caused by withholding information. (No morality was harmed in reaching that all too obvious conclusion. )

Moving on to what you consider to be "problematic" when it comes to using birth as the determination for legal personhood. It is completely and utterly immaterial whether someone is born prematurely or even late as far as the Law of the Land is concerned. The birth event is the only criteria that matters. The reason why everything else is irrelevant is because We the People don't discriminate according to intelligence, or the ability to feel pain, or even that the woman concerned was an illegal immigrant giving birth immediately after crossing the border. If you are a "natural born" citizen then that is all that needs to be considered by the law.

No, I am not making any "moral decisions" about when the law decides that a fetus becomes a person. In the example cited above there are those who believe that it is "bad law" for an infant born of an illegal immigrant to be granted citizenship. However there are many upstanding American citizens today whose own ancestors arrived here illegally. Should they be deprived of their citizenship simply because of something that they had absolutely no control over in the past?

No, I am not using a "moral position" to determine what is and isn't good or bad evaluations of law. I am citing instances of theist attempts to legislate their morality on We the People and how those have been abysmal failures. If you want to prove me wrong on this position then please cite all of the theist based morality laws currently in force that are "good" for We the People.

 

It seems there is general agreement on both sides of the issue that we become self-aware sometime after birth. That being the case, why would anybody object to an arbitrary threshold of birth (to give the newborn the benefit of the doubt)?

Birth is a logical threshold in that it eliminates entanglements and impositions on the pregnant host. There is absolutely no excuse for assuming that this would lead to a "slippery slope" permitting infanticide. We are capable, as a society, of maintaining arbitrary thresholds in society (e.g. age of consent, age of emancipation, minimum age for a driver's license, minimum age for drinking) as long as there is some logical reason for that threshold. What reasons do you think people have for rejecting actual birth as the threshold for personhood?

 

Humans have a unique capacity for thought that goes beyond that of most animals (perhaps with the exception of the other primates). I would not object to including primates as persons (although most religious leaders in the Western world would object to the idea that a gorilla might have a soul). My experience with chickens suggests that there is not much difference between a chicken with, or without, its head (at least for a several minutes) so I doubt its capacity for sentient thought. My experience with cows suggests that they lack the good sense to come in out of the rain, so I have suspicions about their capacity for self-awareness.

To be clear, I do not claim a lifeform has to maintain a specific IQ in order to continuously qualify for "personhood." I just claim it has to have a brain that is functional enough to process thoughts. That is when the process of becoming a person can begin.

 

I'm not talking about theistic justifications of morality - this is only small attempt to ground morality - and theism fails, spectacularly. Theistic morality generally really breaks down into two forms (or variations) Divine Command Theory (DCT) or Natural Law theory. Divine Command Theory hold that what ever God commands becomes moral - but this opens the door to relativism, because anything could be commanded to be moral. including genocide or female genital mutilation. Hence morality would lack any content (any reason for being considered moral) - child abuse wouldn't be wrong because of the harm it caused children - it would be wrong only because God commanded it, the same would be true of murder or genocide. Hence the position in attempting to ground moral belief, actually undermines its own position and ends in relativism (or more egregiously nihilism if your Nietzsche). The quick defeater for Divine command theory is the following - why would such a God be worthy of worship? The theist can presumably only answer from a position of self-interest, clearly not something theists tend to look favorably on. This position has been defeated since Plato (380 BC) and the Euthyphro dialogue. As for natural law - it commits the naturallistic fallacy- they way things are not necessarily the way things should be - which ironically, is the exact same problem with legal arguments for why something should be accepted. I'm not claiming that the law doesn't grant rights at birth, I'm arguing that the birth criteria as a metaphysical position is confused.

As for Krokodil, the drug exists. Whether or not there is a Krokodil presence in the US has nothing to do with whether or not someone should take it. Furthermore, I asked if corporations should supply information labels in general - not drug dealers! To say that something is good or bad is an evaluation - you are making a moral claim.

There is a general concept of morality - a determination of right and wrong (good or bad) and there are conceptions of morality - including those of theists (as bad as they are) and various others. These are not the same thing. I use morality in its classical sense (going all the way back to the Greeks - meaning normatively - what ought to be the case). You have presented a standard consequentialist moral account here: goodness or badness is determined by its consequences, namely harm to others. That is a moral claim.

 

I'm not arguing that moving back to birth is unwarranted as a safety precaution, particularly given the difficulty neuroscience has had in defining consciousness. My guess is that it is later than birth, I move it back just to play it safe. But that's not my point. My point was simply that birth in and of itself grant personhood because personhood is defined by the ontological properties that it has - not by an event. Your position to move it back to birth for example, is not an instance of birth granting personhood, it's an argument that the fetus has certain criteria at that state of development that grants personhood. But where this gets tricky, is when you have a a premature birth at 23 weeks and a 39th week abortion. Because if birth is the criteria alone, notice that the more cognitively developed entity is not a person.

As for infanticide, the ethicists cited here (Tooley and Singer) argue that infanticide is morally permissible especially for infants that have serious disabilities and are not persons. I'm not arguing that society will ever allow for infanticide (of course not), I'm just pointing out what the personhood position logically entails. Even if it does go against our intuitions.

 

Here is an interesting (and readable) study by Cambridge Professor of neurology on animal minds (particularly pigs):
Broom DM (2010), “Cognitive ability and awareness in domestic animals and decisions about obligations to animals. ” Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 126, 1-11.

Interestingly domesticated animals are almost as intelligent as a 5 year old, according to the study (which means they are vastly more intelligent that a newborn and severely mentally disabled humans. To protect these humans and not animals would be sheer arbitrariness - speciesist to be exact (DNA not cognitive ability). Animals meet all of the criteria for personhood that a newborn does.

 

For legal purposes we would need a simple rule. It would be unreasonable to set a specific time (e.g. at 9 months it becomes a person), but birth provides an excellent threshold for the law. It is certainly easy to verify (even for a premature birth). The possibility of a premature birth at 23 weeks does not preclude the termination of a different pregnancy at 39 weeks. That is the natural result of allowing the pregnant woman to decide if she wants to risk a pregnancy or not. I thought we had already agreed the newborn is not sentient at birth, so neither event (birth at 23 weeks or abortion at 39 weeks) happens to a "person." For legal purposes we extend "legal personhood" to those who have crossed the threshold of birth. What is so tricky about that?

While infanticide (for a newborn with a severe disability like anencephaly) might be moral, infanticide would take place after birth so a different set of laws would be involved. There is no reason to bind infanticide to the abortion issue.

 

I am willing to believe pigs are more intelligent than some other animals, but I still have doubts about their sentience reaching the level of the primates. I would be reluctant to qualify a pig a "person." On the other hand, a typical human child does have a functional brain and (even at 5 years old) has a quality of mind that I have not observed in any other animal I have known.

I certainly believe we should be kinder to animals. I am not a vegan but I stopped eating veal when I learned how calves are treated to create the meat for veal.

Are you suggesting that it is immoral for us to protect our newborns from birth onward because we do not protect animals that are smarter than the average newborn?

I would say that the nature of the primate brain is different from the nature of other animals, so it is unlikely that they have the same self-awareness and imagination that primates do. I agree that we should be more protective of other primates, but that does not lead to a conclusion that we should move the threshold for personhood to some point before birth (or after birth). At most it means we should change the way we treat other primates (after they are born).