Denying Government’s Most Basic Purpose
Darwin Writes:
I’m not sure your argument is factually true. Roe V. Wade doesn’t actually specifically allow a woman to determine whether something is alive, right? Doesn’t it just make abortions legal?
The de facto end result of Row versus Wade is that women were given the extra constitutional right to determine when human life begins. This is perfectly captured by the fact an assailant that harms a pregnant woman that wants her child will be charged with homicide if the fetus dies as a result of the attack. However, the same woman that decides to have the fetus aborted will not be charged with homicide. The result here is that a woman is given the extra constitutional right to determine when life begins.
Take for example the highly publicized Scott Peterson case several years back. At the end of the trial, Peterson was convicted of homicide of his wife and unborn eight month child (They are called children when the mother wants the fetus). Had the mother not been murder but elected to undergo a late term abortion she would not have been charged with homicide.
In this context, the application of murder is contingent on how the mother regards the fetus. A mother that regards the fetus as living can declare homicide while that same mother that regards the fetus as non-living can declare it not a homicide. Hence, the right to chose is a de fact right to determine what constitutes a living human in a certain context.
Allowing the government to define when life begins is like allowing the government to define what constitutes a family, or allowing the government to what IQ score you need in order to be considered ‘gifted’
How about letting the government determine how much wealth one can acquire before some of it should be reallocated or letting the government determine what kind of curriculum children should be taught at school. I must say its odd seeing you appeal to a libertarian argument in defense of abortion. I’m also surprised to see you express distrust of government when you blithely accept its role in redistributing wealth.
In any event, as I had already stated with Jamie’s comment, my idea is to ratify a constitutional amendment. As I’m sure most are aware, constitutional amendments require the most stringent criteria before they are passed into law. This rigorous criterion insures that the largest majority of people agree to this definition before it is passed. In no sense is this allowing the government the power to determine what life is. If anything, this is an attempt to restore the definition of life into the hands of the people away from the government.
I really don’t like the term ‘government’. It’s much too broad and is often used in poorly articulated arguments like your current one. However, if I’m to indulge, arguably the most important role government has is determining what can and can’t be killed. With this most basic determination government is able to establish the safety and security necessary for civilization. As I have stated on countless times, government is by definition the entity that has monopolistic power over coercion. It has this power for the explicit purpose of protecting its civilians. This odd extra-constitutional right for a subgroup of citizens, in addition of smacking of discrimination, strikes against the fundamental principle from which government is built. That is the right to determine who lives and who dies.
To blend the last two paragraphs into a more coherent whole I would say that the people, measured by the ratification of a constitutional amendment, should define what life is to allow the state to go back to providing its most important role. Protecting it’s citizens from murder. This clearly would include fetuses that have developed past the point the people have decided constitutes life.
November 15th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
I have to agree with Steve that some sort of concrete definition of when life begins might eliminate the gray area that consumes the abortion debate– in fact, there would cease to be a debate. However, it would certainly piss off a large group of women. Their contention, as always, would be that the government could tell them that even though they have this growth inside them that they did not want, they were no longer within their rights to remove it.
Personally, I think that abortions should be totally legal. It’s not as if women take them lightly; a woman who chooses to have an abortion probably has a good reason to do so (and she probably knows a lot better than the government whether she is able to raise a child or not).
Now I know a pro-lifer would cry out at the death of an unborn child, but guess what: it is not their child. It is an unborn non-person. If I was a woman I would ask a pro-lifer to keep their opinions out of my body. But it doesn’t seem to be within the Christian right to stay out of other people’s personal lives. I don’t like it that people indoctrinate their children with religious dogma, but I don’t try to pass legislation to stop them.
Abortion is not an Ideal solution, but we do not live in an Ideal World. Ideally, the fetus could be taken out of the woman’s body and placed within a pro-lifer who would birth and raise the child. But we don’t have the technology. Or a large enough group of pro-life women willing to carry someone else’s child to term, and then raise it. Some day perhaps, but not today.
November 15th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
As far as a definition of life, I would be fine with it beginning either as the child emerges from the birth canal, or perhaps as soon as the child is capable of living outside of its mother.
A person who kills a fetus against the mother’s wishes should be subject to a new “fetus killing” law that carries the same penalty as murder (0.5th degree murder?)
November 15th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
“The de facto end result of Row versus Wade is that women were given the extra constitutional right to determine when human life begins. This is perfectly captured by the fact an assailant that harms a pregnant woman that wants her child will be charged with homicide if the fetus dies as a result of the attack. However, the same woman that decides to have the fetus aborted will not be charged with homicide. The result here is that a woman is given the extra constitutional right to determine when life begins.”
Darwin already demonstrated this to be false.
“Had the mother not been murder but elected to undergo a late term abortion she would not have been charged with homicide.”
I was under the impression that you can’t just ‘elect’ to undergo a late term abortion - that it was only permissible if you can demonstrate that continuing the pregnancy would be hazardous to the woman’s health. Even then, isn’t there an exception for babies that are ‘viable’ in terms of having the ability to survive with medical assistance outside of the mother, which the baby in that case might have had?
The trimester system does most of the work you want done. Admittedly, the way it happened set a bad precedent, but I think the mechanism you are suggesting to reach a very similar end is a lot less likely to ever succeed.
November 15th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Dan.
1. No he didn’t.
2. You are wrong.
November 15th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
http://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/spibs/spib_PLTA.pdf
California, the state in which Scott Peterson resided, has a ban on late-term abortions, with an exception for cases where continuing the pregnancy would be a threat to the woman’s “life and health”.
“If anything, this is an attempt to restore the definition of life into the hands of the people away from the government.”
I thought you believed in democracy? Isn’t part of that the idea of democracy that the government is of the people?
“I’m also surprised to see you express distrust of government when you blithely accept its role in redistributing wealth.”
Which demonstrates more trust of the government - suggesting the implementation of an accountable system of wealth redistribution fully overseen by the representatives of the people, or advocating a program allowing the government to spy on its own citizens?
November 15th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
More here:
November 15th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Steve: I often have problems with saying too much, so let me try to state my position clearly and unambiguously.
-It is the government’s position that a foetus is alive, and therefore killing it is murder.
-It is the government’s position that abortion is legal, and serves as an exception to this rule.
-Similar exceptions include thing like killing in self defense or capital punishment, each of which are cases in which you are allowed to kill someone who is alive and have it not be murder (or at least, not be prosecuted for it).
-I suspect that, if a woman was attacked and the foetus was killed, she would not have the option of declining to press charges for that death- rather, the state would press murder charges regardless of her decision.
November 15th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
You are aware that partial-birth abortion and late term abortion are not synonyms, yes? If you want to have a discussion about partial-birth abortion in particular, or make an argument about how it is pertinent enough to the example you have chosen to warrant singling it out, that’s fine, but simply posting the link causes some unclarity.
November 16th, 2007 at 10:04 am
And what if LIFE (after being determined and defined as such) in itself becomes a condition which people claim to not have wanted? To add a bit more confusion: There are so many cases where the fact that a child SURVIVED an abortion were put to trial: Doctors were sued for malperformed abortions and had to pay for that. Some of those who were meant and wanted to be dead are turning 17 this year and the fact that they live is a legal case. Life as a legal case…
Mensch - I think you better stick out of this precedence, incidence, individual case, personal decision debate, cause it may be indeed a bit too complex to get a solution for here on this platform (which mainly consists of members of only one “subset” of humans - so much to the diversity on this blog) . The least of all solutions, however, is to change your amendments - there are other issues of more public relevance (as opposed to the cases you presented here - as I said, all individual cases, where the local jurisdictions can work on pretty well without changing the whole consitution) that need to be addressed before you foolishly start to define “life” via your constitution.
November 16th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Are you suggesting that our gender causes us to be less capable of handling the complexity of the issue?
Imagine if I were (hypothetically) to say the same thing to you about any other subject. Would you find that offensive?
November 17th, 2007 at 2:21 am
“Are you suggesting that our gender causes us to be less capable of handling the complexity of the issue?”
no, I was just counting.
If however, the pointing out to the obvious imbalance in gender distribution (which is completely unrelated to the complexity of the topic) caused psychological harm to anyone, I am truly apologizing.
November 17th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
I’m hard to offend, generally speaking. I manage to reside in the same dwelling as Steve, remember? I just was trying to understand why our gender should make any difference in regards to our participation in this discussion.
But it is my opinion that this is inevitably a public policy issue, given that even complete government non-involvement is still a form of policy.