Here continues my political rants:
Abortion is morally wrong, no doubt about it. The question is whether or not is should be outlawed under common law.
First of all, it IS murder. If you take the undisputed legal definition of death: irreversible cessation of brain waves or vital functions, and reverse it: possible start of brain waves AND vital functions, then obviously a fetus is alive, because sometime in the future, after it's been born for a while, it alive, right? Dead is when they won't be alive again, so alive is when they CAN become alive.
Now, I suppose that gets a little funky if you consider than an egg can become alive if you give it a sperm, (and visa-versa) so is an egg alive? No, most people say. Ia agree. To reflect this, we shall restrict the ability to become alive later to normal stuff, like being fed and such. Any human, including a fetus, obviously won't be alive later if he/she doesn't get food and ought to be alive later if they DO get food. In the converse to special events happening to the egg, I guess a dead guy could be brought back to life is we pay a 'special' billion dollars to transplant his brain into a bunch of donated organs or something. So, even in the instance of an egg and freshly dead guy, the correlation between fetus and human holds true.
Second, the real issue (the one I am not certain about) is whether or not the fetus is the property of the mother (or father or both). See, the parents might 'own' the child like a piece of property - this might be an argument in favor of abortion. If I 'own' a million bucks, I can burn it and no one will send me to jail. At what point does a child get promoted from property to rights given to normal people under common law?
a) At some age number: NO. We can't arbitraily pick some number or position like birth or 18 to get rights. It needs to be based on something.
b) When the parent(s) release the child. This is, whenever they want to. This leaves the unfortunate option that they can NEVER release the child and hold a death threat over his/her head whenever they want. This doesn't make any sense.
c) At conception. God is the one who gives moral rights anyway. Parents wouldn't have ANY rights over their child or over themselves if God didn't give the right to them. Heck, they would even HAVE a kid if God didn't give it. I hold to conception. If you have a child, you must recognize that you are making a decision to create another human with rights that will depend on you.
Rape and threat of death to mother:
a) In the case of rape, I view it just like all other accidents. A drunk rams into you (car accident). They can't pay and you were dumb enough not to get car insunrance. You still have to pay, right? So the unfortunate mother still has to have the child. If worried girls want to 'buy insurace', they can carry pepper spray, learn karate, run fast, be street smart, go on the pill all the time...you have imaginations.
b) The birth risks the mothers life. Honestly, with todays medical practices, I doubt this would come up. If some crazy person can have 7 (or was it 8?), they can save a mother and child. However, I don't know much of the science behind giving birth and I think I already know more than I want to at this point. If it really is trouble, I'd treat it the same as insurance. Say the woman is married. You don't want to risk your life in birth? Then find some way not to have kids.
But right there in the moment, when two lives are at stake, I really don't have much to say. I would try to save both and hope for a miracle probably, or go for the child because parents would probably give their lives for their children anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment