@Deviant:Scripter:
The only difference is that civilians are helpless and the unborn child is totally helpless.
In the above quote you admit that it is indeed a “child”. Now as far as I know, killing a “child” is murder, is it not? Murder is against the law, is it not?
Killing a child is killing a child. When it dies in an accident, it is not murder. When it dies on the reasons that make murder, it is murdered just as any other person that dies on the same reasons. Killing a child does not equate murder.
@cystic:
Interestingly enough this applies to many of my patients who still have a very significant number of neurons - and yet they can not think or feel anything (or breath apart from a respirator). Given these people’s burden on society - should they be allowed to keep living? A very unaggressive approach would be to simply not keep them alive - something we all might repudiate if thought he had a chance at life. Yet we are actively killing someone in the same state and this option is embraced by the pro-baby-death coalitions.
A tricky question indeed. I supposse the main difference is that the person in the coma/etc. once thought and felt. So, there are very slight differences between these two states you describe.
i agree with D:S on this one. Both the civilian and the baby are innocent. They are guilty only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In my mind they are both evil and tragic occurrances.
I hope that is a typo with you agreeing D:S, otherwise i didn’t make my point clear enough. I agree with the above, yet accuse that the civilian “collateral damages” are accepted as something that just “has to be”.
others of us believe that lives are valuable regardless of their age from our heart. Does this make me similarly dogmatic? Maybe.
When we break that down we come to the question: when/where does life begin. That would be another tricky question.
I’m of the “you were once told an eye-for-an-eye but i say to you love your enemies (etc.)” school. Pre-emptive eye-taking is inappropriate. Is this what abortion is? Or are we talking about hostilities in Iraq?
I don’t agree with pre-emptive eye-taking either. But as you might have noticed, my argument was not including each and every abortion, but abortion following a rape. So, i would claim that it is not pre-emptively.
One must consider:
- bad things happen to people. Regardless of if we planned it that way, we must live with the consequences - be it paraplegia of a ski-ing accident or a random shooting - it’s not fair and it’s not right. At the same time, is this victim permitted to take their misfortunes out on another person - their doctor, an orderly, or some person who pisses them off - by killing or otherwise hurting them?
This part should be taken by society, by punishing the wrong-doers. The question is, which part of society is to make up the order of the punishment? Should those who can’t be affected by a crime be able to set the penalty, or should those who can suffer it be the prime source for societies consensus?
- 9 months vs. life. One might suggest that if the woman by having the child would die then abortion might be more acceptable - that her right might well equal or even supercede that of the child. At the same time, given that she finds out about the pregnancy usually within a month, begins to show by 5-6 months and labors for typically less than 8-24 hours - is this an appropriate exchange for the death of a child?
But how is she compensated for this prolonged suffering from the crime?
You don’t want to victimize the child, so you seem to further victimize the woman.
