Abortion?

"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased." - Alexander Hamilton.

There is no divinity, but the message is the same - rights are rights by the nature of humans. Legal documents attempt to recognize these rights, and if they fail to do so, it is the law, not the rights, that must be rewritten.

 

Ahh, this is not what I meant. I meant ..

It is our systems that make up our body, and once our systems are finished, or in some cases, almost finished, we are considered human.

Traits. You know, the traits that classify us? The traits that make us human, animal, or plant.

Tool-use, emotions, personality, and morality .. Traits like those?

Some of those can be said for human and animal, but my case is silent, for now. :]

 

Why is it our systems that make us human?

What about an immoral, unemotional, boring, person who lives naked in the jungle (tool-less)? Are they a person?

 

Because without our systems, in the first place, we would not be human, but only a fetus.

Hmm, good point. I .. Have nothing to counter-act with that.

 

There is the case of the man who has his systems replaced by machinery. According to your definition, he should not receive rights.

 

Kill your child to survive you mean? Way to go.

 

My definition of this sort basically says that a fetus should not receive rights until it has enough in it's body to be considered human. This, in different terms, means that once that fetus becomes a human, it has received rights.

The man who has his systems "replaced", has already had his systems make him human.

If the case was as you were thinking, then the older you get, the less rights you should receive, because your systems aren't as strong when you're younger(birth) as they are when you're older.

Is this what you think?

It's called cannibalism. Kill your child, eat your child when you're on the brink of starvation and death, and you survive for a longer period of time.

It's not ethical, nor do I support it, but it makes sense, even if you try to make it sound like one of "those" moves.

 

How can you define a human by their parts? You're ignoring rationality, consciousness, ability to feel pain, and focusing entirely on whether or not their liver has arrived.

 

I'm ignoring these because like you implied, even someone with no sense of rationality or emotion is still considered human.

What about a man with only 4 senses? He cannot feel. This includes pain. Is he still human?

As for consciousness, I do believe that I've stated this as one of the characteristics of being "human". If I haven't, I meant to.

 

I know i would have no problem in killing someone in order to secure my life

 

I think this sort of definition fails. Since human bodies are just the biological machinery we use to express ourselves, why should the (human) body alone have rights? It shouldn't. The people inside those bodies deserve the rights.

The question central to whether a fetus should receive rights or not is this:

When is a fetus a person?

And this is something the medical community in the West have decided on; the beginning of personhood and rights starts when the fetus can feel pain at about 24 weeks. This is very conservative in my view, given that fetuses "sleep" their whole way through their time in the womb, and that pain is a mix of cognitive and emotional factors, many of which fetuses do not possess until well after birth.

 

To pose a question - is a man in a coma deserving of rights?

 

Yes and no.

This man has the right to live, even if he isn't in a conscious state.

This man hasn't the right to vote, because he isn't in a conscious state.

 

A man in a deep coma may be compared, in some respects, to a fetus. Both are nonrational, yet one has the right to life, while the other does not.

As The Fat Controller said, why do your body parts grant you rationality? If you think into it, they are just alignments of atoms, molecules, and cells. Why would they grant a person rights?

 

i dont think its right because everyone should have the right to live. although it is the womens body so she should have some say in it

 

This is true. But to a certain extent, I do not believe that a woman should have an abortion at any time for any reason though. I think that there are circumstances where having an abortion would be the only reasonable thing; for example if she got raped, was on heavy medication, or she used a method of protected sex, but to no avail. You can not take a woman's right to have an abortion. Who are you to tell her that she can't have an abortion, it's her baby! You're not the one having it.

 

It may be her baby, but if she leaves it so long that the fetus is developing human characteristics, it has a right to life; and in a sense that is depriving the baby of it?

 

i think that abortion is WIN

 

It's not a child until the 3rd trimester of pregnancy. Before then, its a fetus and a fetus doesn't deserve human rights as its a bunch of cells, not a human being.

 

idk i mean in sense its a human life form. if your wanting to get technical its not. if i got a girl pregnant im pretty sure i wouldnt want it aborted =/