Corvus wrote:How does the analogy fall apart? The 14th amendment isn't doctrine, and has nothing to do with whether a man can lose their sanctity of life or not. Nor does it explain how a judge has been granted the authority to remove the sanctity from another man's life. Law and morality are separate, though they often come to an agreement. Law is the mutually beneficial agreement people give to each other when they live in a society. Morality is the perspective of a person or persons. Kerry's actions undermine the vehemence of his belief, not the belief itself.
The 14th Amendment (cf 5th Amendment) establishes when it is justified to violate fundamental human rights, including the right to life.
...nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. ...
Furthermore, law and morality are NOT separate. The law is predicated on morality, namely the moral theory stated in the DoI. When the law violates morality, it becomes unjust. You need look no further than the timeless words of Martin Luther King Jr. for in-depth arguments on this. That and the Nuremburg trials. You misdefine morality anyways. There is a difference between
morals and
mores. I for one reject the notion that morality is subjective. I believe there is only one way we OUGHT to live (most philosophers call it the "good life"). However, the way we DO live is indeed subjective, but I don't call that "morality."
I understand where people are willing to mitigate the vehemency of their religious views when running for public office. It's a different thing to try and catagorize a fundamental moral value (such as life) under religious doctrine and then run on a platform completely contradicting that value.
But life is not valued the same in all situations. You have written that, though you disagree with the death penalty, the value of a convicted criminal's life is not the same as that of an "innocent child". Why must a blank page be valued more than a written one? (Or a work-in-progress, for that matter.)
Well, I'm not arguing how things are, I'm arguing how things OUGHT to be. I'm against both abortion and the DP. However, I'm not as passionate against the DP because convicted felons face DUE PROCESS OF LAW. That's called justice. Certainly unborn children are not given due process of law are they, where's the justice? I believe they should be given due process however. Abortion should only be used if it could be proven in a court that the unborn child is threatening the life of the mother. When it comes down to the right to life vs. the right to life, the Court can decide. When it comes down to the right to life vs. the right to privacy, there is NO justification in which privacy ought to trump life.
Concerning your "blank page" analogy, think about the fact that the DNA contained within the unborn child possess the traits that are in the process of being written. From the point of conception a blueprint, not blank page, exists.
In America, I am given to understand that it is perfectly legal for parents or next of kin to terminate the life of a person if they are living only through the support of machinery. Perhaps Kerry trusts the consciences of mothers to know what is right or wrong, and hesitates to term the people who go through something as drastic as an abortion as "murderers", as you just come shy of doing.
I'm against euthanasia too while we're at it, unless the person had previously specified to an attorney that he does not wish to live under such conditions. I don't think the SCOTUS or John Kerry should fight to undermine fundamental human rights by giving people the benefit of the doubt, or by trying to mitigate the law to compromise with emotional appeals.
The term "murder" I think is accurate. If you intentionally end the life of an innocent human being, that's murder. It may not "legal" murder, but murder nevertheless.
ST88 wrote:It all depends on your definition of life. At the point of conception, the human embryo is essentially indistinguishable from a common bacteria.It all depends on whether or not you believe that some kind of "breath of life" is in this particular cell or complex of cells at this point.
Really? Do you have anything (i.e. biological/embyrological/science textbook) that compares an unborn child with bacteria?
Fact is though, we KNOW the child is HUMAN and not some other species. It's also unique/distinct. We don't think twice about destroying bacteria in the human body. Why do we think twice about killing an unborn child if it's no more significant than bacteria? Life itself is not sufficient in judging it's moral significance...
When you isolate each necessary characteristic, it will sound absurd.
And, yes, the law should keep up with scientific facts, but not the other way around. The law should not be used as a basis for scientific facts (only additional law).
Then why are we allowing the 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade to continue to define the significance of a human being, when science has helped show that human life begins at conception?
But I don't think you can slough off morality from religion that easily. Religion informs our sense of morality more than you acknowledge. A secular morality will have different characteristics than a religious one just by its very nature.
Morality is independent from both religious and secular
worldviews. In this case, it's about fundamental human rights, which obviously factor into every worldview. John Kerry, in trying to justify his stance on abortion, has logically placed the entire concept of fundamental human rights, namely the right to life, under the guise of his religious beliefs. I believe that's absurd and an a political cop-out. I don't think any atheist/agostic/Muslim/Jew/Christian/Buddhist/etc. would argue that fundamental human rights should be catagorized specifically under religious beliefs? Abortion is a human rights issue, not a religious issue. Unborn children are a group of human beings that are being discriminated against in this country and across the world.
Murder is a legal judgment not a scientific one. There are plenty of justifications for killing, if that can be the preferred term. Where we disagree appears to be who is responsible for the abortion of a fetus. I say it is the mother, you say it is society as a whole. If the mother is responsible, she has her God to answer to. If society is responsible, then we should all have to answer for allowing this genocide to happen. Is this a fair assessment?
I believe there's only one justification and that is the moral dilemma where it's life vs. life. And I'll be tastelessly blunt here; any other justification is based on inconvenience to the mother. Murder can never be justified based on inconvenience. The government has an obligation to secure fundamental human rights to all human beings. This includes unborn children. Indeed the mother will have God to answer to in the end, however, the moral and political foundation of this country (and other UN nations) tells us that people must be held accountable to society if they are going to unjustly violate another human being's right to life. And don't confuse government with society, especially without defining society. The government is to be held accountable on how well it secures human rights. If genocide occurs, the perpetrators AND the goverment must answer to this. BTW, that served as a moral justification for removing Saddam Hussein. He and his government blatently violated fundamental human rights and had to be held accountable.
Clearly, Kerry does not like it, but his standard for upholding the right to choose is legal, not moral. He does not call it murder. He makes a distinction between "life" and "personhood," which I believe is a legal distinction (correct me if I'm wrong). Speaking in strictly legal terms, I believe he is correct and well within his rights as a Catholic to express a political view. As for morality, I think he is actively trying not to press his own personal beliefs on the public. I, for one, am leery of government figures who claim moral authority via religion as reasons for their decisions. I realize I am in the minority in this in this country, but there I am.
I've read that interview transcript before too. He also commented a bit on that tonight in the debate. Relating directly to John Kerry, what I wish to know is WHY and HOW he attempts to make a distinction between "life" and "personhood;" given the fact that he does believe human life begins at conception. That's a purely arbitrary distinction, especially coming from him.
I dunno, *perhaps* John Kerry is just ignorant if he is not aware that the abortion argument transcends religious doctrine. My biggest beef with Kerry is that he is trying to pass the abortion debate off on separation of church and state.
I wouldn't want anyone pushes his religous worldview in politics either, even a Christian. But I do NOT want to see presidential candidates undermine fundamental human rights and justify it by "passing the buck" to his religion. I find that logically inconsistant.
Jose wrote:As for Kerry's position, I'm impressed that he has the courage and, yes, morality, to say it the way he has. Personally, he's opposed to abortion. Morally, he is also opposed to telling others that They Must Do As He Says. He is doing the right thing to keep his religious views out of other people's lives. I think that takes more courage and leadership than it does to say "do what I say because I'm Right."
In most cases, this "morality" wouldn't be such an argument, but since we're dealing with human life, I find it an important issue. Over 40 million abortions have been legally performed since 1973. John Kerry has come out and said he believes human life begins at conception so he MUST concede the fact that over 40 million human beings that have been killed since then. How can a person who sincerely believes 40 million human lives have been ended possibly reconcile that? Oh, separation of church and state. Riiiight
It's important to ask, as we think about this, whether it is morally correct to sentence someone to the cruel and unusual punishment of a living hell--say, for example, a life of forced prostitution, or neglect and abuse, or any number of other things that are likely to be forced upon children who are born into situations beyond their control and in which they are not wanted and cannot be cared for. These things happen, whether we like it or not. I think it is very likely that an early abortion would be preferable to these kinds of lives.
One thing is that potentiality does not factor in on moral significance. That is an arbitrary characteristic. Furthermore, the logical ramification is to suggest that one's conditions in life weigh in on the person's moral significance. Why not murder all the homeless people then? What about people who are genetically predisposed to diseases? Are these people who "live in hell" less human? If both my mother and father were alcoholics, would it be morally justified to murder me as a child since my life *might* turn out crappy? Additionally, I really have a sour taste for this argument, since I know a person who's mother considered an abortion. He's a college graduate, wife and kids, and cherishes every moment of his life. Who are you, the SCOTUS, or anyone else to be the premature judge to this person's life?
So, the obvious rebuttal is that life begins at conception. No, it doesn't. Conception is the union of two already living cells. Life began for these cells before they were eggs or sperm, before they had completed the cellular developmental program that gave them their particular characteristics. They came from parent cells, which came from parent cells, which came from parent cells, back until the first cell in their lineage.
Ah, but these cells were not genetically unique from the mother. The egg was simply one of her cells. Once the gametes came together to form ONE zygote, they no longer are two separate insignificant cells. Conception is the point where "parent cells" transform to become a unique living human being ergo moral significance and fundamental human rights.
It makes more sense to ask, not when life began, but when a human embryo develops the characteristics that would make it care whether it lived or not. It makes more sense to ask about the life that the person would face once they have developed enough to experience it.
The "characteristics that would make it care?" Well you know by now that I believe ANY additional characteristics to the three I've listed are arbitrary and/or unnecessary. Nevertheless, I don't see how you could do that since development is a constant process from the beginning. Consider the fact that newborn infants aren't even self-aware until about 6 mos, so under what qualification do we say they "care" and the same child a few weeks ago didn't?
One should also think about the biology of the fertilized egg. What do these little guys do? They develop for a few cell divisions, then attack Mom by invading her tissues and usurping those tissues to build a placenta. If the embryo happens to do this in the right place, then we get a pregnancy (unless mutations cause a spontaneous abortion). Sometimes the embyro does this in the wrong place, causing things like "tubal pregnancies" which can be fatal to Mom. It's not right to let Mom die because we somehow feel the embryo is untouchable.
I wouldn't say it's right to just let Mom die either. I would require a doctor to show before a Court that the mother's life is/was legitimately threatened (due process!). In a great majority of cases, pregnancy is a normal natural process for a woman to go through - that's what the womb was designed for after all.
It also makes sense to ask, as Kerry has, who should be the one to decide the fate, not only of the fertilized egg, but of the mother who is also affected. I would argue that the mother has the primary right to decide. She's the one who's having her body invaded, and she's the one who has the job of caring for the child once it is born. The rest of us have a right to discuss the options with her, but certainly not to force her to do what we say. I would also argue that anyone who has ever had sex with someone to whom they are not married has automatically forfeited the right to make this decision for someone else--unless they are willing to accept full responsibility for a child for each time they yielded to temptation.
The right to privacy does not trump the right to life. The unborn child is not "just a clump of cells" to be compared to that of the mother's fingernail. If the unborn child is a living human being, it is entitled to have it's fundamental human rights to be secured by the government.
As for your "if you had pre-marital sex, you have no right to argue this issue," marriage has nothing to do with fundamental human rights. Marriage doesn't give the child a right to life.
Like Kerry, I'd rather there were no abortions. But also like Kerry, I'll fight for a woman's right to choose her own fate for herself, and not have it forced upon her by others. Having our views informed by religious discussion is great. Having them enforced by religious totalitarianism is not.
Once again, this isn't a religious discussion. Mind you I haven't once cited Scripture to justify my beliefs here. If Kerry sincerely believes abortion is wrong, he ought to take a stand against it instead of letting politics undermine that moral value.
), I would fight for its dismantlement. But the majority of my fellow Americans disagree with me. Murder is a legal judgment not a scientific one. There are plenty of justifications for killing, if that can be the preferred term. Where we disagree appears to be who is responsible for the abortion of a fetus. I say it is the mother, you say it is society as a whole. If the mother is responsible, she has her God to answer to. If society is responsible, then we should all have to answer for allowing this genocide to happen. Is this a fair assessment?
