Xelios ... a couple of perspective points
However, we have to remember here, we are not dealing with just her body any longer. We are dealing with an infant child as well (whatever stage of development it may be in). The question is, does the woman have the right to chose whether this child is allowed to live? If so, at what point does she no longer have that right? When the child is 2 months along? 3? 8? How about when it's 3 years old? 5?
The first perspective point, I admit, seems cold: I live in the United States of America. (I'll get back to that.)
If a woman gets pregnant "by accident" (and not by any type of forced pregnancy such as rape) then she took on the risk that she may end up pregnant. She made the choice to "make herself available" despite this risk, and if she gets pregnant she should have to live with the consequence (if you can call a child that). If you don't want to have a baby, keep your pants on. I'm afraid I'm going to have to agree with KB on this one.
I agree with the idea that the best prevention is to keep the pants on. And I won't even get into the practicality of that. The second perspective point pertains to what happens when we start making such considerations as the above.
I live in the US of A
Actually, this doesn't mean a whole lot. But at the end of all of our American compassion and greed, our love and hate, our union and disparity, is a document which represents the highest of human causes: justice. We're all familiar with the phrase,
Justice is blind, but what does that really mean?
* Presumption of innocence. It seems quite odd that we should have to argue about trivial matters if, say, a man is videotaped in the midst of a shooting spree. However, 'tis better to walk a thousand murderers than to endorse the execution of an innocent human being. That is to say that, as trivial as it might seem, we should at least demonstrate the connection 'twixt the man on the videotape and the man in the courtroom.
* We let a man walk from the three-strikes law in the Seattle area on a technicality. The newspapers didn't have time to critique the legal approach before he went out and committed a rape. I don't even know at present what the technicality was. The point being that despite the miserable result, the law was, actually, upheld.
These points lend toward the coldness of the Constitution. It is there for us, but we must know what to do with it.
And this is what I mean when I say I live in the United States of America. It's the supreme law of the land; if you enjoy the rights it affords, you answer to that clause. But it is not there to make certain judgements, only to provide the conventional basis for that judgement.
Of technicalities: does anyone know where the Miranda Act comes from? For those unfamiliar with the American judicial enterprise, when one is arrested, one is read a short list of rights which
must be preserved. They are: 1) the right to remain silent, 2) the right to an attorney (at public expense if necessary), and 3) the right of communication (e.g. a phone call).
In my youth, the 1980s, we heard much in America about the "rights of criminals". People wanted the Miranda Act revoked because we were "giving too many rights to criminals". (e.g.--
He killed someone, and we're protecting his rights?) Such an attitude, while it seems a proper sentiment, overlooks a couple of points. First, the suspect is still presumed innocent, and therefore is entitled to these rights. Secondly, the Miranda Act would not have been necessary in the first place if police in, I believe Florida, in searching for a rape suspect, had not seized a migrant worker named Ernesto Miranda and, in essence, tortured a confession out of him. Ernesto Miranda turned out to be innocent of the charge he confessed to. Ever been shackled and hosed with icy water in an attempt to extract a confession? The Nazis knew how to do it. And so do the Americans. The idea of a
technicality upon which we walk a guilty suspect is a necessary byproduct of ensuring the rights enumerated in the Constitution. Cold, yes. Proper, yes.
It is demonstrable that without such bulwarks, authority oversteps itself. In the state of Washington, we have a protected right to privacy. To get around this, police will detain a suspect and take up to four hours to "run a license" (check the validity of your ID). It has the same effect. In New York, Rudy Giuliani had the police department arresting stoners on "quality of life" offenses, held them in jail overnight, and turned them out without charging them. The courts have considered this inappropriate. While, technically, Giuliani wasn't breaking any laws, the purpose of his actions was determined to have malice against the rights of the suspects (if you can't charge them, why arrest them?) and the courts have ordered the process stopped.
Perhaps rights would be an easier subject if we didn't abuse our sense of rights. Precedents are set regardless of the crime: if you undermine the legal system escaping a drug possession charge, you open a loophole for an accused murderer. Perhaps rights and due process would not be so corrupted if we did not abuse them by inventing reasons to arrest people (e.g. stoners, and, in the past, homosexuals).
The end result of the whole mess is that while it would be nice to isolate abortion as an issue and figure the right thing to do, we run the risk of undermining rights. As cold as it is, we must honor those rights.
One cannot establish that a woman "invites" a child to grow within her from the simple consent of sexual intercourse; that is tantamount to a woman "inviting" rape by simply opening the front door. It is possible, then, to honor both the mother and child's rights by applying lessons from Sparta; the general effect would be just like abortion, unfortunately, and without the sanitary protections. Quite simply, we can offer the right of life to that zygote/fetus/child and, if it can't survive outside the mother's womb at time of extraction, so be it. Cold? Cruel? Perhaps. But the matter of it is that as soon as you establish the rights of a living person for that zygote/fetus/child, you are also assigning certain responsibilities to it. That it is not capable of avoiding the situation does not excuse this "person". We do not execute murderers who are incapable of distinguishing their acts, but we do, in fact, incarcerate them. We do not excuse sexually-overcharged retarded persons for their rapes. Nor should we excuse this "person" its intrusion on the mother. If sexual intercourse uniformly resulted in pregnancy, we might have a way to work around this point, but unfortunately, such is not the case.
But the law is what we're considering; the moral of right and wrong is separate from the law. The law's responsibility is to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Included in that greatest good is the idea of self-determination. The law cannot revoke rights given without due process; the establishment of rights to the "child" inside only lasts that long. Upon the birth of the child, those rights will be lifted and awarded to a guardian. Would anyone like to take a whack at characterizing that particular judical proceeding?
In that last sense, we revisit
Taken's point about punishing the child for the parents' mistakes, as well as my counterpoint that such is the way of things. How is it that for those first nine months that "person" is given immunity from punishment for other people's sins, yet upon their entry into the functioning world, it becomes par for the course? And that leads to the second point:
Extraneous considerations
It isn't that I disagree with the notion of abstinence being the best solution. But let's take a look at that:
What we're dealing with is considerations extraneous to the laws discussed. They are, at best, motivations of what is or of what some feel should be. What
should be is never what is. We cannot expect an exception to that rule.
If we undermine the cold clarity of governing law with the warm mush of sentiment, we do the whole of the living endeavor a disservice. Take a look at the present war/inquest/manhunt/whatnot. The idea of Americans violating human rights based on mushy sentiment wouldn't be so shocking if we hadn't gone out of our way to invent a term to excuse ourselves. But the truth of the matter is that by rules of POW's or by the US Constitution, the current flap about Camp X-Ray points toward human rights violations. Anyone who points out that these are Taliban monsters, Al Qaeda monsters, terrorist monsters, or whatnot, is merely accepting the mush of patriotic sentiment. Does anyone realize that the term "unlawful combatants" is utter BS invented to circumvent the law?
Or the plague of "drugs". The situation is apparently so dire that mushy sentiment compels people to turn a blind eye to the fact that the Constitution is no longer in evidence. Seriously, owning a bong is a more serious crime than raping your daughter in this country. You retain more of your rights if you're accused of raping your daughter.
And my one potshot aimed generally at such sentiment is that
it's easy to approve when it's not your rights being suspended.
In terms of abortion there runs a high danger of sentimental deception. I've started to use the word
zygote in this debate because we're focused so much on the idea of fetus and child that it's worth recalling that this "person" includes a fertilized ovum before cleavage.
As a side question, can anybody point out where, aside from money, the potential of something matters? To clarify: the zygote is a "person" according to the pro-life camp. Specifically, the zygote is a fertilized cell. I've thrown away many a germinating seed. Now, this isn't a direct comparison of a human zygote to last year's tulip bulbs. It's okay to throw out that bulb, or step on that ant ... the difference with the zygote is
its potential to be human. Lawsuits about "my baseball career" aside, and "lost business" estimates aside, in what issue of law has the American judicial process given such consideration to potential as the potential of that zygote?
And this is where sentiment starts to disturb me. Everyone seems to appreciate the Constitution more or less, even the Anarchists who would destroy it, because they know they'd be shot dead without it. But sentiment is what moves people to want to throw the Constitution aside. John Walker Lindh may have sold his country, but two points strike me. As an aside, I wonder why everyone's so upset, since we used to have a wartime slogan that went,
America, love it or leave it. He left, what's the big deal? On a more important note, though, I have not yet seen it established what jurisdiction we have to try him in court as we have charged him. It would seem, then, that all Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects should be charged in federal court in Virginia. (Truth told, I'd prefer it.) But
sentiment undermines the law. Jurisdiction isn't actually established in any context other than,
We're the USA, stop us if you dare. We're doing this because he's an American and we're disgusted that he would participate in something so ridiculous as the Taliban. Of course, sentiment also compels us to forget that we, the people, have aided and abetted the Taliban, as well.
Certain forms of sentiment, when applied to law, undermine the law. In doing so, they undermine the things which we claim to uphold. To act rashly on sentiment and declare legal life at conception and award rights to the zygote creates a conflict of rights with a familiar result: the suspension of the self-determination of our breeding machines.
Frankly what it comes down to me is that I don't understand how we can isolate the issues of abortion and law from the issue of the law.
If someone would like to craft the legislation that protects the zygote from abortion and protects the rights of the living individuals in the functional community, I would love to read it. As to that, however, I am compelled to point out to all that a right-to-life amendment to the Constitution is a wasted effort; the right to life is already included in the Constitution. We've argued about that right for 220 years. I submit to you that if there's a way to expand the definition of "all" to include the zygote, and also protect the idea of "Liberty and Justice for All", I would love to see it enumerated. History has not yet managed the rhetoric that will accept the zygote as fully-endowed with rights as a person without suspending the endowment of another human being. And so the justicers argue it out, and hammer it out, and still come up with the answers they do.
The Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments. Getting rid of those would be the first thing to do. That is, shredding the Constitution is the only way to fix the issue as the pro-life crowd would like. And thus the American Revolution will end in failure.
Nobody can destroy America but Americans. And abortion is an issue which, if not handled with care, can lead to the rash disassembly of all the protections which we receive as stipulated in the social contracts of government and governed.
By the
consent of the governed does this nation work.
The reason children do not have to consent to be governed is because we do not accept that they are capable of such consent. This is its own issue. The fetus is not capable of consenting. It is not capable of protesting. As with living, functioning children, the fetus is the responsibility of the parent, and subject to the rights of the parent.
Seriously, if anyone wants to provide a working, executable solution--or our Sciforums best representation thereof--to the abortion issue which outlaws the practice of abortion while protecting the rights of all individuals, I'd love to read it.
And, as a short note, I will point toward the insanity in society that sexual repression is documented to bring. Even a brief perusal of Victorian women will show this. People say Freud was a pervert; there's a reason his psychology centered around sexuality: it was a fundamental pillar of dysfunction. This, too, is a sentimental consideration we are obliged by history to consider if we are to make such vital decisions based on sentiment. There exists the possibility that if people don't get laid, we'll go to war instead. And at that point, the "lives" we save by not aborting become kind of moot. And no, I'm not joking about that.
Closing remarks
This is why I advocate education. For the Christians, specifically, this involves forsaking the common sexual neuroses that plague the faith. And this is very relevant because it is Christians who,
for the most part make up the pro-life crowd. And it is also the Christians who argue against education of relevant issues. People will make better decisions if they are
educated.
Family planning helps, too. It is easier to educate a person if they are not in bad circumstances. I remember a friend's high school graduation in McMinnville, Oregon in ... '94, I think. There were several girls visibly pregnant and several more not visibly pregnant. Okay, family planning is a good idea because for three of those girls I met that day, the "good job" and "bright future" of the fathers of their children involved
gas station attendant, union labor at a rubber-products firm, and custodian at the mall in the nearest larger city. Those bright futures are starting under a mountain of debt ... I assert that the frustration of the common laborer's finances do have an effect on education, and, in the long run, can undermine responsible decision-making. Doubt that point? Cross-reference juvenile crime and substance statistics with home economic data. Yes, a lot of bored suburbanite kids do drugs and steal cars, but the higher concentrations of juvenile deviance occur as you move into the lower economic strata. I'm not talking about aborting to spare this mess. What I'm talking about is how much we have to fix in society before responsible decision-making can be realistically expected. If you go to work every day and don't murder anyone, you're pretty responsible. Even moreso if you file a tax return. Great standard, eh? But if you're going to demand a certain quality, you must empower that quality to exist. Roses don't grow in the Mojave as far as I know, and with good reason it would seem.
I, too, would strive for an abortion-free society. But I'm not going to reduce women to livestock in order to do it. I'd rather raise as many people as possible to clarity.
I must propose, then, that if the only solution can be abstinence, there also exists a duty to empower that solution. Bring on, bring on. I believe society needs to be smarter across the board.
If a pro-lifer would be so kind as to detail the process of that empowerment, I would be most grateful.
Until then, if "keep your dick in your pants" or "don't make yourself available" is the best we can come up with as a solution to this tragedy, I must refuse the solution on functional grounds.
Personally, I think lesbianism is the answer. And no, that's not a joke.
http://www.grtbooks.com/exitfram.as...&URL=http://www.litrix.com/lysis/lysis001.htm (
Lysistrata by Aristophanes)
thanx much,
Tiassa
