Scarecrow Akhbar said:
Ummm...humans are killed under other circumstances for legitimate reasons...war, self-defense, punishment for crimes committed. Only the unborn are killed without cause.
Pfeh. "Legitimate" is a matter of arbitrary definition. Just look at the arguments about whether or not the death penalty is murder. Or war.
Or even self-defense, if you're in Europe.
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
No person is born without special rights or powers over any other.
Funny you should phrase it that way.
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
Since you can't dispute the fact that humans are human from conception...
I'm not even trying to dispute it.
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
... it follows that incubators don't have any special rights to kill humans anywhere, including those she's volunteered to start inside her.
Who's talking about "special rights"? She has the perfectly normal and standard right to remove unwanted humans from her property.
Hell, I'm even conceding additional limitations to her rights, in the form of requiring some justification for removing those unwanted humans from her property after a certain period of time.
Tell me, what's your opinion on the legality of "squatter's rights"?
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
I can discuss morality because I'm consistent.
Except, apparently, on womens' property rights. Oh... and, of course, warfare. War may indeed have a just cause-- but certainly civilians and children especially cannot be held responsible for the actions of their governments, right?
When we convict a man of murder, we certainly don't execute his children.
Also, if we convict and execute an innocent man, who is liable for his murder? The police? Prosecutors? The warden?
Your "morality" is a pretty paintjob on rotten lumber.
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
In general, punish for criminal acts is intended as a deterrent to others to show them that they shouldn't engage in that behavior.
Yes. Now explain why you feel the need to deter women from seeking abortions or doctors from performing them.
And no, "because it's murder" doesn't count, because you have failed to demonstrate
why it's murder, and because there are distinct and measurable reasons to deter the killing of people with established legal identities.
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
Locking incubators up that have murdered their children is no different than locking up Scott Peterson....who murdered his child as well as his wife.
That was a nonsense law passed by anti-abortionists in order to redefine the legal existence of fetuses. If we couldn't lock Scott Peterson up for long enough on the basis that he murdered his pregnant wife, we need to reassess our sentencing guidelines.
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
Personally, I'm opposed to informing the government of any birth, since the government only views children and people as resources to be exploited.
Then how, precisely, would you propose to catch and convict women that give birth in a public toilet and then discard their infant?
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
People aren't dogs, and shouldn't be euthanized without their permission. The unborn are not legally competent to grant that permission, nor are new-born infants.
We've established that they're human. We haven't established that they're "persons". Nor have we established anything resembling how legal competence is relevant when discussing beings which have no legal
identity.
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
Which is no different than throwing the unwanted ones in the dumpster. Do you think the trash kids should get an expensive lethal injection, an inexpensive .22 bullet, or a reusable club to the head, or should someone just be hired to swing them by their ankles and smash their skulls on the nearest tree?
Lethal injections aren't that expensive-- particularly considering that newborns are considerably less resilient than adults.
And yes, your list of particularly gruesome ways to kill babies is impressive. You could add putting them in blenders or firing them out of potato guns, if you really think it adds something to your argument; it still doesn't address the issue logically, and if I didn't know better, I could swear it's part of a deliberate effort to
avoid doing so.
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
First you say that any "unwanted" child should be murdered, now you're saying that you're not saying that.
I'm saying that abortion shouldn't be retroactive. You're really reaching for ways to distort my argument now... why don't you just go ahead and go for the Godwin?
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
I'm not morally conflicted by the assertion that sterilizing the planet outside borders of the United States would secure the safety of my children from terrorist animals, and saying that individual incubators aren't granted special rights to commit murder.
Congratulations! You have now
thoroughly waived any possible claims to moral superiority.
Or are
you trying to claim that the majority of the human race-- consisting of every human that is not American-- are not, in fact, human? Hell,
Steen's arguments are more compelling than that.
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
No, abortion is an abdication of responsibility, an avoidance of the consequences. She already accepted the responsibility of incubating the child when she volunteered for the hot beef injection.
I've already thoroughly demonstrated how this is not the case. If you want to claim otherwise, you actually need to be able to point out reasons
why this is not the case-- sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling may not be a formal logical fallacy, but it should be.
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
Since she did volunteer to start the child, she's already surrendered her claim for sole control of her body for the whole getstational period.
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
Yeah, it does, just like one accepts the consequences of jumping out of a flying airplane. There's no going back.
You can't prove that-- and it flies in the face of the entire concept of "consent" as recognized by American law and Western civilization. Except, perhaps, for Italy, which has a real knack for this sort of deformed moral reasoning.
