Harbal wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2019 5:52 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2019 5:38 pm
Do you also believe that slaves belong to their masters? Because that's the implication of the question you've begged
What is the similarity between a slaves relationship to his master and an embryo's to its mother?
If a baby is a human person, it's in no less a sense than anybody else is. These things don't come in degrees.
So if a woman can "own" a baby, then one person can "own" another.
: "Is the child an individual human person, or not?"
Up to a certain stage of development, I would say not. You may well say it is, but both arguments would depend on our own definitions, each of which would be open to dispute by the other.
Likely. But if the baby isn't a human person, then there is no murder in abortion. But if a baby is, then there is.
That means that the person who advocates abortion is taking the risk of committing murder, and knows full well she does not know for sure that she is not murdering a person, so she may well be murdering. But the woman who does not have an abortion kills no one, and in fact helps one to live. So it's pretty obvious who's on the right side of the risk there. And it's obvious that a person who, while admitting she doesn't know what she is doing, kills a child, is behaving very immorally.
In other words, it makes no difference whether or not the woman "believes" she's committing murder; if she is, she is. If she goes ahead, acting as if it doesn't matter whether she's sure or not, she's still acting as a morally reprehensible kind of person: because
not being sure is a reason NOT to kill somebody, and
never amounts to an excuse for doing it.
It would be unreasonable for me to bind you with my opinion, as would it for you to bind me with yours. Isn't it better that we each are allowed to live in accordance with our own beliefs?
How does my "belief" that I'm not killing a person mean I'm not actually killing a person?
A true story: I'm a fair archer. I can put an arrow through something at a good distance.
One day, I was in a field, and I saw a wooden storage shed on the far side, quite old and rotted, and quite a distance away...a nice target.
In short order, I put a half-dozen arrows straight through it. It was only then that it occurred to me, to my dawning consternation, that I had not checked to see if anyone was in the shed. It wasn't likely, but it was quite possible. The shed was still occasionally in use.
When I got to the shed I saw that if somebody had been standing inside it, I most certainly would have killed him/her. The arrows were about three to six feet high, in a generally round pattern: I'd have hit the head, the vitals, the lungs...who knows what else?
I'll never forget the horror of that moment. And I'll never again shoot an arrow or anything else at a target the nature of which I do not fully know.
The application to me? Well, if you could "wish" a baby not to be a person, then just saying "You believe what you want, and I'll believe what I want," would make sense. Then the personhood status of the child would depend on nothing more than our opinion. But it doesn't. That's something we can agree on. If a baby is a person, she's a person; and if she's not, she's not -- in both cases, regardless of what you or I thinks. And some one who kills one is either a murder or not. So all I'm saying is that until we have "checked the shed," and know for sure, neither of us should "shoot an arrow," and we shouldn't encourage anyone else too, either.