Plan C

After my earlier post on the issue of positive versus negative rights, you may wonder whether or not I support rape victims taking pills that may or may not inhibit implantation, suck as .

Well, I believe in erring on the side of not taking lives until it is conclusively shown one way or another.

So, let's talk about a hypothetical drug that we know prevents implantation, and thus causes the death of the pre-embryo. We'll call it Plan C.

Should a rape victim be allowed to take Plan C? After all, the embryo has no positive right to life*.

It should be taken into consideration that, like unplugging the violinist, taking Plan C is not an act of inaction. Nobody would object to having the pre-embryo removed, frozen, and implanted in another woman. Because the taking of Plan C causes the death of the pre-embryo, it violates his or her negative right to live.

Imagine you are out on a cruise and there is a sleeping man in a life raft drifting towards you. You can either do nothing, in which case the man will dock and be saved. Or you can grease the dock, thus causing his death. Because the man is innocent and greasing the dock is not an act of inaction, doing so would be an act of manslaughter.

*Where the pregnancy has resulted from consensual sex, the embryo does have the positive right to life, because his or her mother has placed the pre-embryo in jeopardy, and, thus, has a responsibility towards him or her to protect the pre-embryo from harm.

The Violinist

The violinist argument fails for several reasons, mainly the fact that the intent of an abortion is to kill the fetus, not to terminate the pregnancy. However, it also fails because it assumes that it is morally permissible to unplug the violinist.

First of all, in this analogy you in no way caused the violinist to hook up to you. This attachment occurred against your will and "the society of music lovers" has in this case severely violated your rights. I would like to demonstrate in this post, however, how the common moral intuition in this case fails when scrutinized logically.

As I see it, the main reasons many people see unplugging the violinist as acceptable are twofold.

Firstly, being attached to the violinist is a huge pain in the neck. You need to stay in bed until the violinist recovers. I doubt many people would have the same sense of outrage if you could more or less go about your business. However, as I demonstrated yesterday, the right to life supersedes the right to liberty. Just like the intention of act of causing the avalanche, the intention of act of unplugging yourself is to regain your liberty and to "undo" the situation you have been unjustly placed in to.

The objection based on positive and negative rights will be addressed in the next section.

Secondly, the situation they are placed in is incredibly unjust, and unplugging is seen as merely returning to the situation prior your kidnapping in which the violinist was dieing of natural causes and you had no greater moral obligation towards him than towards a man on the other side of the planet. However, regardless of how this situation came to pass, we need to consider the present situation.

I will grant that the violinist lacks the positive right to life: the right to use your body; if you could unplug yourself without killing the violinist, I doubt anyone would object. Also, if the violinist were to approach you and demand your assistance, I would be the first to say that you have no obligation to come to his aid; this represents a situation in which you are passively letting the violinist die.

However, in the present situation, you are already hooked up to the violinist. As such, you cannot disconnect yourself because the violinist's death would be a direct result of your action; this is a situation in which you are actively killing the violinist. Because of this fact, the violinist's negative right to life comes into play, just as in the avalanche scenario. Regardless of how this situation came to pass, even though the violinist has no right to your body, your moral obligation to not kill (cause the death of) him takes over.

I may seem like I'm repeating myself, but I want to make sure I have made my point in a way everyone can understand. It may seem counterintuitive that the society of music lovers could impart upon you an obligation that you didn't previously have, or impart upon the violinist a positive right he never had, but the point I'm trying to make is that the application of negative rights is more than adequate to show why unplugging yourself is wrong. Positive rights apply to inaction while negative rights apply to action. Many see the act of unplugging as merely choosing not to allow the violinist usage of your body, but that choice has already been made (I'm sure we can all agree that the society of music lovers have violated your rights).

Because unplugging the violinist is not an act of inaction, the violinist's negative right to live comes into play, and as such, it is immoral to unplug yourself.

However, because your intent was not to cause the violinist's death, in the current legal system of the United States would most likely charge you with manslaughter and not murder. In addition, if the violinist chose to be plugged in, unplugging would be justified as self-defense.

To sum up, while you have no moral obligation to remain plugged in, you do have an obligation not to act in such a way that said action leads to the death of an innocent human being.

Life > Liberty > Pursuit of happiness

It can easily be demonstrated that the right to liberty supersedes the right to pursue happiness.

Proving that life outweighs liberty is more complicated, but this quote from Libertarians for Life does a great job.

...[Y]ou are on a mountain, and I attack you and throw you into a place filled with rocks that will tumble down below if given a push. The only way you can leave that spot is by causing a landslide. On a perch below is someone else I also forced there. If there's a landslide, their perch will be destroyed and they'll fall to their death. There is no way for your calls for help to be heard; you have to wait until you are discovered missing and a rescue party is sent. Let's assume that you are in no danger; one of your hobbies is to be a survivalist; you know how to attract game birds. You are able to live off them until found, but that will take nine months. The other person is also able to survive because your efforts to attract birds will inevitably attract birds to their perch, too.

Does your right to liberty include a right to push the rocks out of the way and cause the death of the other person?

The law of transitivity can show that life supersedes the right to pursue happiness, or you can consider that every single murder has had a motive.

It is also important to point out each right is predicated upon the previous one(s). You can't pursue happiness if you aren't free and you can't be free if you're not alive and you cannot pursue happiness if you'ren't alive.

Volition

I'd embed it here, but it's too wide, so here's the link.

Fluffy Language

Any position can be made to sound good by dressing it up and dancing around the issue and insulting the opposition.

Those against gay rights speak of "defending marriage" and "protecting children" and "supporting traditional marriage".

Those against youth rights speak of "for their own good" and "parental rights" and "protecting children".

Those against prenatal rights speak of "women's reproductive rights" and "no forced parenthood" and "every child a wanted child" and "deciding whether and when to reproduce" and "Get your laws off my body!" and "Against abortion? Don't have one!".

Those in favor of slavery spoke of "property rights" and "privacy" and "constitutional protections" and "legislating morality".

Those in favor of rape speak of "men's sexual rights" and "no forced celibacy" and "opposing rape is telling those conceived of rape they should not exist" and "the right to one's own penis" and "Get your laws off my body!" and "Do not force your morality upon others!" and "If you are against rape, you are free not to rape anyone.".

Okay, I made that last one up but you get the point. I believe that the personhood movement will ultimately succeed because it forces people to look at the essential issue: Do all human beings deserve human rights?

How is babby formed?

Again, I'm not important enough to hack. But Roebots seem to be clueless as to how girl get pragnent.

When I point out that banning aborion doesn't give the unborn more rights than the born, they say [crap] like "give me your kidneys then". They seem to be under the impression that fetuses just walk around the streets looking for women to "glom onto", and that having an abortion is just refusing permission.

But I hope anyone arguing on the internet knows where babies come from, so I'll spare you another Post 239.

The offspring in no way chooses his position; it is forced upon him by the mother. And abortion occurs after implantation, and is performed by actively killing the prenate, not merely "unplugging". To have an abortion is therefore analogous to bringing someone onto a cruise in their sleep and dropping them in the middle of the ocean. After all, who are we to force you to carry him on your ship to Bermuda.

But I guess this is all irrelevant since granting the unborn their human rights and insisting women take responsibility for your actions is just a punishment for sexuality.

For more, see Libertarians for Life's article "Abortion and Thomson's Violinist: Unplugging a Bad Analogy, Comments on why the prenatal child has the right under individual liberty to be in the mother's womb".

Interesting conversation

I'm okay with ZJemptv on most things, but we're having an interesting conversation at this video's comments.

He seems to think that customers have a right to force their morality upon business owners and that not wanting to kill another human being is a "completely arbitrary and unnecessary basis" upon which to decide how to excercize your liberty.

Let's say there's a restaurant that refuses to serve veal for ethical reasons. What do you do if you want veal? Don't eat there! You have no right to force anyone to sell a product that they do not want to sell, regardless of the reason they refuse to sell it. You have no right to force them to comply to your morals.

Them not selling BC is no more forcing their morality on you than a store closing on Sunday forces their religion on you.

If I run any sort of business, I have the right to choose what products to sell. I could open a candy shop and refuse to sell Jujubees because I think they're part of an evil plot to turn toddlers into smores. You still have no right to tell me what products to carry. If I'm looking for jujubees, I loose you as a customer.

I could sell clothes and arbitrarily not carry blue socks.

I could close on Sunday even if "cultural homogeneity" means every other business in town is closed on Sunday too.

And now a moment of silence...

Ha.

This blog updated every day and 9/11 happened 8 years ago, almost a day for every death caused by 9/11.

Although, this blog is text-based. Which means, technically, it's always silent.

Anyway, we still mourn the loss of those three thousand victims killed 8 years ago.

Yet where is the public outrage from the 4,400 innocent unborn children killed every single day in America alone? Where is the sense of unity stemming from this ongoing Holocaust? Why does the nation not feel such an urge to prevent these deaths that we know are happening and can be prevented through education, outreach, support, and legislation? Why was the loss of civil liberties and the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqis considered acceptable (when they did very little to help prevent future attacks that we didn't even know were coming) when an inconvenience to women is considered a source of outcry?

Of course, I have a bigger point to this. Whenever I debate prenatal rights, someone is bound to say something along the lines of "there are enough people in the world".

I'm not suggesting some sort of forced breeding camp or that all condoms shall be made of cloth. I'm saying that once you do reproduce, your offspring have rights. We could "fix" the population (and feed the hungry!) problem by eating every left-handed 3rd grader. Likewise, the population of the world could be reduced by 17% by killing the entirety of China. Or reduced by 84% by throwing every religious person into a volcano. I'm sure nobody would defend these "solution".

Merely reducing the population clearly doesn't make something morally defensible. I'm surprised this argument is so popular.

Wait, no I'm not.

Turning women and their doctors into criminals?

So? By that logic, laws protecting children against abuse turn parents into criminals.

In both cases, they're only criminalized if they violate the rights of their offspring. Parents are not criminalized just for being parents.

I do not see how mothers and their doctors should be exempt from responsibility for their action just because.

Can anyone explain how this is anything more than an appeal to emotion?

Woman to stand trial for pants.

Aren't there, like, international laws against this kind of human rights abuse?

Though, this is not surprising.

"People-seeds"

Libertarians for Life have a great article debunking Thomson's violinist argument. I will now tackle her much weaker "People Seeds" argument:

Again, suppose it were like this: people-seeds drift about in the air like pollen, and if you open your windows, one may drift in and take root in your carpets or upholstery. You don’t want children, so you fix up your windows with fine mesh screens, the very best you can buy. As can happen, however, and on very, very rare occasions does happen, one of the screens is defective; and a seed drifts in and takes root.

The analogy is very laughable, but let's consider it at face value. You open the window, well aware of the risk. Then, the "people-seeds" take root.

Here comes the problem. Thomson says you would then have the right to remove them from your home. She made the same mistake in the violinist argument; she confuses negative rights with positive rights. Following this analogy, all that could be done is induced labor. For an argument against induced labor before viability, see the boat analogy.

So, to imporve the analogy, let's say that the people seeds plant, and one comes up to you asking for food. You then proceed to poison her, or dismember her, or burn her, or... you get the point. You would then rightfully be charged with murder.

"Slut-punishing" cont.

I feel I should expand upon Post 59. Pregnancy is not a punishment. It doesn't even happen randomly.

When a woman gets pregnant, just like anyone else in any other situation, she may react the situation in any way that does not violate someone else's rights.

I have been told that banning abortion somehow harms women, banning rape and murder doesn't hurt people, and that it should therefore be legal. But what that basically says is, regardless of its morality, homicide should be permitted if it allows one to excape an inconvenience or a responsibility.

Abolition harmed plantation owners. Does that make slavery okay, regardless of its morality?

Sonia Sotomayor Calls Abortion: "Woman's Right to Terminate Her Pregnancy"

By now, you know how ****ing sick I am of all these euphemisms. It's also vague as ****; I'm all for the described right. Wanna know how to excercize it nonviolently? It's called "birth".

You know what? How about I excersize my "right" to "terminate" YOUR LIFE, Sotomayor. See how much you like THAT!

Note to idiots: Click here.

Burkkas or Underwear?

Republicans claim Liberal foreign policy will lead to Shariah Law. This is often portrayed as women forced to wear burkkas, which would, of course, limit liberty. But is this really any worse than being forced to wear clothes in the first place?

Clothes are great for protection from the elements, but the social stigma (or at least the laws) against nudity have got to go. Ban exposed thumbs and you violate the First Amendment. Ban exposed genitals and everyone's okay with it for some reason.

It's perhaps the most pervasive element of Religious Law.

Durr... it's medical!

Describing abortion as a "legal medical procedure" does nothing for it. So is circumscision. But both are performed on nonconsenting parties.

I also had someone say that doctors take an oath to do no harm, so abortions would never be performed if the prenate was a person.

1. This assumes oaths are unbreakable.
2. This is an argumentum ad verecundiam.
3. This ignores the fact that doctors are often forced to perform them (especially after Obama rescinded conscience protection).
4. Holocaust executions were done by "doctors".

Bourgeois Media

This is my third post on the media's biased coverage of the mediaa's biased coverage of the Tiller assassination. And I realized the reason.

I only have to pst once a day. News channels have to fill 24 hours. And they pick the most sensational angle because it gets viewers and, by extention, money.

This is just another place where quality of product is diminished by capitalism. You could make it out of metal, or you could make it out of cheap plastic and they'll buy another when it breaks. Which would you do? You could pay up, or you could take their money and deny all of their insurance claims. Which would you do?

Appeals to emotion

Coathangers and difficult choices do not a justified homicide make.

Imagine a news story. A poor man kills his daughter for the insurance money. Is this justified? No. Does the distress lessen the offense to manslaughter? Yes*. Does he deserve social services? Yes.

Imagine another news story. Man rapes woman. Woman fights back. Man gets AIDS from woman.

Now, the man fears he'll get arrested if he he goes to the hospital. The wounds get infected and he dies. This death could've been prevented had rape been legal and regulated. Yet do we decry the anti-rape laws? Do we say rape should be legal?

No.

*Depending on how good his lawyer is.

Slavery?

I subscribe to multiple pro-life newsletters from across this great nation (okay, and one or two foreign ones) and recently news came in from the buckeye state.

Of course, affirming the rights of the unborn is in no way comparable to denying the rights of slaves, and I've been over this before, but the Roebots are still using this argument and it still is ridiculous. Here is the unedited newsletter entry:

Urge Voinovich & Brown to Oppose Dawn Johnsen Nomination

Action Requested: Please contact U.S. Senators George Voinovich and Sherrod Brown and urge them to oppose the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Explanation: President Obama has nominated a radical pro-abortion activist, Dawn Johnsen, as the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel. Johnsen is a former Legal Director for the pro-abortion group, NARAL. She also worked for the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. While with NARAL, Johnsen was the lead author of a brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court which argued that statutes that restrict abortion are "disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus. ..." The brief also stated: "The woman is constantly aware for nine months that her body is not wholly her own; the state has conscripted her body for its own ends.... [Abortion restrictions] reduce pregnant women to no more than fetal containers." Among other things, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel is responsible for advising the White House and Executive Agencies on constitutional questions and the constitutionality of all pending statutes. Yet, in her 2008 essay "A Progressive Agenda for Women's Reproductive Health and Liberty on Roe v. Wade's Thirty-Fifth Anniversary", Johnsen described as "wrongly decided" longstanding Supreme Court decisions that upheld the constitutionality of parental notice and consent statutes and restrictions on public funding of abortion, as well as the more recent decision upholding the ban on partial-birth abortion. It is thus clear that Johnsen's views and advice on the constitutionality of abortion-related issues will not just adhere to Roe v. Wade, but promote an even more radical view of totally unrestricted abortion on demand. ACTION: Contact Senators George Voinovich and Sherrod Brown and urge them to oppose the nomination of Dawn Johnsen as head of the Office of Legal Counsel, and to vote against any motion to cut off debate on the nomination. Tell them that Johnsen's history of pro-abortion advocacy indicates that she would use her position to promote her own views on unrestricted abortion on demand that go well beyond the holding in Roe v. Wade. You can contact Senator George Voinovich at: Washington office (202) 224-3353 Columbus office (614) 469-6697 Cleveland office (216) 522-7095 Cincinnati office (513) 684-3265 Toledo office (419) 259-3895 Nelsonville office (740) 441-6410 You can contact Senator Sherrod Brown at: Washington office (202) 224-2315 Cleveland office (216) 522-7272 Cincinnati office (513) 684-1021 Columbus office (614) 469-2083 Lorain office (440) 242-4100 Or click Here to send a message to both Senators

Re: Sam Harris on stem cell research

A quick Google search would've told Sam that not all those opposed to ESC research on ethical grounds is religious, and not all atheists are utilitarians.

After WWII, Germany split into two. Is this one nation becoming two? Even later, Germany merged into one nation. What happened to the extra nation?

Therefore, Germany was never a country.

Harris is positing that souls, entities he does not even believe in, cannot merge and fuse like cells. Why?

Words

I've spent a great deal of time here explaining the euphemistic nature of the term "pro-choice". The whole question is irrelevant, however. I could say I'm pro-rape, and, when called out on it, clarify that I do not personally agree with rape, but I support the right of a man to rape a woman if he so chooses. I would not impose my personal morality on men; after all, it's his penis. If person A supports the right to rape, and person B supports rape itself, they are going to have largely the same impact on the law: more votes towards the legalization of rape. And both are equally abhorrent positions to hold, or at least the difference is insignificant.