Re: Capital Punishment

From a natural rights perspective, there is nothing morally wrong with capital punishment…

Yeah, except that systemic bias negates the “punishment fits the crime argument”. Statistically, blacks are vastly over-represented on death row, as are the poor in general. (Read: those who cannot hire good lawyers.)

Innocents are executed every year in America, as Justice Sandra Day O’Connor admitted a few years back (before Bush was elected, I believe). She also supports a minimum standard for legal counsel of murder defendants.

Justin, mo one here is arguing to let murderers go unpunished...just lock them up, which is, in the long run, cheaper than fighting a dozen appeals to commute a death sentence. Execution is a long, pricy process, with a final result that cannot be undone. There are numerous examples of innocent men being put to death for crimes they did not commit. That’s walking, talking humans (parents, landowners, etc) Justin, not blobs of human jelly...if the spectre of abortion must rise again.

Also, I may be wrong here, but doesn’t the presence or non-presence of an execution law have little or no effect on the murder rate?

Let me repeat what I have said before: I think it is morally wrong to separate human beings into those that do get rights and those that can be killed.

And let ME repeat what I have said before: I don’t care if you consider something morally wrong or not. That doesn’t make it “morally wrong,” nor does it make anyone agree with you.

I see that Sadie is a follower of the “Michael Stiber School of Complete Moral Relativism”.

Why, yes I do (and proudly)! Thanks so much for noticing (and apparently caring)! It’s nice to know that, even though I could not care less about you or what you think, you seem to care about what I think! Thanks, man!

I know this is an exercise in futility, since there are no easy answers about abortion, but here goes.  Justin, you said

I think it is morally wrong to separate human beings into those that do get rights and those that can be killed.

Now, I’ve noticed that you have not stated directly when abortion is permissible, if ever.  It might help if you could tell us if you think abortion should be permitted
a) when the mother’s health is endangered?  If so, how endangered must it be?
b) when both mother and fetus are likely to die, if she carries to term?
c) when the mother was raped?  By her father?
d) when the baby is anencephalic?

If you believe fertilized eggs are human beings, then what about the estimated 50% of fertilized eggs that are spontaneously aborted?  Were they human beings too?  What if a fertilized egg doesn’t implant because the woman does gymnastics, or runs from her rapist?  Is that an abortion, is the woman guilty of depriving a human being of its rights?

People on all sides of the abortion issue are guilty of trying to make something black and white out of something complex.  Of course we have to draw lines.  But to claim some sort of self-evident rationale for one’s particular line, especially in the case of abortion, while understandable (it is an emotional issue, and we want all the support we can get for however we decide), is not justified by biology.

Also, I may be wrong here, but doesn’t the presence or non-presence of an execution law have little or no effect on the murder rate?

You’re not wrong--it’s been statistically proven.

a) when the mother’s health is endangered?  If so, how endangered must it be?
b) when both mother and fetus are likely to die, if she carries to term?
c) when the mother was raped?  By her father?
d) when the baby is anencephalic?

I do my best to apply consistent natural rights principles to these difficult cases, based on the premise that all humans have rights. That does not mean I always sort them out correctly. Here goes:

a. It is acceptable to treat the mother’s health condition, e.g. perform chemotherapy, even if that means the baby will die. However, that treatment would have to be the standard treatment even if there were no baby - it could not be used for it’s side effect of killing the baby.

b. Abortion is legal in that case

c. Abortion should be illegal. If I kidnap two innocent people and give one of them the means to escape but it requires killing the other, that person does not have the right to committ murder.

If you believe fertilized eggs are human beings, then what about the estimated 50% of fertilized eggs that are spontaneously aborted?  Were they human beings too?

yup

What if a fertilized egg doesn’t implant because the woman does gymnastics, or runs from her rapist?

Not unless the woman did gymnastics with the specific intent of using it as a “back alley” abortificant, then it is morally wrong. The second case is not morally wrong because the intent was not to commit murder. Think about ends versus means. If you are a utilitarian only the ends matter so the two cases are identical. But if you believe in natural rights the intent and the means matter. That is why they differ.

Colissions of rights are never easy to handle, there is legitimate room for debate on how to handle them. When you get down to it, that is why we have a legal system. That is also why the legal system often gets things wrong.

Daryl, don’t be an ass. sadie and Michael clearly are not advocates of the ‘right’ to theft, murder and rape.

To Justin:

Allow me to quote an earlier post since you did not read it:

Actually, I did read it carefully.

Here is a fairly typical definition of life for the skeptical: a living thing is anything that has an internal blueprint of itself (DNA), and the intrinsic capacity to build itself based upon that blueprint. Abortion supporters tend to overlook the “intrinsic building capacity� aspect of the definition of life. For example, they often bring up toenail clippings and discarded skin or hair cells because they have DNA and yet are non-persons. But toenail clippings also lack the intrinsic building capacity.

Your ‘fairly typical’ definition of life is not inconsistent with the examples I used. The skin cells in my cheek grow and replicate until they are murdered by the swab.

While I freely admit that I have yet to define my own definition for what ‘life’ is...you don’t decide for me what it is Justin.

I was converted by my wife.

Good for you. Not relevant.

You should want only men making the decisions about abortion - men are slightly more likely to be pro-choice than women. They want sex without committment.

I’ll assume that you made a typo there and actually intended to state my point of view correctly that women’s viewpoints on abortion should be given more weight than men. As to the assertion that men are slightly more likely to be more pro-choice than women, please cite your source and sample study size please. Actually, wait a minute...I don’t care because it doesn’t matter.

Also, I may be wrong here, but doesn’t the presence or non-presence of an execution law have little or no effect on the murder rate?

This actually goes back to what I was saying about abstinence and birth control earlier in the thread: people are bad about estimately risks that are not 50:50 or 70:30 or whatnot. Once you get close to 90:10 they start to overestimate good risks and underestimate bad risks.

This actually goes back to what I was saying about abstinence and birth control earlier in the thread: people are bad about estimately risks that are not 50:50 or 70:30 or whatnot. Once you get close to 90:10 they start to overestimate good risks and underestimate bad risks.

Please elaborate.

Your ‘fairly typical’ definition of life is not inconsistent with the examples I used. The skin cells in my cheek grow and replicate until they are murdered by the swab.

The skin cells were not a separate living human, but rather a small part of a whole. Even after being detached, most of their genes are switched off and they lack the capacity to build except from a minute subset of the DNA. By contrast, you as a whole - one system - have the full range of DNA and the full ability to build based upon that entire range of DNA.

That is why you are a human, a fertilized egg is a human, and a stray skin cell is not a human.

While I freely admit that I have yet to define my own definition for what ‘life’ is...you don’t decide for me what it is Justin.

I am not a biologist; I do not get to decide for me either. I can disagree with bioligists. I can also disagree with evolutionists. But I would be wrong.

Colissions of rights are never easy to handle, there is legitimate room for debate on how to handle them. When you get down to it, that is why we have a legal system.

I’ll agree with you there, Justin.

That is also why the legal system often gets things wrong.

That’s where you lose me.  Having a moral system that insists that there is a “right” and a “wrong” for difficult questions, only makes sense if you believe in an absolute arbiter of morals.

Do you really believe that abortion is always either right or wrong?  No in-between?  You didn’t answer my question about the anencephalic baby.  And here are two more:  what if it’s a choice between the mother and the child surviving?  And what if the woman aborts because she’s running from her rapist, but she’s hoping that she will abort?  If she hops while running away?  Is that murder?

Justin: What I meant by “different attitudes” was that the incidence of out-of-wedlock childbirth prior to the sexual revolution was assuredly affected by the notion that abortion or abandonment was an appropriate way to deal with unwanted pregnancies, as outlined by Les. In other words, if the illegitimate birth rate was so low in the early 20C only because more people were having abortions, it wouldn’t really speak to the comparative effectiveness of abstinence (and as a sidenote- it seems foolhardy to presume that just because OOW birthrates were low at the start of the century, we can somehow pin all the blame for OOW births on the sexual revolution. There could be any number of competing or corresponding factors affecting the rise in birth rate. Perhaps it was unusually depressed during the first half of the century due to particular factors, and is now returning to it’s normal state. Perhaps there are other elements of later 20C life affecting the rise, such as a dramatic increase in medical services and healthcare, etc. etc. Longest. Parenthetical. Ever.) I’m not saying that that’s the case, only pointing out that the OOW birthrate is only part of the issue when determining the effects of the sexual revolution on behavior. That’s why I tried to refer to out-of-wedlock conceptions rather than births. And again, reprinting the graph doesn’t really address my point that there are several potential difficulties in accurately assessing the OOW birthrate, such as under-reportage. People today are much more willing to admit to having a baby OOW than they once were. Moreover, we should look at WHO is having those babies. While I agree that too many OOW births can create all kinds of social problems, we also have to consider the relatively new phenomenon of financially and socially stable individuals choosing to have babies OOW. These situations are increasingly common, and are not separated from assessments of overall OOW birthrates, yet I think it’s fair to say that they are not what people immediately think of when they talk about OOW births and their potential to negatively affect society.

As for this point:

There are two consistent philosophies:
1. Protect all human life. Oppose both the death penalty and abortion. This is the Catholic position.
2. Protect innocent human life. Oppose abortion but not the death penalty. This is the standard Protestant position.

The liberals have got it all twisted: they are opposed to killing the guilty but support killing innocent humans.

There are in fact many more than two consistent philosophies. For example:
Protect human life by diminishing the power of the state to exercise control over it. Hence, support abortion rights and oppose the death penalty, on the basis that the state should not be granted the direct power of life and death over its citizens.

Or how about this:
Protect human life from birth until death.

You can frame the issue any number of ways, it doesn’t mean that there are any easy answers.

I totally understand why people are opposed to abortion. But what’s the logical conclusion of that opposition? You cannot, ultimately, prevent a woman from aborting a fetus. You can make it more difficult, but there will always be ways, be it back-alley clinics, a fall down the stairs, etc. Short of tying a woman down, chemically inducing a coma, and hooking her up to a feeding tube from the moment of conception until birth, there is no truly effective way to prevent abortion. So isn’t it better for the overall well-being of the species if, when a woman decides to have an abortion, we at least let her do so in as safe and healthy a way as possible? Isn’t that the best way to protect both the life of the mother, and of any children she might decide to have in the future?

From a natural rights perspective, there is nothing morally wrong with capital punishment as long as it fits the crime. For example, we deny people of the right to liberty for some crimes by putting them in prison. The same logic applies to capital crimes.

If someone in prison is proven innocent of any crime, they can be immediately freed. Last I heard, it was a little more difficult to resurrect someone wrongly put to death. I don’t presume that the state is infallible, so the death penalty makes me very uncomfortable. Moreover, the application of the death penalty is the very definition of inconsistent. For example, here’s a statistic from an editorial in today’s Baltimore Sun:

The plain facts about race are that blacks who kill whites are 2.5 times more likely to be sentenced to death than whites who kill whites and 3.5 times more likely than blacks who kill blacks, according to a study of Maryland’s death penalty system by Raymond Paternoster of the University of Maryland.

In Maryland, nearly 80 percent of homicide victims in the past five years have been African-Americans. But all but one of the seven prisoners currently on Maryland’s death row are there for killing a white person.

Clearly there are more sides to this issue than can be addressed by a simple philosophy such as “Protect innocent human life.”

Re: skin cells.

a fertilized egg is a human

I’m just not interested in engaging in the debate on the level of biology and when “human” life does or does not exist. Call it moral laxity, but it is not, I would argue, relevant to the question of public policy formation based on moral codes, *except* when we are talking about setting a deadline for when an abortion cannot occur (ie) a specific trimester in which it is understood that the child would have a chance at survival outside the womb, etc etc. As valid as your position may be re: the start of a living human being - and I’m not saying it is - it is a distraction to the real question vis a vis public policy formation.

As I’ve stated, if the chief question is one of public policy and whether or not we are to limit or maintain access to legal abortion, then I find it telling that I have yet to hear a rebuttal from anyone on my point that banning abortion is a futile and destructive act due to the likely rise (IMO) of an unregulated abortion black market.

I am suggesting, as I have before, that your biological viewpoint - one I do not share, nor which to discuss - is not helpful in terms of a public health standpoint - given the likely outcome a radical change to abortion laws based on your viewpoint would create.

F*uck. Still on abortion. I’m outta here.

That is why you are a human, a fertilized egg is a human, and a stray skin cell is not a human.

Okay.  Is being human also a yes-or-no proposition?  Something is either absolutely human, or absolutely not human?  If so, which of these are these human:
a) a human-chimp hybrid (some biologists think this is possible)
b) a human with a (genetically engineered) mouse gene (to replace the faulty one he was born with, say)
c) an egg and sperm close enough for some molecular interaction at their peripheries, but no penetration of the zona yet
d) an egg and sperm touching, but the sperm still has its tail, and the genetic material is still separate
e) a homo erectus
f) a homo sapiens neandarthalis
g) a homo floriensis

Do you get my drift?  These things are all continua, and any place you choose to draw a line is arbitrary.

am suggesting, as I have before, that your biological viewpoint - one I do not share, nor which to discuss - is not helpful in terms of a public health standpoint

Precisely. Not only is Justin’s view, in my opinion, patently false, it is utterly irrelevant. The point of this entire thread was about preventing fundy nutcases from strangling our democracy. As much as it will make the Darrells and Justins of the world (or the country, anyway) weep, screwy non-biological claims, religious mythologies, and intolerant “moral values” do not for rational public policy debate make.

Okay.  Is being human also a yes-or-no proposition?  Something is either absolutely human, or absolutely not human? If so, which of these are these human:
a) a human-chimp hybrid (some biologists think this is possible)
b) a human with a (genetically engineered) mouse gene (to replace the faulty one he was born with, say)
c) an egg and sperm close enough for some molecular interaction at their peripheries, but no penetration of the zona yet
d) an egg and sperm touching, but the sperm still has its tail, and the genetic material is still separate
e) a homo erectus
f) a homo sapiens neandarthalis
g) a homo floriensis

Do you get my drift?  These things are all continua, and any place you choose to draw a line is arbitrary.

You are appealing to the fallacy of the beard, AKA the fallacy of the continuum. Some men are clean shaven and some have beards. It is impossible to draw a satisfactory line that perfectly divides those that are clean shaven from those that have beards - but that does not prove that clean shaven are bearded or vice-versa.

The same principle applies to DNA. Other points in the genetic continuum would be downs syndrome babies that are missing a chromosome. Or people with XXY sex chromosomes.

However, the difficulty in assigning the in-between cases does not disprove the basic principle. But to answer your question, I would personally classify all but b) as non-human.

Justin:

Abstinence works. It is the only method that does.

You must look at gays as saviors of the nation then. We significantly abstain from making babies more than any subset of the populace.

Thank-you for your support.

I agree that the reality of the situation demands some amount of abortion, thus making the no how, no way argument far from central.  However, the counter notion of “women should be able to abort anytime for whatever reason” is just as radical, it seems to me.  Insisting a baby is still in a woman’s body and thus not human, perhaps even an hour before natural birth, is just as narrow-minded as the conservatives insisting that balls of cells are human.

rgjp: Daryl, don’t be an ass. Sadie and Michael clearly are not advocates of the ‘right’ to theft, murder and rape.

The argument made in each case was exactly the same.  It is their argument.

If there is any difference between the following two logical arguments, then by all means point it out to me:

1. “Even if you think abortion is cold-blooded murder, you shouldn’t try to make it illegal because other people might not agree with you.  Look at NOW—they say abortion is ok, so they should be free to choose.  If you disagree, just don’t have an abortion yourself but don’t try to tell others what to do.”

2. “Even if you think having sex with 8-year-old children is wrong, you shouldn’t try to make it illegal because other people might not agree with you.  Look at NAMBLA—they say sex with children is ok, so they should be free to choose.  If you disagree, just don’t have sex with 8-year-olds yourself but don’t try to tell others what to do.”

This is the actual, explicit argument which each of them made.  They think someone who believes abortion is the murder of an innocent child, but does nothing to prevent it is a “moral person”.  In fact, such a person would be far less moral that someone who thinks abortion is ok because a fetus is not a person.

These things are all continua, and any place you choose to draw a line is arbitrary.

Exactly. The limits for defining what human life is or isn’t are always changing, given our current scientific and philosophic ability to:

a.)identify human-like life
b.)use new technologies to create human-like life
c.)progress in viewpoint so that all humans are afforded full rights. (You know, like women, the disabled and Indians used to *not* have in the not so distant past.)

Justin, you can’t tell me that in 50 years I won’t be able to be cloned - at least in part - using just my sperm. It may be possible then. So, assuming I’m still alive in 50 years (I’ll be 77)...am I going to be dragged into court for my now public admission of the great 1998 sperm massacre, which spanned a remarkable 300 days and often featured multiple killings in one day?

I have made it clear that this “debate” about abortion - particularly on a biologicial level - is a distraction.

From what, you ask? Well, see example (c) above. The true “moral relativists” are hijacking government’s ability to enact progressive laws that make sense in your country. (ie)public health care, penal reform, (real, scientific) education. You all know what I’m talking about. I refer once again to my experience working in election campaigns coming up against people who refuse to vote for a certain party because their pastor told them that the party in question “is pro-gay”. What about that party’s excellent record on the environment? Or education? Or public works? Or taxes?

How does a democracy move forward when the whole process - in fact every discussion - is being hijacked on such a basic level?

To Daryl Cantrell:

Dude, the only one talking about NAMBLA and rape is you. Sadie clarified her position long ago.

Justin- you say:

You are appealing to the fallacy of the beard, AKA the fallacy of the continuum. Some men are clean shaven and some have beards. It is impossible to draw a satisfactory line that perfectly divides those that are clean shaven from those that have beards - but that does not prove that clean shaven are bearded or vice-versa.

Where’s the fallacy?  This is a continuum too.  Of course the two ends of the beard continuum (say, Bush to Zilch) are different- and differentiable.  But there are all those men in between.  And with something as complex as defining whether something is “human” or not, there are many dimensions of in-betweenness.

And you claim that you (or someone) can put your finger at a particular point along any of these continua and say, in effect, “all you to the right of my finger are human, all those to the left are not”.  Do you really believe this?

Okay- assuming you accept evolution, we evolved from homo erectus.  When exactly did we suddenly become human?

However, the difficulty in assigning the in-between cases does not disprove the basic principle.

If the basic principle is that you can draw a line between humans and nonhumans, which you maintain, then the existence of these continua disproves it.  To repeat the question of my last post: is abortion always either right or wrong?

Some studies have suggested a significant genetic factor predisposing people to spirituality.  If genetic customization of babies becomes possible and under parental discretion, the non-believers could start snipping out the spiritual inclination of their children.  Or, I suppose, with current laws and technology, parents could abort those fetuses inclined to later be spiritual.  Long term, this should have an evolutionary impact on the ratios in the general population and could solve the abortion delima for future generations.

“I think abortion is wrong, because a fetus is a human being.  However, I would never try to impose my views on another person.  If they think it’s ok to kill another human, who am I to interfere??â€?

“I think theft is wrong, but the person who stole my television said that property rights are an illusion.  Far be it from me to force my worldview on them!  Everyone should be free to steal anything they want—if you think theft is wrong, just don’t steal anything yourself.  Don’t try to impose your views on others.â€?

“I think rape is wrong.  However, I understand that some Muslim men think a woman wearing a short dress is asking for it.  I would never try to impose my Westernized, No Means No worldview on them!â€?

All of these examples are internally inconsistent. If you believe that you shouldn’t impose your beliefs on others, than you also presumably believe that other should not impose theirs on you. So if you believe in property rights, the person who steals your TV has immorally imposed their beliefs on you. However, that person would have every right to not prosecute you for stealing their TV, if they so chose. And if a Muslim man rapes a woman for how she dresses, then he has infringed on her right not to be raped, as well as her right to dress however she wants. However, that Muslim man would have every right to ask someone to “rape” him because of how he dressed. And any person has a right to not be killed by someone else, or to not kill someone else. But if you do want someone to kill you, then you’ve got that right as well, provided you can find someone willing to do it. All of your examples of the anarchy resulting from the “moral relativism” of respecting other people’s rights and beliefs are actually examples of NOT respecting such rights and beliefs. Doing something to someone that they don’t want done to them is wrong. It’s as simple as that. Preventing someone from doing something they want to do to themselves is probably wrong as well, although perhaps to a lesser extent simply because it’s less invasive. Under this view, it’s not all that hard to figure out what the laws should be regarding something a woman wants to do to her own body, particularly since it seems fair to presume that an embryo can’t “want” anything at all.

You must look at gays as saviors of the nation then. We significantly abstain from making babies more than any subset of the populace.

Well, Brock, you may be my personal savior (in a small but significant way), but saying “any” subset of the population is a bit reckless.  Some gays do, after all, have babies.  Not as many as, say, Christian heteros do (I’m willing to bet), but significantly more than, say, men with vasectomies or people under three.

That said, your kind of abstinence is an effective way to avoid abortions, and thus should be applauded by all fundamentalists.

WAnd with something as complex as defining whether something is “human� or not, there are many dimensions of in-betweenness.

Yes, and perhaps the in-between cases need to be treated differently. But for plain old 23 chromosome homo sapiens, the standard rules apply.

However, the difficulty in assigning the in-between cases does not disprove the basic principle.

If the basic principle is that you can draw a line between humans and nonhumans, which you maintain, then the existence of these continua disproves it.  To repeat the question of my last post: is abortion always either right or wrong?

NThe basic principle is that it is morally wrong to kill a human.

Hey, what about some George Carlin?

Not every ejaculation deserves a name

Have you noticed that most people who are against abortion are people you wouldn’t want to fuck in the first place? Conservatives are physically unattractive and morally inconsistent. They’re obsessed with fetuses from conception to nine months, but after that they have no interest in you. None. No day care, no Head Start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothin’. If you’re preborn, you’re fine; if you’re pre-school, you’re fucked.

Once you leave the womb, conservatives have no interest in you until you reach military age. Then you’re just what they’re looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.

Pro-life. How can they be pro-life when they’re killing doctors? What sort of moral philosophy is that? “We’ll do anything to save a fetus, but we might have to kill it later on if it grows up to be a doctor?” They’re no pro-life, they’re antiwoman. Simple. They’re afraid of women, and they don’t like them. They believe a woman’s primary role is to function as a brood mare for the State. If they think the fetus is more important than a woman, they should try getting a fetus to wash the shit stains out of their underwear. For no pay.

Pro-life. You don’t see many white, antiabortion women volunteering to have black fetuses transplanted into their uteruses, do you? No. You don’t see them adopting any crack babies, do you? No, that’s something Jesus would do.

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