Re: Late Term Abortion
Re: Adrian
I know you aren't inline with Xiahou or Crazed Rabbit on gun rights, and I'm not sure where you stand on home defense in general, so this analogy may not be meaningful to you. If not, I apologize for my poor attempt.
A person has the right to defend their home from invasion. If an armed intruder comes into their house and threatens their person, family, or property, they have the right to attack and possibly kill the intruder. It is not the same if the intruder has been invited in. I cannot invite a neighbor I dislike to my home, then kill him, and claim I am innocent because he had invaded my home. It's flawed to say a woman has the complete right to abortion simply because the fetus is invading her person. She has in most cases invited it in by voluntarily engaging in sex. Involuntary impregnation is of course another matter.
The analogy breaks down somewhat, since the homeowner can demand the guest leave, and if the guest refuses to leave they become an invader and the rules of the game shift. The fetus does not have the ability to voluntarily leave the womb if the mother demands it goes.
Overall, the issue comes back to the same place it always does. When does a fetus become a human--or in legal terms, when does it become a person--with rights of its own. As Viking points out, the cells involved have always been alive, since prior to fertilization on. If all living human cells have a right to life, masturbation is mass murder. Life is not the issue: humanity/personhood is. The traditional lines in the sand (conception and birth) are both very unconvincing to me, and any line between those is, as Viking has said, arbitrary. For legal purposes, it must be drawn, just as an arbitrary line between child and adult (for purposes such as voting rights, substance use rights, driving privileges, sexual consent, method of trial, etc.) has been drawn (or rather, several have been drawn depending on the issue). I don't know where the best place to draw that line is. The beginning of the third trimester seems a reasonable place, and it sounds like most of the western world has chosen something along those lines. America is still struggling with the issue.
Ajax
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Originally Posted by Craterus
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