FSTDT said:
- When people say that taking potential life is wrong, they contradict themselves by refusing to take into consideration every other potential such-and-such that people are.
But people are already people... fetuses are not, you seem to think I need to state them as morally equal first... but I admit they are not, and dont need to establish their equal worth, because they arent... it would be impossible. You are essentially saying fetuses have absolutely no worth and therefore can not have a "right" to live. I disagree. I think they should have a right to live, a right to become a true person because the reasons for abortion are not enough for me to deny them this potential, yes potential, life.
Let me put it in another way. Should an apple seed be treated the same as a fully grown apple tree? No, of course not, the apples are more valuable in a nutritional sense. Now of course no one would want to stop apple trees from being planted and growing more nutritional apples, which is usually beneficial. If however, the apple trees were growing uncontrollably and damaging the environment, I think it would be in our best interest to stop these trees from growing, by ensuring the seeds could not mature. But as long as this seed does nothing but become a beneficial tree, there is no good enough reason to stop it from growing. sorry for this whack example, it was the best i could come up with
Notice that the measures of moral value are necessarily connected to a being's capacity to have morally relevant experiences (suffering, satisfaction, happiness, goal setting, rationality, etc. are all experiences), but because a fetus has no experiences at all, no measures of moral value which depend on those experiences can apply to the fetus by definition.
The end result of all this is pretty clear: if moral value is connected with experiences and our obligation to protect life is based on the preservation of morally relevant experiences, and a fetus has no experiences at all, we can't say that fetus possesses any moral value at all.
I hear this loud and clear. I know by literal real-time definition, but we are dealing with something that can well become a living, experiecing being. And it conflicts with my belief that they should have the right to experience life in the future.
If you still feel that abortion is wrong, then at best maybe you can commit consistently to the following position: you don't believe abortion is right for you, but that is not the same thing as saying it isn't right for anyone at all
Alright, I'll bite, although I am still a little shaky on this issue though. I have been integrating my feelings regarding abortion and the potential child's right to live with the choice of a woman recently. I cannot speak for women who have had abortions or plan to, and I can not possible understand what they are feeling. I think it would be wrong of me to demand they use their body as a vessel for something they do not want, which is why I am against the illegalization of abortions. I would hope they could be persuaded by all means, but the breathing, experiencing female has more rights than a fetus.
