A Fetus is Not Morally Equivalent to a Mature Human

Despite Pro's response, he has not avoided the equivocation charge between positive (legal) rights and natural rights. Consider the example he raised in the initial paragraph: that children have fewer rights than adults. Now in one sense, this is true -- children do not have the right to drive cars, drink alcohol, smoke, etc. .. They don't have these rights because these "rights" are those which are artificially created by law. However, these are legal rights, not moral rights; moral rights are those that one has irrespective of what the law says -- this is what enables us to call a law unjust. Pro admits to this distinction. Thus, in order to demonstrate moral equivalence, Pro has to show that moral rights, and not legal rights, vary according to certain criteria. Now Pro has a response to this. He presents a scenario in which a child objects to the authority of his parents, saying "I ahve the natural right to have a glass of gin, get married, etc. .. " Unfortunately, this just commits the same error. The right to "have a glass of gin" is not a natural right due to the fact that it isn't pre-political, whereas say the right to life is. The "right" to have a glass of gin or to drive an automobile is a positive right. So Pro's response ends up commiting the same error. From this it is clear that though individuals may vary in regards to positive rights, this is irrelevant to moral equivalence (ME). Pro's examples ME therefore fail. Now, in regards to the burden of proof which I share, Pro has shared me with failing to demonstrate that natural rights of the fetus and the adult are the same, he alleges that I have only raised the mere possibility. No, I did so in my opening argument in which I argued that since I was once a fetus, I had the same rights then as I did now. Now of course whether this argument is sound is another issue which I will touch on shortly, but suffice to say that I did argue for my side. I. Mental CriteriaA. Self-awareness Pro argues that I am defining "self" in terms of future ability. Not so. What counts as the "self" is another subject, but my use of "future ability" was used only to deliberate a necessary condition for being a person. The unborn count as persons by virtue of the fact that they have the inherent potential to develop self-awareness. The immediate exercising of self-awareness, as Pro argues, does not stand up to scrutiny as an adequate definition of what counts as a person, for this would imply that those who lie down to take a nap no longer count as persons. Now Pro is right that the law treats those who are impaired or unconscious with no or lesser penalties than if they were fully aware -- but to use this as a counterexample to moral equivalence is wrongheaded, for it once again confuses positive rights with natural rights. The law regards these people as being different because they are not able to exercise moral judgement -- but to say that this also entails moral non-equivalence is to go beyond what the legal motivations tell us. Even though the law has varying degrees of responsibility, all persons are treated equal in moral value. In fact, legal counterexamples can be found which allow us to more clearly understand this notion. Suppose that a homeless man takes some sleeping medication and falls into a deep slumber on a park bench. Now suppose that he is then shot and killed by a vandal. On Pro's account of rights, the vandal should not be charged with murder because the individual in question either wasn't a person or lacked significant mental function to be morally equivalent to an adult human. But clearly this is absurd -- it would have been just as wrong if the man was shot when he was fully conscious. This lines up with both what the law says and what our moral intuitions tell us. B. Perception and memoryThe above can be equally applied to Pro's perception and memory requirement. Pro argues that "a person without sensory capability loses rights and priviledges because the person is almost totally dependent on others. "Let's amend the above example. Suppose that an assailant rapes two people: one who is normal in all regards and another who has no ability to sense but maintains full mental awareness. Should we charge him with a lesser crime in the case of the latter person? No. Indeed, it is just as wrong to shoot and kill an educated college professor as it is to shoot and kill a severely retarded child. In the eyes of the law, they are the same -- all persons are of equal value even if their ability to function comes in varying degrees. Interestingly, we see that therefore the legal examples employed by Pro can also be used in support of moral equivalence. Whereas the law regards positive rights as varying based on certain criteria, the law treats the natural rights of all human persons as the same. The murder of a severely retarded person is treated the same as the murder of a normal healthy person. So Pro's appeal to legal examples actually backfires! Now, regarding the two specific examples I raised -- Pro simply bite the bullet! But is this really convincing? All else being equal, are we really to believe that it is less wrong to strangle a severely retarded child than it is to strangle a normal child? That the example is not between a child and an adult is irrelevant, since I'm focused on the general principle Pro advanced, which is that rights vary. I suspect that our intuitions don't line up here. Pro's appeal to examples in which you can only save one appear to tip the scales toward his favor. A much clearer example would be the one that I just provided, in which all else is equal and moral decision making is not performed under durress. And in those cases, interestingly enough, our moral intuitions line up.2. Extrinsic criteriaA. Life of the mother/spontaneous abortionsSince I want to save room for some final comments, I will condense my responses here. Regarding the high infant mortality rate in third world countries -- I did not make a concession along the lines that they are not morally equivalent (Indeed, I don't even know how Pro inferred this). Now regarding the argument, Pro still has not responded to it. Are we to think that the infants who die in the third world are not morally equivalent to infants who die in developed countries simply because (a) more of them die and (b) they are not given the proper treatment usually associated with death? This strikes one as absurd, the answer is obviously no. The use of extreme examples in which we must rescue one and let the other die (such as in the life of the mother) are dubious here. When one decides to rescue a young person over an elderly person, is he really saying that the elderly person is less valuable, or that though they have equal moral value, the younger person has a better chance physically of surviving. It's important that we analyze not just the act, but the motivations and intent behind it. One may act to save the younger person over the elderly, but this does NOT automatically imply that his reasons were that because the younger person is morally worth more. His reasons may be completely different, as is usually the case in these examples. The very fact that there are dilemmas like these is because most consider them to be of equal worth, and thus must look to other nonmoral criteria. But doing this does not imply that they are not of equal worth. Examples which involve the life of the mother thus do not assume that the fetus is less valuable. Final commentsIn responding to Roy, I have mixed in positive arguments for my own position due to space considerations. I gave several clear examples in which various humans were treated equally despite their varying mental criteria. Thus, if equal treatment is independent of mental function, then the fetus too should be treated on par with an FDH despite the fact that it lacks significant mental function. Thanks to Roy for participating in this debate, I appreciate it.