Abortion

First off, I never said to kill the attacker. Review my post and see for yourself. What I said was to grab the attacker's arm, denying him bodily autonomy to move his arm, but allowing a child to live. I was finding fault with your statement: 'Bodily integrity or bodily autonomy means that you have the right to control what happens to your body even if that hurts or kills others.' In my scenario, I go against your statement, yet in my opinion it is the right thing to do. 'If someone is trying to kill your child, and the ONLY way to stop them is to kill them, any rational person would choose their child's life over the attacker's life. Is that your stance? Because you only have two options in that contrived situation: advocate murdering the attacker or advocate the murder of your child. By doing either, does that mean that you don"t value life? How can your point of view be anything but contradictory of each other?' You have set me up to fail. If I choose to do nothing, (according to you) I do not value life. If I kill the attacker, I don't value life. the only way to successfully win in your scenario is to not care about human life, which i am not prepared to do. In that situation, I would kill the attacker. In my opinion when someone tries to take a life deliberately, their life is less important than their victim's. However, I am against the death penalty. The reason for this is that the death penalty is about revenge, while, killing an attacker is about stopping an evil act being committed by a murderer. Of course you could argue that killing the attacker is still murder, and it is, but in a situation where the child dies OR the attacker dies, I would pick the attacker, as seeing that either way a life is lost, It may as well be that of a murderer as opposed to a child. You cannot prevent death, only decide who it takes. 'If you do believe human have "worth" please tell me what a human is worth? That should be an interesting discussion.' Well here's your interesting discussion. I didn't mean 'worth' as in monetary worth, not at all. I meant it as moralworth, as in something to be valued. I honestly do not know how you can take '... is human life after birth worth anything?' and see that as monetary worth. 'Life begins at conception, and no I don"t agree with your view. You present a false dichotomy where there are only two choices, and that"s not the reality. Is it morally "right" to put the child"s life above the mother's? Is it morally "right" to put the mother"s life above the child"s? The answer to both is no, it"s not a decision I have any right to make from a moral standpoint.' To clarify, I believe that if the mother's life is in danger, then the only solution should be to maximise human life, whatever that looks like. Think of it in a utilitarian sort of way. You say it is incorrect there are only two choices. Is it? If so, prove me wrong. These are the only two choices available: 1. You believe human life begins at conception, and therefore agree with my view. 2. There is a cut-off point in terms of development as to what constitutes human life, and what is worthy of human rights. Prove me wrong. Here, you put: 'Bodily autonomy is what others can do to your body. This is the reason that rationally, you should defend yourself from an attacker, to protect that attacker from violating your body.' But what gives you the right to violate his bodily autonomy? If you prevent someone harming you using their body, you are preventing their bodily autonomy. This sounds ridiculous, because it is. However, I'm only going off your definition. So either change your definition or agree with me, because at the moment your statement above contradicts your definition. For clarity, here is your definition: 'Bodily integrity or bodily autonomy means that you have the right to control what happens to your body even if that hurts or kills others.' So if you say that it's ok to prevent an attacker from attacking you, then you directly contradict your definition, as you say '...even if that hurts or kills others' Now I expect you to be a nihilist at this point, as the only way this statement below is consistent with your beliefs is if you don't care about human life at all. However, this is not true, as you care about the life of the fetus' mother. 'In your thought experiment, you are not in any way required to take care of someone who is helpless.' Of course you are not required, just as a mother at this moment in time is allowed to not care for someone (the fetus) that is helpless. The alternative to not taking care of the person is a human dying. If you value human life, you would care for the human life, as you can see that 9 months of inconvenience are by far worth less than an actual human life. You said this: 'We have the freedom to help others, or not help others, that is what freedom is.' True, but do you think you should have the freedom to pull the trigger of a gun and kill someone who isn't harming you? In my opinion, the freedom of choice can be infringed, as the alternative is someone losing their freedom to live. Thus, it is the same with the fetus. As for your lung example, I would like to live in a would where you are forced to give a lung if it saves the life of someone else. I value human life over virtually anything else, so someone else's convenience can be sacrificed for human life. 'Choosing to not save someone, does not make you a murder.' No, of course not. But deliberately having an operation to destroy an unborn baby is, as you are actively causing the fetus' death. I cannot find where I have said I don't care about the good of society. I'm assuming you are referencing my view that lowered crime rates do not make a difference in terms of the abortion argument. '...you just care about birth, not what happens afterwards.' No, you do not know that. You are assuming that I have a hard right Republican leaning, and therefore advocate things like flat tax and cutting welfare etc. I have never mentioned anything as to what happens to the child after birth. Therefore you are assuming my view point on issues you do not know what my view point is. Do not do this,as you may be wrong and it is an unfair argument, I could (hypothetically) be a communist who so happens to be pro-life. So do not assume my complete political viewpoint is the same as many pro life advocates.