From: bard@cutter.ssd.loral.com (J H Woodyatt)
Subject: Exporting `Abortion is Murder' into law
Reply-To: bard@cutter.ssd.loral.com
Organization: Abiogenesis 4 Less
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 19:18:21 GMT

#   beaver@castor.cs.psu.edu (Don Beaver)
>>  bard@cutter.ssd.loral.com (J H Woodyatt)
### beaver@castor.cs.psu.edu (Don Beaver)

### THE FOLLOWING IS PRESENTED FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT.
### (Do not delete this disclaimer.)
### 
### Stipulate:  A fetus is a person.
>> 
>> Well, if we're going to be *concrete* then we'd better define our
>> terms better...
>> 
>> Stipulation:  Exporting the proposition `abortion is murder' into law
>> means accepting the idea that zygotes, embryos and fetuses are all
>> within the class of human creatures the law deems to be persons.
# 
# Fine.
#
>> Also, it must be shown that the criteria for establishing when unborn
>> persons may be deprived of their right to life when they were
>> conceived as a result of rape or incest, or when their mothers' lives
>> are in grave physical danger resulting from pregnancy.

Rereading this, I see where I should have appended the words `are
consistent with common law' to the above sentence.

# You have changed from "criteria to establish what conditions
# are necessary" to "criteria to establish when unborn persons
# may be deprived..."

Do you think I have changed the meaning?

Back when we were being more casual about our language, here's what I
wrote:
> What consistent criteria can you use to establish what conditions
> are necessary for a fetus to be deprived of its right to life under
> these increasingly hypothetical laws? 

Now that we're in the ring, I want to clean it up to this:
> What criteria can you use to establish when unborn persons may be
> deprived of their right to life that are consistent with common law and
> will permit such persons to be intentionally killed because they were
> conceived as a result of rape or incest, or their mother's physical
> health is put in grave danger by pregnancy, but in no other cases?

Do you accept this as a rephrasal of my earlier question?  If not, can
we ignore the earlier question, and concentrate on what I meant to
ask, as posed in the newer, higher-revision-level question?

-----

### Assumption 2:  Any person may voluntarily restrict his/her
### basic rights (ie. they are voluntarily "alienable").
>> 
>> Bad assumption.  A person may choose not to exercise his/her basic
>> rights, but no one may be deprived of their basic rights because they
>> have chosen not to exercise them.  (Your contrived argument rests on
>> this fallacy, by the way.)
# 
# Irrelevant comment.  I referred to voluntary restriction of rights,
# not to failing to exercise rights.  Your contrived objection fails.

The comment was not irrelevent.  Further, you did not deflect the
criticism that people may not voluntarily restrict their own basic
rights -- they may only choose not to exercise them.  Common law
recognizes this.

For example, if I sign a legal contract wherein I promise to give
blood every sixty days, I may be punished for breaking the contract,
but I may not be compelled to give blood to fulfill my obligation,
because, while I have chosen not to exercise my right to be free from
requirements to give blood, I have not forfeited that right by signing
a contract.

As another example, one closer to the topic at hand, a woman does not
forfeit her right of bodily autonomy when she signs a contract
agreeing to serve as a surrogate mother.  If she violates the
contract, she may be sued for violating the contract, but she may not
be physically forced by the state to fulfill her contractual
obligations.  This is because common law recognizes that she does not
forfeit her right to control her reproductive system by signing a
contract wherein she agrees not to exercise them. Here, we're talking
about a written, signed contract, not some unwritten, unspoken,
implied contract.

Do you wish to argue that the implicit contract that a woman enters
into under our hypothetical laws when she consents to sexual
intercourse is a `social contract' she makes with society at large and
not with her sexual partner?  Down that path lies a thorny garden.

-----

>> I presume these are the laws you intend to show are a consistent
>> reflection of the original stipulation.  Good luck.
# 
# They are a quick and rough summary.  No legal system has ever
# seen such compactly described laws.

Understood.

-----

### Criterion for establishing necessary conditions:
### ------------------------------------------------
### 
###   Does the fetus' right to life exceed the sum of the woman's rights to 
###   bodily privacy and to life?
>> 
>> This is a question, not a criterion.  The criterion is your implied
>> answer:  `no, except when it does' -- which is ludicrous.
# 
# Well, I guess any question can be answered "no, except when yes."
# Now what?

The answer wasn't ludicrous.  The *criterion* is ludicrous.

Take the example of two pregnant women, we'll call them Thelma and
Louise.  Thelma is pregnant as a result of a rape.  Louise is pregnant
from consensual sex.  Both want abortions.  Neither's life is in grave
physical danger as a result of the pregnancy, and their health risks
from pregnancy are roughly equivalent.  Under out hypothetical system
of law, Thelma may abort, but Louise may not, but both women have the
same rights to bodily privacy and to life, because neither woman
forfeited those rights.  Just because Louise implicitly chose not to
exercise her rights to bodily privacy and to life (whether consciously
or not) does not deprive her of her right to exercise them in the
future should she change her mind.

>> This is where your argument disintegrates.  The conditions you offer
>> for deciding when the law may approve the deprivation of the unborn's
>> right to life are inconsistent with current law.  The deprivation of a
>> person's right to life can only be legally sanctioned by *due process*
>> of law.  The law excuses the killing of a person after the fact if
>> certain criteria are met, e.g. self-defense, but it does not *ever*
>> issue legal licenses to kill people who have not been tried and found
>> guilty of capital crime or have not been deemed to be enemies in time
>> of war.
# 
# If you would like to be as detailed as current law and include
# several hundred pages of description, that's your choice.
# 
# Require the woman to have a court's permission for abortion, assign
# the fetus a public defender (it does have the right to question the
# woman's claim of rape).  If the defender can't make a sufficient case,
# then the fetus is evicted, through whatever means necessary.

The fetus is `evicted?'  Oh, that's rich.

We're talking about legally killing a fetus under a system of law that
regards them as *persons* with full human rights, here.  Worse yet,
for a woman to obtain permission for an abortion, she would have to
file a civil suit against her own fetus.  A public defender in a civil
case?  Yahoo.  Can you imagine a civil court deciding that a *person*
shall be *EXECUTED* because his/her right to life is less important
than someone else's rights?  Civil courts do *not* do this today.

-----

### WHETHER THESE *SHOULD* BE LAW IS A SEPARATE QUESTION.
### (And I won't argue it.)
>> 
>> ...and I suspect I know the reason why.
# 
# State your suspicions.  I suspect you don't know or are trying
# to make a misleading point.

Because I think you would argue support for such laws, and you know
you'll come off sounding like a sex-fascist.  That's my suspicion.

Besides, it is not a totally separate question.  It is a *related*
question, and it is a question that it is intimately tied to the
question at hand -- because if these laws aren't consistent with
common law, and they aren't consistent with current law, then they
probably ought not be laws, right?  If they *are, then that would be a
point in their defense when it comes to deciding whether they ought to
be enacted.

-----
 
>> Here's basically what you've argued so far...
>> 
>> Assumption:  Abortion is murder, except when...
>> 
>> 1.  ...the mother's health is gravely endangered by pregnancy -- it's
>> killing in self-defense, and the state won't be able to prosecute if
>> they don't think they can prove otherwise.
>> 
>> 2.  ...the unborn person was conceived as a result of rape -- it's
>> killing in defense of `bodily privacy,' i.e. basic personal liberty
>> (that was not surrendered by implicit contract) or some such
>> silliness, and the state won't be able to prosecute if they can prove
>> otherwise (e.g. by proving that the mother surrendered her rights,
>> i.e. consented to sex).
>> 
>> 3.  ...the unborn person was conceived as a result of incest.  For
>> this, you offer no explanation whatsoever.
>> 
>> Now, (1) I do not wish to quibble about, (2) I think is absurd,
>> because it seems ridiculous to think that *any* basic right is
>> surrenderable, let alone by implicit contract.  And, (3) just makes me
>> curious.
# 
# Well, since you seem to want an even more encyclopedic response,
# I'm not interested in quibbling either.  Your restatements of
# the arguments are inaccurate.

Show me the inaccuracy.  Don't just complain about it.  *Show* them to
me.  How did I misrepresent your argument?

#                               As for (3), it introduces yet another 
# level of complexity: it contains BOTH the issue of involuntary 
# conception (thus your "no explanation whatsoever" is off the mark)
# AND the issue of fetal health, which has not so far been part 
# of the discussion. [...]

It does not.  Incest by itself does not involve involuntary
conception.  Incestual *rape* does.

As for the argument that incest raises the issue of fetal health, I
think we can kill that argument by showing that under our hypothetical
system of laws, a healthy fetus conceived under consensual incest can
legally be aborted, but a fetus with a severe genetic defect that was
not conceived as a result of incest would be protected from abortion.
Clearly, fetal health has little to do with any arguements for why
conceptions resulting from incest ought to be excepted from bans on
abortion.


-- 
J H Woodyatt (a.k.a. Dr. Strychnine)
Space Systems/Loral

Help keep Las Vegas clean.  Eat your kill.
Newsgroups: talk.abortion