We have enough to criminalize rape. Why not what is functionally the same act?Now please remember, this is IF you accept the idea that a fetus is a person. Its not a premise i hold, but IF one holds it the rest follows fairly logically.
It's a pretty crazy idea that can't withstand scrutiny. That one must begin with it already tells us the other side is dealing with less than a full deck. It's no surprise to me that the fruit of such a tree is poisonous, as I suspect it's also no surprise to you.
But even given that, which is infinitely too much to ask, I don't think it all follows logically.
If someone expropriates my arm because they're drowning or trying to pull themselves out of a burning car, they kind of have the right to it so long as they're not going to get me killed or maimed in the process. IF (please remember the if) you accept the premise of a fertilized egg as a person the same thing applies. They've appropriated the womb on the basis of strict need to maintain their life.
The same is true of a tumor. Must we grant Samnell's Lobotomized Fake Church of Brain Dead Tumor Personhood Believers the same consideration? We both know that asserting personhood based on dogma leaves us just there. If we're willing to permit that kind of thing, we must also grant equal consideration to someone who believes all policies should be decided by a d20 roll or the mass of their bowel movement on a given day.
Furthermore, someone expropriating your arm because they're drowning and trying to pull themselves out is hardly demanding access to your genitals. I think that's an entirely different level of severity. There's a reason why we wight object to a hand on the shoulder and shrug it off with an unfriendly look but would respond totally differently to a hand reaching down one's pants. But that's not all. The risk and cost to you for your arm being borrowed for a minute or so is in any event where its borrowing is actually going to help the person in danger (that is, you're not both trapped under burning timbers or something) is massively smaller than the risk and cost of even the least eventful of pregnancies. To compare a relatively minor, short term inconvenience to nine months of pregnancy ending in birth is to trivialize the demands of pregnancy.
Inaction has never been considered the same as action, nor should it be. How many people pulled over on the side of the road have you driven past? Is that the same as punching a hole in their tires?
But for inaction in seeking consent, rape is the same as consensual sex. I think everybody agrees on that, so it seems in some cases we do treat inaction as a kind of action, however paradoxical that may seem. I would not argue that every possible inaction should be treated this way but in this case both the one we all agree is a rapist and the person I suggest is more or less the same are fully cognizant of the fact that they are seizing use of a woman's genitals without her permission.
But he didn't cause it. You can't require him to take immoral steps to stop it from happening.
Absent some kind of empirical demonstration of personhood on behalf of the fetus, I can under no circumstances responsibly grant that the pharmacist is being required to take an immoral step. People have all kinds of crazy beliefs, and if you don't believe me I'm sure someone will be along directly to pull some examples from my own posts. :)
But coexisting equally and without violence and such requires that we all make certain compromises in the name of both maintaining that peace where it exists, improving it where it is lacking, and introducing it where it is absent. We're all stuck on this rock and in this universe together and we must come up with some rules that we can all agree upon. (The work is never done.) Unless we base those rules on reasonable, empirical foundations they simply become another form of inequality and, quite often, violence.
We all have different preferences. I, for one, really like seeing a hot guy in a speedo. It's one of my very favorite things. I dare say I have a deep and abiding passion for the subject which my internet history would testify to. This preference does in many ways great and small (mostly small, but I'm trying to pick a non-controversial example here) influence my day to day actions. I'm not hurting anybody with this. I don't go around demanding that every man wears a speedo, no matter what the circumstances or what their own preferences are. I do not advocate that it be illegal to sell other styles of swimsuit, that there be fines levied for selling or using them, or that any obstacles at all be placed upon their wear and/or purchase except insofar as those apply equally to all forms of swimwear. If someone doesn't want to wear a speedo, I'm a little disappointed (if they're attractive anyway) but I'd be racing to the front of the line to condemn some kind of jerk trying to mandate them. (I can actually think of a few narrow exceptions here but in the interests of not derailing the conversation over what constitutes a reasonable dress code in what circumstance I'm going to skip them. I trust my meaning is clear.)
In our case, here is a pharmacist who prefers that every pregnancy come to term. Or maybe he's less severe and only wants the pregnancies he personally approves of being terminated to be terminated. It's fine for him to harbor this preference. I think it's a bad one, but what you do in your head is your own business. It's even fine for the pharmacist, if a woman, to act out that preference in her own life. (Men, I've noticed, don't get pregnant.:) ) I would be extremely opposed to forcing her to terminate a pregnancy she wanted. That kind of violation strikes me as at the least very close to being rape and much alike in severity.
For that pharmacist to demand that others follow his preferences is at the very least extremely boorish. (I didn't even consider demanding that everybody else prefer looking at speedo models, note.) But it goes rather beyond that when he's going to use his state-granted authority in an attempt to force them to do so. It's not the pharmacist's body. He's violating the woman's sexual autonomy just as a conventional rapist is. He has his license with the understanding that he's going to use it properly and dispense drugs as instructed, not just give his fratboy pals all the roofies they want and paying his stock boys in oxycotin. If he can't handle the fact that he needs a real reason to deny someone a medication, just as he has to wait for a prescription to hand out the morphine, not just his personal preference, then he has no business dispensing drugs whatsoever. He cannot be trusted to use his authority responsibly.
It's a pretty crazy idea that can't withstand scrutiny. That one must begin with it already tells us the other side is dealing with less than a full deck. It's no surprise to me that the fruit of such a tree is poisonous, as I suspect it's also no surprise to you.
Its only poisonous if you accept your conclusion as the logical one, which relies on making your premise the logical one, making this line of questioning rather circular.
The strength of your case is on person hood. I don't think there's anything wrong with making that a lynchpin for your stance: it has evidence, rational, reason, and makes logical sense.
But even given that, which is infinitely too much to ask, I don't think it all follows logically.
I think it does, and i think the frequency that you fall back to the "but its not a person" position shows that.
The same is true of a tumor. Must we grant Samnell's Lobotomized Fake Church of Brain Dead Tumor Personhood Believers the same consideration? We both know that asserting personhood based on dogma leaves us just there.
-Not accepting the premise.
If we're willing to permit that kind of thing, we must also grant equal consideration to someone who believes all policies should be decided by a d20 roll or the mass of their bowel movement on a given day.
Wait.. you DON"T make daily decisions based on your last couric measurement?
We do make a lot of concession for people's religions and morality.
Furthermore, someone expropriating your arm because they're drowning and trying to pull themselves out is hardly demanding access to your genitals.
The same thing holds. Life is more important than modesty. If, for some inscrutable reason, such as i was holding up a mine shaft and i was burried up to my waist in rubble and the only thing they could grab onto were my two best friends then they grab onto my two best friends and pull.
When its two siamese twins we fully recognize that both have a right to life even if ones life would be vastly better if the other were dead.
But for inaction in seeking consent, rape is the same as consensual sex. I think everybody agrees on that, so it seems in some cases we do treat inaction as a kind of action, however paradoxical that may seem.
Its not remotely paradoxal because we are NOT blaming someone for the inaction in seeking consent, we're blaming someone for the act of sex without getting consent: the active violation of another's will. I passed by dozens of females today, didn't ask for consent to have sex, and its not a crime.
But coexisting equally and without violence and such requires that we all make certain compromises in the name of both maintaining that peace where it exists, improving it where it is lacking, and introducing it where it is absent.
And without the foundation of an individuals right to chose what you're left with is at best the tyranny of the majority, and more likely the tyranny of the people running the show. Right and wrong are not dependent on a majority vote. For example, slavery was wrong, even if a majority of Americans thought it was fair that 10% of them should work for nothing.
For that pharmacist to demand that others follow his preferences is at the very least extremely boorish.
The pharmacist is not, at least at this juncture, demanding that every pregnancy come to term. What they are saying is that everyone else has to respect their decision not to have any involvement in the termination.
There is a gray area as to whether or not this is a reasonable accommodation to someone's religious beliefs, which probably varies vastly by the size of the town and the pharmacy. In new york city with 15 people working the counter its a piece of cake to wave down bob and have him fill out the forms. On the other hand if you're in Flyspeck Oregon where the pharmacies consist of you and the meth lab in the trailor down the road its not practical for another pharmacist to drive 120 miles out to you.
Its still less of a bother than some accommodations I've seen, such as ultra orthodox Jewish firefighters not working Saturdays. Moral choices about your own actions should reside primarily with you, not with the government.
The same is true of a tumor. Must we grant Samnell's Lobotomized Fake Church of Brain Dead Tumor Personhood Believers the same consideration? We both know that asserting personhood based on dogma leaves us just there.-Not accepting the premise.
Not accepting MY premise now. :) Unless we take the dogmas out of it, we only have "Is so!" and "Is not!". We get nowhere. If the premise can't be sustained on the grounds of the universe we all live in, it ought to be dismissed.
We do make a lot of concession for people's religions and morality.
Too many. People are free to believe anything they want. Freedom of action is rightly and necessarily limited. Freedom of religion should never be an excuse to break any law whatsoever, nor to restrict, burden, or impede the choices of anybody who does not freely choose to be so hindered. Obviously our woman with an unwanted pregnancy who comes to the pharmacy seeking emergency contraception has chosen not to be so bound.
The same thing holds. Life is more important than modesty. If, for some inscrutable reason, such as i was holding up a mine shaft and i was burried up to my waist in rubble and the only thing they could grab onto were my two best friends then they grab onto my two best friends and pull.
The life of dust mites? Of cows? Certainly there are varying degrees of gravity and there are obviously varying degrees of worth to life. We all eat living things pretty much every day, both deliberately and just by inhaling.
Its not remotely paradoxal because we are NOT blaming someone for the inaction in seeking consent, we're blaming someone for the act of sex without getting consent: the active violation of another's will. I passed by dozens of females today, didn't ask for consent to have sex, and its not a crime.
You also didn't have sex with any. But if you have sex, inaction in seeking consent is what makes it a crime and a violation. Other than that, who would want any kind of sex criminalized?
Aside the usual suspects I'm sure I don't need to name, of course.
And without the foundation of an individuals right to chose what you're left with is at best the tyranny of the majority, and more likely the tyranny of the people running the show. Right and wrong are not dependent on a majority vote. For example, slavery was wrong, even if a majority of Americans thought it was fair that 10% of them should work for nothing.
I can't quite agree. I see all rights as nothing less than social contracts. They do not rise out of the earth or descend from heaven. We make 'em up. We can unmake them too. (Yes, all of us together and yes a right that the majority don't believe in rapidly ceases to exist whether we want it to or not.) That doesn't make them good or bad, and I can think of some pretty bad rights, but ultimately we did invent the things. I mean I think it's pretty immoral to advocate for religion, but I don't think that generally speaking the state should prevent people from doing so.
The pharmacist is not, at least at this juncture, demanding that every pregnancy come to term. What they are saying is that everyone else has to respect their decision not to have any involvement in the termination.
If the pharmacist were a dog catcher that would be fine. He chose greater responsibility. If he wants to unchoose it, that's fine too. But I see no reason to even consider letting him have it both ways. Power without equal responsibility never goes over too well in my book.
Its still less of a bother than some accommodations I've seen, such as ultra orthodox Jewish firefighters not working Saturdays. Moral choices about your own actions should reside primarily with you, not with the government.
I don't think allowing ultra-orthodox Jewish firefighters to have Saturday off is an acceptable accommodation, unless the government also lets every other firefighter designate a day they always get off based on such equally weighty concerns as not feeling like getting up that day, bowel movement mass, etc. (Shall I open Samnell's Fake Church of the Not Feeling Like Getting up Before 11 PM or Working After 12 PM on Every Day that Ends in Y?) Otherwise the religious have a special right to set their own vacation time that no one else enjoys, which is totally unacceptable. Everybody at the same job should have exactly the same level of control over their vacation days.
But I'll agree with the second sentence. Moral choices about your own actions should reside primarily with you. So don't go asking the state to bow to your every whim (or at best just as bad, demanding it of private individuals just trying to access legal medicines for serious medical conditions) just because the d20 says you have to do X or Jesus came down from heaven with all his angels and said you had to do Y.
Not accepting MY premise now. :)
You said the premise didn't logically lead to the conclusion. It did. You needed to deny the premise several times in order to maintain your conclusion. It doesn't mean you're wrong, it just means that your entire case rests on "Is it a person yes/no"
Unless we take the dogmas out of it, we only have "Is so!" and "Is not!".
Its rare that disagreements rarely get past that point at the heart of the matter, despite the layers of veneer both sides will pile up.
We get nowhere. If the premise can't be sustained on the grounds of the universe we all live in, it ought to be dismissed.
Careful, that pretty much removes any plea to the morality of an act, since morals and oughts are hard if not impossible to demonstrate.
Well you have a problem there. What do you mean "we" ? MOST people believe in some sort of a soul. If we're going for your idea of a social contract, you're obliged to go with the majority vote here, and you loose out.
Too many. People are free to believe anything they want. Freedom of action is rightly and necessarily limited.
Freedom of INACTION on the other hand is nearly limitless.
Freedom of religion should never be an excuse to break any law whatsoever, nor to restrict, burden, or impede the choices of anybody who does not freely choose to be so hindered. Obviously our woman with an unwanted pregnancy who comes to the pharmacy seeking emergency contraception has chosen not to be so bound.
And just as I'm against the government telling her that she's wrong, I'm against the government telling the Pro Life pharmacist that he is wrong. Its a moral choice. Its going to be subjective.
The life of dust mites? Of cows? Certainly there are varying degrees of gravity and there are obviously varying degrees of worth to life. We all eat living things pretty much every day, both deliberately and just by inhaling.
With apologies to suicidal gnats, I do hold the sanctity of life for cows. I don't really have any rational reasons to gently toss spiders out the window (unless its winter in which case they stay) while yanking ticks out and squashing them... but spiders aren't going to give me lyme disease and debilitate me for life. (even the dangerous spiders have no real reason to bite me)
And you're again back to not accepting their premise. You and I see a zygote as a ball of cells. they (for religious reasons 99% of the time but i may have come accross the occasional secularist that thought this way) see it as a unique human life. Human life would have every reason and right to appropriate my two best friends to sustain itself.
u also didn't have sex with any. But if you have sex, inaction in seeking consent is what makes it a crime and a violation. Other than that, who would want any kind of sex criminalized?
This point is turning into a borderline Chewbacca defense. Its not ANY action on my part in obtaining permission that determines if an act is rape. The action is entirely on their part to consent or not, and the action on my part is to have sex or not. You're trying to define an action as inaction and its not working.
My action: voulez vous couchez avec moi*?
Their action: oui!= not rape.
My action: voulez vous couchez avec moi?
Their action: No!
My action: doing it anyway= rape
Note that my ACTIONS in attempting to attain permission were exactly the same.
I can't quite agree. I see all rights as nothing less than social contracts. They do not rise out of the earth or descend from heaven.
They stem unopposed from an individual will. A being has wants and needs. Unless the legitimate want or need of another individual opposes it there's no basis for denying it.
We make 'em up. We can unmake them too. (Yes, all of us together and yes a right that the majority don't believe in rapidly ceases to exist whether we want it to or not.)
That's not all of us together. What is it with you lawful types assuming every or even most governments are democracies :) ? Rights get suppressed against the will of the majority all the time because a minority have all the guns.
That doesn't make them good or bad, and I can think of some pretty bad rights, but ultimately we did invent the things. I mean I think it's pretty immoral to advocate for religion, but I don't think that generally speaking the state should prevent people from doing so.
The problem with your view is that there's no GOAL. There's no possibility of advancement. Its descriptive, not proscriptive, and circular. The social contract is whatever the government says it is... until it says something different. What does that even SAY? What does that give you to strive for? It answers the is/ought dichotomy by denying any ought or hope that things could be better.
If the pharmacist were a dog catcher that would be fine. He chose greater responsibility. If he wants to unchoose it, that's fine too. But I see no reason to even consider letting him have it both ways. Power without equal responsibility never goes over too well in my book.
And where do you get that authority?
So don't go asking the state to bow to your every whim (or at best just as bad, demanding it of private individuals just trying to access legal medicines for serious medical conditions)
But the opposite is happening here, the individual is supposed to bow down to the demands of government.
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No, but if he had the ability to provide Danielle-san with emergency contraception when Danielle-san asked for it then he certainly deserves jail time. He would be expropriating control of Danielle-san's sex organs without Danielle-san's consent.What about that is not rape? It's literally word-for-word how I would define rape. Do you dispute the accuracy of the description when it's some dude in a dark alley? Some polgynist scum in a church compound? A fratboy with roofies? What's the difference?
Penetrating or performing a sexual act on a person against their will is rape.
Not supplying said person with condoms or pills is not rape.There is a vast gulf, in fact, between these two things.
The only way your example even remotely works is if she were able by some mental command to will her reproductive system to work or not work, in the very same way she can determine who and who does not have access to her vagina, and a pharmacist was somehow able to restrain her from doing so and force her pregnancy to occur against her will.
It's like blaming the pharmacist for her organs working as intended.
There is a vast gulf, in fact, between these two things.
The only way your example even remotely works is if she were able by some mental command to will her reproductive system to work or not work, in the very same way she can determine who and who does not have access to her vagina, and a pharmacist was somehow able to restrain her from doing so and force her pregnancy to occur against her will.
It's like blaming the pharmacist for her organs working as intended.
The pharmacist emphatically is trying to force her pregnancy to occur against her will. That's what refusing to give emergency contraception necessarily entails. The two cannot be separated. She has chosen not to have this pregnancy and the pharmacist is saying no, she will have it whether she likes it or not.
Not accepting MY premise now. :)You said the premise didn't logically lead to the conclusion. It did. You needed to deny the premise several times in order to maintain your conclusion. It doesn't mean you're wrong, it just means that your entire case rests on "Is it a person yes/no"
I still haven't seen any logical connection between a fetus is a person and emergency contraception and/or abortion is a murder. That would, at the maximum, make it a case of self defense so far as I can tell. After all, if the fetus is a person then it's chosen (being a person it must be able to) its lodgings without consulting the mother.
I'm completely serious in saying that I could agree with the pro-lifers entirely about the personhood of the fetus and it wouldn't even give momentary pause to my present position that a woman deserves an absolute, unchallengeable right to an abortion on demand at any time for any reason until such time as there's simply no time left to perform that abortion prior to delivery.
Careful, that pretty much removes any plea to the morality of an act, since morals and oughts are hard if not impossible to demonstrate.Well you have a problem there. What do you mean "we" ? MOST people believe in some sort of a soul. If we're going for your idea of a social contract, you're obliged to go with the majority vote here, and you loose out.
The social contract includes the state apparatus we use to resolve disputes and, fortunately, de jure it excludes religious rationales for restricting others.
Freedom of INACTION on the other hand is nearly limitless.
Quite right. If the woman doesn't want to terminate the pregnancy, no one should force her to. Not even a pharmacist.
With apologies to suicidal gnats, I do hold the sanctity of life for cows. I don't really have any rational reasons to gently toss spiders out the window (unless its winter in which case they stay) while yanking ticks out and squashing them... but spiders aren't going to give me lyme disease and debilitate me for life. (even the dangerous spiders have no real reason to bite me)
Dust mites aren't suicidal. They're just in the dust when you inhale it. You probably kill at least thousands every single day. This is precisely my point: not all life is equally valuable. We exterminate it for our pleasure, for our convenience, for our good health, for sustenance, and any number of other reasons. You may not eat cows, but I bet you eat plants that were just as alive.
They stem unopposed from an individual will. A being has wants and needs. Unless the legitimate want or need of another individual opposes it there's no basis for denying it.
How does that work? By magic? It sounds to me like you're describing how we might evaluate whether or not rights should be granted, not where they come from.
That's not all of us together. What is it with you lawful types assuming every or even most governments are democracies :) ? Rights get suppressed against the will of the majority all the time because a minority have all the guns.
I have taken democracy as a given because I am not an authoritarian. (And I'm generally not speaking to people who identify themselves as such and thus skip the argument about how democracy is the least worst method of governance available to us.) But you're quite right. Authoritarian governments do take away rights quite regularly. So do non-authoritarian governments. (Not that these are perfectly binary categories. The UK is pure authoritarian on paper, being an absolute monarchy, but in the real world is considerably less so. The US is theoretically democratic but most of its governing structure is set up to prevent democracy from happening.) To say that they don't is just flying in the face of the facts. Whether or not we prefer that they do so is a completely different issue from what rights are and what rights one has.
The problem with your view is that there's no GOAL. There's no possibility of advancement. Its descriptive, not proscriptive, and circular. The social contract is whatever the government says it is... until it says something different. What does that even SAY? What does that give you to strive for? It answers the is/ought dichotomy by denying any ought or hope that things could be better.
Quite right. I have stated what rights are. I haven't said what they're for or gone much, except in this specific case, into what I think they ought or ought not entail. But here's a basic principle: If one says one is for a right and against the state taking it away or suppressing it, but then allows private bodies to do much the same, one isn't actually in favor of that right. Rather one just wants to ensure the oppressors and persecutors are able to operate with greater impunity than the framework of a democratic or pseudodemocratic state would allow.
I'm not popular with libertarians. :)
What do I think people ought to strive for? That's asking what the meaning of life is. It doesn't mean anything. I could tell you "a better world" but that doesn't mean anything either. It's just a platitude. My personal preference is for sort of the love child of Sweden and Canada with some small dollops of things from other countries.
But the opposite is happening here, the individual is supposed to bow down to the demands of government.
In taking the license from the state, the pharmacist made himself its agent. So I quite agree; an individual is supposed to bow to the demands of the government. Specifically, the woman with the unwanted pregnancy is.
It's still not rape, sorry. Rape is sex and violation. Refusing contraception is not.
It's wrong. I would support it being illegal, but that doesn't make it rape.
Agreed. I don't suppose we can put that particular topic to rest?
I still haven't seen any logical connection between a fetus is a person and emergency contraception and/or abortion is a murder.
Would it be murder to kill your Siamese twin for sharing your liver? Its just as intimate as your genitals (moreso)
That would, at the maximum, make it a case of self defense so far as I can tell.
You cannot use lethal force in self defense unless your own life is in jeopardy. If someone is punching me in the face i cannot draw a knife and stab them.
After all, if the fetus is a person then it's chosen (being a person it must be able to) its lodgings without consulting the mother.
Your definition of person hood includes the ability to make a choice. Theirs does not.
The social contract includes the state apparatus we use to resolve disputes and, fortunately, de jure it excludes religious rationales for restricting others.
And said social contract explicitly allows religious/moral distension on this matter in several areas. You are appealing to the social contract (laws) when it agrees with you at the same time arguing that the social contract should be changed.... what is your basis for this change? It, by definition, CAN"T be the social contract.
Quite right. If the woman doesn't want to terminate the pregnancy, no one should force her to. Not even a pharmacist.
The pharmacist is doing no such thing. If he were to kidnap her, lock her in the basement hooked up to an IV for 9 months THEN he would be forcing her. Inaction is not action. Not giving a bum money is not the same as robbing them of a dollar, even though the net result is the same.
Dust mites aren't suicidal. They're just in the dust when you inhale it. You probably kill at least thousands every single day. This is precisely my point: not all life is equally valuable. We exterminate it for our pleasure, for our convenience, for our good health, for sustenance, and any number of other reasons. You may not eat cows, but I bet you eat plants that were just as alive.
Well, i can't exactly go without oxygen. Sorry mites. A pregnancy however is not usually a matter of life and death. (if it is a matter of life and death then i AM all for requiring ER doctors to save the mother even if it means loosing the baby)
People arguing against abortion take human life to be the mark of whether or not its worth saving.
How does that work? By magic? It sounds to me like you're describing how we might evaluate whether or not rights should be granted, not where they come from.
I'm doing both. If i want to walk down the street the burden of proof is on someone else to show why i can't have what i want.
I have taken democracy as a given because I am not an authoritarian.
Sure you are. You just think said authority should be invested in 51% of the population (or more realistically in the folks that lie enough to get 51% of the population to vote for them) rather than a single individual. The end result is the same: people being compelled to do by hook or by crook what other people want them to do.
If one says one is for a right and against the state taking it away or suppressing it, but then allows private bodies to do much the same, one isn't actually in favor of that right. Rather one just wants to ensure the oppressors and persecutors are able to operate with greater impunity than the framework of a democratic or pseudodemocratic state would allow.
Usually you're right, but i think there are the occasional exceptions. The fact is that the state has more power, more power is more responsibility, which is less license to act on individual cases.
Its why i'm less worried about a poodle being off a leash than a rottweiler.
What do I think people ought to strive for? That's asking what the meaning of life is. It doesn't mean anything. I could tell you "a better world" but that doesn't mean anything either. It's just a platitude. My personal preference is for sort of the love child of Sweden and Canada with some small dollops of things from other countries.
And what is your basis for that preference?
In taking the license from the state, the pharmacist made himself its agent. So I quite agree; an individual is supposed to bow to the demands of the government. Specifically, the woman with the unwanted pregnancy is.
Absolutely not. I have a drivers license, does that make me a tool of the state? Does that force me to drive little old ladies to the supermarket? No. As a vegetarian do i have to drive people to the steak house? No. Getting a license from the government does not mean giving them your life. Its getting back something you probably should have the freedom to do anyway but other considerations won out.
Also, your argument falls apart when the state doesn't agree with you. Illinois for example says you can't fire pharmacists for refusing to fill morning after pills. The state and pro life pharmacist are in agreement.. whats your argument there?
But here's a basic principle: If one says one is for a right and against the state taking it away or suppressing it, but then allows private bodies to do much the same, one isn't actually in favor of that right.
How exactly is a private body's refusal to help you do something, the same as "taking away your right" to do it?
I have the right to own property; that doesn't mean you have to give me yours.
You have the right to buy and consume birth control; that doesn't force anyone else to sell it to you.
Freedom to do something does not create in anyone else (even the government) a responsibility to help you do it. All it means is that if you can manage to do it on your own, or find someone else willing to do it with you, no one is allowed to act to stop you.
I think the premise is that providing condoms is as important as life-saving sugery, or other emergency care, and not something that can be allowed to be withheld.
I don't agree with that premise.
You cannot use lethal force in self defense unless your own life is in jeopardy.
Not to quibble with the rest of your post -- just wanted to point out that defense of property, in Texas, is legal grounds for use of lethal force. It doesn't even have to be your own property. If you see someone breaking into the neighbor's house, you can legally go over there and blow him away. It just sucks when you realize it was his brother-in-law, not a burglar.
...defense of property, in Texas, is legal grounds for use of lethal force. It doesn't even have to be your own property.
Another reason not to live in Texas.
"That guy stole my pencil!"
BLAM!
Something that was mentioned in the other thread, but which I didn't get a chance to respond to.
The only place the Bible condemns homosexuality is in the Old Testament in the same chapter where it commands parents to kill their own children.
It does get a brief nod in the NT. Mind you its from Paul and Paul's just.. his own barrel of worms.
Romans 1
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
A man who is born gay (as we now understand gays to be) isn't abandoning natural relations with women when having sex with one another.
I highly doubt that view (which i personally agree with about 90%) was shared by the author.
If I'm living in a high crime area, have a young child in my house, and find someone sneaking around in my house, I may well shoot first and ask questions second. Well, not me personally as I don't keep a gun in the house, but I sure am not going to blame my neighbor if he does it.
...which seems like self-defense, rather than strictly defense of property. Not really the same thing as seeing someone stealing your neighbor's lawn mower and blowing them away, which is apparently A-OK in Texas.
Not to quibble with the rest of your post -- just wanted to point out that defense of property, in Texas, is legal grounds for use of lethal force. It doesn't even have to be your own property.
"A person is justified in using deadly force against another if he would be justified in using force under Section 9.31 of the statute when and to the degree he reasonable believes that deadly force is immediately necessary to protect himself against the other's use or attempted use of unlawful deadly force, if a reasonable person in the same situation would have not retreated. The use of deadly force is also justified to prevent the other's imminent commission of aggravated kidnapping, murder, rape or robbery."
So oddly enough, if someone says "Fistecuffs!" and punches me in the face, i can't shoot them, i have to defend myself mano e mano because i have no reason to suspect that deadly force is being used against me.(its fairly obvious to anyone looking at me that one more blow to the head isn't going to do anything)
If someone is making off with my wallet i can blow them away. So technically I was right, you just misunderestimated the insanity of texas :)
I think it's important to interpret the Bible for the times - else, you get all kinds of weirdness like defense of slavery and murder of disobedient children.
Thats just figuring out what you believe and then shoehorning bible verses into that. You may as well skip the second step at that point.
I still haven't seen any logical connection between a fetus is a person and emergency contraception and/or abortion is a murder.Would it be murder to kill your Siamese twin for sharing your liver? Its just as intimate as your genitals (moreso)
I'm not convinced that it would be. (That it would be murder, that is. It would depend on the precise circumstances of the conjointed twins.)
You cannot use lethal force in self defense unless your own life is in jeopardy. If someone is punching me in the face i cannot draw a knife and stab them.
Pregnancy is life-threatening. Also I rarely see objections to the notion that a woman should be able to use lethal force to defend herself against sexual assault. I doubt many people would object all that much to a slave using the same to escape his or her owner, which is the other nearest equivalent I can think of to forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy against her will.
And said social contract explicitly allows religious/moral distension on this matter in several areas. You are appealing to the social contract (laws) when it agrees with you at the same time arguing that the social contract should be changed.... what is your basis for this change? It, by definition, CAN"T be the social contract.
Dissension on one's own part, absolutely. Imposing your dissension on others? Not at all.
The pharmacist is doing no such thing. If he were to kidnap her, lock her in the basement hooked up to an IV for 9 months THEN he would be forcing her.
The only difference I see here, and I'm completely serious, is that kidnapping her and locking her in the basement is simply a more effective and certain means of achieving the same goal. And on inaction, people do get in trouble with the law for things like neglect and negligence, which are inactions by definition.
As I've said before, I don't think every possible inaction entails culpability. But in this case the pharmacist knows with great certainty exactly what his inaction entails and thus cannot claim ignorance and possesses a monopoly on the means of distribution of the contraceptive. These radically alter the circumstances.
If you're excusing the pharmacist for not being maximally monstrous and thus allowing the possibility that his end isn't achieved, I could say the same about the woman. Emergency contraception isn't 100% effective so therefore the pharmacist has no grounds to complain even by his own moral standards. Even if it were, he's not making her take it.
Sure you are. You just think said authority should be invested in 51% of the population (or more realistically in the folks that lie enough to get 51% of the population to vote for them) rather than a single individual. The end result is the same: people being compelled to do by hook or by crook what other people want them to do.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Taxation is theft. Bald is a hair color. Democracy is authoritarianism. Yeah, I've heard this before. It wasn't impressive when the teenage Objectivists spouted it back in high school either. Sorry to break it to you, but the people are being compelled only to do things they already agreed to do.
And what is your basis for that preference?
Same as anyone's. I think it would be a better society for everybody. I've told you before my attitude towards rights is descriptive, period. Having a right and deserving or being entitled to a right are entirely different. In America, women have the right to contraception and abortion. I think that's fabulous.
Absolutely not. I have a drivers license, does that make me a tool of the state?
Yes. Accepting the conditions on the license is inherent in accepting it. A pharmacist accepts that he or she will only be dispensing controlled substances as the state permits (with a prescription, etc). A driver accepts that he or she will only be operating a vehicle within the limits the state sets.
Also, your argument falls apart when the state doesn't agree with you. Illinois for example says you can't fire pharmacists for refusing to fill morning after pills. The state and pro life pharmacist are in agreement.. whats your argument there?
I've already addressed this.
But here's a basic principle: If one says one is for a right and against the state taking it away or suppressing it, but then allows private bodies to do much the same, one isn't actually in favor of that right.How exactly is a private body's refusal to help you do something, the same as "taking away your right" to do it?
The private body has a monopoly, which is state granted, over the distribution of certain controlled substances. If that private body refuses to dispense them to those legally entitled to them, it has taken that right out back and shot it dead just as surely as if the state did. A right is meaningless if in the real world it cannot be exercised. It is then not granted, but rather entombed.
I'm not convinced that it would be. (That it would be murder, that is. It would depend on the precise circumstances of the conjointed twins.)
I think you're hitting some moral dissonance there.
If the circumstances were similar to pregnancy: say the conjoined twin needs to share your organs for 9 months before they can be separated, then killing your twin because you don't want to put up with them would absolutely 100% positively be murder, and neither a doctor nor a pharmacist would aid in such a separation. Doctors have routinely said no to twin separation surgeries because of the risk to the patient, even if both patients are willing.
IF you view a zygote as a person you have the same situation, but the zygote (oddly enough) isn't consenting. Hurting a person through the application of medicine is against the Hippocratic oath, getting a person killed against their will is murder.
Pregnancy is life-threatening.
Now you're grasping at straws here. First of all absolutely nothing is going to change in the first week in terms of risk, so the idea that its an emergency situation is bupkiss. Its like standing on the shore 8 hours before the tide comes in and screaming "HELP ME HELP ME!" instead of just walking 30 feet further inland.
Secondly the death rate is 0.013%
So what you have is someone facing a 1 in 10,000 risk of dying in nine months. That's a VERY small risk to take.
Also I rarely see objections to the notion that a woman should be able to use lethal force to defend herself against sexual assault. I doubt many people would object all that much to a slave using the same to escape his or her owner, which is the other nearest equivalent I can think of to forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy against her will.
A rapist or slave owner is guilty, and their disposition would be much improved by some high velocity lead injection therapy. A zygote is not guilty of anything.
Dissension on one's own part, absolutely. Imposing your dissension on others? Not at all.
How is the pregnant person not imposing her dissent on the pharmacist? It goes both ways.
The only difference I see here, and I'm completely serious, is that kidnapping her and locking her in the basement is simply a more effective and certain means of achieving the same goal. And on inaction, people do get in trouble with the law for things like neglect and negligence, which are in actions by definition.
Seriously? It didn't occur to you that if the pharmacist kidnaps her she has no choice, where as if the pharmacist says he won't fill that script there are 55,999 OTHER pharmacies she can go to?
If there were only one state licensed pharmacy in the country you would have a point. As there are over 56,000 of them you don't.
As I've said before, I don't think every possible inaction entails culpability. But in this case the pharmacist knows with great certainty exactly what his inaction entails and thus cannot claim ignorance and possesses a monopoly on the means of distribution of the contraceptive. These radically alter the circumstances.
Malarky. Anyone but the most optimistic pro lifer is going to assume that the woman leaves the pharmacy, walks down to the end of the block and fills the subscription somewhere else. It is completely, totally, and utterly inane to think that this act of the pharmacist is in any way shape or form deterministic in the woman's life.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Taxation is theft. Bald is a hair color. Democracy is authoritarianism. Yeah, I've heard this before. It wasn't impressive when the teenage Objectivists spouted it back in high school either. Sorry to break it to you, but the people are being compelled only to do things they already agreed to do.
You're being as intractable as they are, going to the opposite extreme, but you're not being consistent with it.
You're viewing people like one giant organism where each individual is a cell with no one has any purpose except to serve the greater whole. It doesn't work like that. Society doesn't actually exist, its a collection of individuals.
There needs to be a balance between what people are forced to do together and what people are allowed to do apart. Absent of overwhelming necessity a states power to compel someone to violate their deepest and most cherished beliefs should be nil. I'm not complaining about taxation (which is only money) I'm talking about a persons right to control their own actions.
At best you're acting as though democracy is actually the will of the people. Who's spouting off ideals that should have been left behind in highschool?
Same as anyone's. I think it would be a better society for everybody. I've told you before my attitude towards rights is descriptive, period. Having a right and deserving or being entitled to a right are entirely different. In America, women have the right to contraception and abortion. I think that's fabulous.
Except that there's a discrepancy between what you describe and what you're saying. You say the state is a social contract and that determines your rights. In Illinois that contract says you don't need to prescribe ru 486 if you don't want to. You then appeal to something other then the description to say that this shouldn't be so. What you seem to be appealing to is the absolute power of a democracy that agrees with you.
Yes. Accepting the conditions on the license is inherent in accepting it. A pharmacist accepts that he or she will only be dispensing controlled substances as the state permits (with a prescription, etc). A driver accepts that he or she will only be operating a vehicle within the limits the state sets.
That's note remotely being a tool of the state. I'm not compelled to drive for hitchhikers and pharmacists aren't compelled to fill out prescriptions they find morally objectionable. The state's legitimate interests extend to me not driving a semi truck while blizted out of my mind because i could kill people, and thats the same reason pharmacists need to be qualified enough to tell the difference between 10 micro and 10 miligrams.
I've already addressed this.
Your answer doesn't make sense to me. You think there SHOULD BE a social contract that prevents that from happening but don't offer a basis for why your idea of a social contract is a better idea than anyone elses.
The value of religion is that it brings people together to question what is moral and gives them a framework to organize relevant questions and share answers over the years/generations. The 10 Commandments, for example, provide a set of assertions that can be questioned/explored/shared.
So it serves the same purpose as D&D alignments? I never would have imagined a presuppositionalist kantian moralist was possible before getting into those sorts of conversations.
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I think it's important to interpret the Bible for the times - else, you get all kinds of weirdness like defense of slavery and murder of disobedient children.Thats just figuring out what you believe and then shoehorning bible verses into that. You may as well skip the second step at that point.
It's actually true. Well as a theory anyway. No one was there to see it and all that. It is also believed that he might have been gay himself, (in the born gay way), and was very against the roman style carnival and orgy fests. But it's just a theory.
The private body has a monopoly, which is state granted, over the distribution of certain controlled substances.
Which is yet another case of GOVERNMENT interference in a freedom, not PRIVATE interference.
The problem isn't private Person X refusing to do something with you. The problem is that private Person Y consents to do it with you, but the government prevents it.
It's actually true. Well as a theory anyway. No one was there to see it and all that. It is also believed that he might have been gay himself, (in the born gay way), and was very against the roman style carnival and orgy fests. But it's just a theory.I think it's important to interpret the Bible for the times - else, you get all kinds of weirdness like defense of slavery and murder of disobedient children.Thats just figuring out what you believe and then shoehorning bible verses into that. You may as well skip the second step at that point.
(sigh) It would seem I'm about to get this thread locked simply by replying. But I thought I'd throw out that any complaints that the Bible advocates slavery as we understand it now, or the killing of merely disobedient children, are from a position of total misunderstanding at best. You might observe how many thousands of people there are the last hundred years that believe the Bible is the same yesterday, today and forever, in terms of dogma and relevent history, who don't kill their kids or won slaves.
You might also recognize that the same passage a lot of critics go to to say "See? The Bible uses the word 'slaves'!" also proscribes the death penalty for anyone who steals a person and forces them to work against their will.
And the bible condemns homosexuality in several places. And people aren't born gay. Not that I'm likely to be around to discuss these things, because I know exactly how "civil" some of the folks who frequent this thread will be, and defending my beliefs against another assertion (which will not respond to the verse about real slavery being punishable by death - I've been to this dance before) will just get the thread locked.
So I just thought I'd throw out here: if you want to know what the Bible says, read it or ask a long-time Chrisitan, or get a book by someone who's studied it for a long time. When people say things like "the only place the Bible condemns homosexuality is in the same place it tells them to kill disobedient children", it seems clear they are echoing something they read or heard somewhere and didn't study the subject themselves.
BNW: We have a word for the practice of shoehorning Bible verses into a preconceived belief. It's called eisogesis. It's not responsible behavior. Eisogesis also applies to trying to apply modern criticism to a centuries old dosumnet, as if every act in the Bible is approved by God, or as if modern definitions redefined the events of Biblical times.
And which "he" from the Bible are we saying was gay? Did I misunderstand something?
And people aren't born gay.
Sounds almost like you're speaking from personal experience.
Or is this just something you're pulling out of the air?
I think people saying "People are born gay" has about as much basis in fact as "God hates f%#@".
I think people saying "People are born gay" has about as much basis in fact as "God hates f&*~".
Well, except for all the gay people who can give us firsthand accounts, that is. God isn't talking.
I think people saying "People are born gay" has about as much basis in fact as "God hates f%~!".
As nice as it is to know what you think, I'll stick to the science, thanks. Which, although not yet conclusive, is leaning toward people being born gay, rather than homosexuality being a learned behavior.
Conversely, it is rather easy to demonstrate that Christianity is a learned behavior. I really can't see a serious argument that culture isn't a huge (if not overwhelming) factor in religious faith. There's plenty of data on the subject.
Meh. It's all opinion until they find "gene x means homosexuality".
Not related:
They recently found that a defect in gene A20 leads to Rhumatoid arthritis...so hooray for genetic studies.
Meh. It's all opinion until they find "gene x means homosexuality".
Actually, it is a matter of fact: either it is true or it isn't, irrespective of whether we have discovered the interconnections.
You may also want to note that most causal links (in genetics and elsewhere) aren't nearly as simple as you imply.
Meh. It's all opinion until they find "gene x means homosexuality".
Actually, the reasearch looks a lot more like "exposure to x quantity of hormone y means a stronger tendency towards homosexuality." For example, third-born sons being many, many times more likely to be gay than firstborn, owing to differences in hormone levels in the womb.
Meh. It's all opinion until they find "gene x means homosexuality".Actually, the reasearch looks a lot more like "exposure to x quantity of hormone y means a stronger tendency towards homosexuality." For example, third-born sons being many, many times more likely to be gay than firstborn, owing to differences in hormone levels in the womb.
Interesting...I had not heard that. How do they control for parental experience levels? I know I was a hell of a lot more uptight with the first kid than the third.
On a related note, anyone want to buy a kid? ;-)
I know I was a hell of a lot more uptight with the first kid than the third.
You're female? Odd choice of avatar names, then!
Seriously, though, lemme see if I can post some links:Here's one
Another
(etc. -- just Google it)
I guess I'll wait and see, and look up the research ;)
I know I was a hell of a lot more uptight with the first kid than the third.You're female? Odd choice of avatar names, then!
Seriously, though, lemme see if I can post some links:
Here's one
Another
(etc. -- just Google it)
What I meant was...how do they know the 3rd child wasn't simply treated differently? It's not like we can raise the kids in a lab... (pesky parents)
Nature vs. Nurture?