Mr. Purandara,

You write, "When a fetus or a cow develops advanced technology, let me know. Until then, I suggest you stop reading hack literature."

Sir, with all due respect, you blatently avoided my questions. I did not ask you about foetuses nor cows. I'm not interested in your view on foetuses or cows, nor am I interested in your view of Heinlein. I asked you some very specific questions, and you avoided them. Please answer the questions I asked rather than changing the subject to something I do not care about. Thanks.


Mr. NM,

You ask, "So, you believe in NATURAL rights and still reject that a fetus has a right to live?"

I believe the foetus has a right to not be murdered, just as you and I have a right to not be murdered. But I do not believe any human (adult or otherwise) has a right to enslave others so as to ensure their own acquiring of food. My right to life is simply a negative right, and not a positive right. Should I make the argument that I need to enslave you so as to ensure my own survival, you would be fully justified in rejecting my argument and in refusing to serve me. But you would have no right to actively take my life (except in actual defense, or in punishment for a heinous crime (e.g. murder)). Since the foetus has equal rights, therefore the same must be true concerning foetuses. The foetus has a right to not be murdered, but no positive right to life/food/healthcare/&c. In short, all true rights are negative rights, for the existence of positive "rights" would necessarily negate the existence of rights themselves. (All negative rights amount to the right to not be enslaved while all positive "rights" amount to a "right" to enslave. The law of non-contradiction dictates that they can't both exist.)

You write, "The right of a fetus to live in the womb in which he was conceived (through no power of his own but through the actions of the mother... and, less relevant here the father... mind you) is at least as self evident as the right to speak freely."

The foetus owns its own mouth and mind, and the fruits of its own labour. This is what gives the foetus the right to speak freely. But does the foetus own the womb in which it was conceived?

The only point I'm defending here is that the womb's owner has the right to evict persons from her property. She has no right to murder the evicted party in the process, nor to murder the evicted party once he has been evicted. I'm not even saying it's necessarily "moral" to evict people--I leave questions of morality up to the individual. (Personally, I see abortion as being quite immoral.) Rather, my argument is simply that it is not a violation of natural law to evict another human from your property.

Is there a flaw to this view? If so, I shall consider it as best I can.

You write, "Without corollary natural obligations, natural rights become a joke. When you have sex, you take on the obligation for the well being of the children created."

I think you are confusing two distinct concepts here. When I take a person and dimish her ability to survive (perhaps by running her over with my truck and causing her to lose all limb function), then I have become personally indebted to her, and must see to it that she is cared for to the best of my ability until (1) she gains functional capacity equivilent to that which she had prior to my running her over or (2) she dies. Should the death be from lack of care on my part, then I should be held liable for murder.

Obligations can only be aquired through one of two means: (1) mutually-agreed-to contractual agreements wherein title to an alienable piece of property is being transfered or (2) through the commission of an act of aggression against the victim. Running someone over with my truck constitutes this latter type--even if I ran the poor woman over unintentionally.

But in the case of the foetus, neither of these things have taken place. Firstly, sex is by no means an act of aggression against the foetus, who indeed doesn't even xeist yet at the time the sex takes place. Secondly, no contractual agreement can be made to the foetus since the foetus is wholly incapable of forming contractual agreements.

So, the important question remains: has the mother, through conception, taken a person and in some way dimished his or her ability to survive, or in any way damaged or usurped property owned by the foetus? Absolutely not.

Therefore, absolutely no obligation can exist between the mother and her offspring unless she (1) (eventually) creates a contract with her offspring or (2) at some point cause damage to the offspring or the offspring's property. For example, if the father accidentally gives his daughter a scab, the father has the obligation to ensure that all medical expenses related to the scab are fully paid for by him and that his daughter is restored to the condition she was in prior to receiving the scab. But he doesn't have the obligation to stay with her for eighteen years, or even one day for that matter.

Again, if there are any flaws to this view, please let me know? I shall try to consider them as best I can.

A lot of pro-choicers like to throw that argument in there to make themselves feel somehow more rational than their opponents, and yet, I've debated that point over and over again with literally hundreds of people, and their side has yet to hold up... they nearly always storm off mad when the inconsistencies in their beliefs become apparent. I'm tired of asking the same questions over and over again to entertain this point, especially when it's usually one of those ideas that was hastily adopted by someone looking for something, anything, to justify the conclusion they adopted before giving rigorous thought to the issue.

On a tangent from that question, I find the idea that natural rights are bestowed by sentience to be quite suspect for other reasons, too, beyond the inconsistencies it almost inevitably causes. It's difficult to defend a concept of natural rights if the nature of them is almost impossible to ascertain, and yet, I'm yet to hear a workable clear cut definition of sentience which would allow for such a trait to be identifiable. In order for the existence of such rights to retain any validity, one really must maintain that their existence is self-evident. Can you call something self-evident if you can't distinguish between when they exist and when they don't?

Good answer.

Rights are endowed at the level of the human being. The cells of an embryo are part of a distinct chain of derivation from the mother's cells. However tied to the mother, the embryo is a different being from her. You were endowed with the right to life, not your cells. If you cut off your hand, you're still alive. If you kill the cells of an embryo, you actually destroyed that human organism.

Another good answer.

Yours,
Alex Peak