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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: AK2004 who wrote (146491)4/26/2002 1:29:22 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) of 1579508
 
why would it matter? While it maybe self-defense for her the outsider would see it as two innocent
lives with equal rights

If she had or has a legitimate right to defend herself then anyone else has a legitimate right to defend her. There is however some question about the question "does she have a legitimate right to kill the fetus to protect herself?" because even if you assume the fetus is a human being and should have its rights respected there is some question about whether or not it can be considered an attack in this situation.

re: has a legal right to make her medical conditions
we can define legal rights but who would have moral rights to choose?

I think that for most cases the legal right to decide medical care is closely aligned with the moral right. (I think abortion is an exception to this but this current discussion assumes that fetuses have human rights so it doesn't have to directly deal with the more general abortion question) What the law should be (or in other words what the human/natural/moral rights are in this case) is a complex question and not immediately obvious but if we decide that the mother does have the right to request that an abortion be performed when her life is in danger then anyone who generally has the rights to make medical decisions for her should also have the right to make this decisions assuming she is unconsious and has not expressed her wish not to have an abortion.

I would support the idea that when the woman will die with out an abortion she should be able to have one for the following reasons in order of importance and direct relevance to the questions you raised. (the lower the number the more important and the more relevant)

1 - You have two lives in the balance here so there is a less clear cut case for infringing on the liberty of the mother in order to save the child.

2 - When the mother dies the child would normally die, so you are not usually dealing with "should we save the mother or the child, but rather should we save the mother or no one.

3 - Politically it is hard to see abortion becoming illegal in the US but it is almost impossible to imagine abortion not being allowed in cases where the mother will die without an abortion.

4 - Cases where the mother will die without an abortion are relatively rare. If allowing an exception in this difficult and moral ambiguous case will enable most abortions to be outlawed then many lives will be saved. (3 and 4 are really different aspects of the same reason or at least they are closely related)

Tim
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