Yes, and the non citizen has a legal name, a birth date, driver's license and a green card if he's legal.
And if he has none of the above its still illegal to kill him.
If not, what is the logic or scientific basis for your position?
Science give us facts not moral or philosophical conclusions. We can and often should apply these facts to our moral and philosophical reasoning but science can't say something is morally right or wrong. It deals with facts, nor meaning and truth and ethics or morals. I don't think you really can have a scientific basis for a basic moral or philosophical opinion. Science can only help direct how you apply the opinion. For example lets say your moral opinion is that it is wrong to let people suffer and die from horrible diseases without any effort to help them. Scientific information (medicine being a subset of science) would tell you how to treat them. If there is no known treatment existing known fact and scientific methodology can provide a basis for the effort to figure out how to treat their disease, but science doesn't tell you what you should do, or what is important, it just gives you the information needed to apply you more abstract ethical and philosophical opinions.
An purely emotional basis for one side or the other would be something like "look at that little fetus in the ultrasound, he is so cute, it must be wrong to kill him", or for the other side "Mary doesn't want to be pregnant and is suffering (at least emotionally and the normal physical disadvantages of pregnancy) because of it, how can you tell Mary not to have an abortion. There is nothing inherently wrong with such an emotional, sympathetic, response from either end, but my opinion is based on fundamental principles, not mere emotion. To give an another example of this distinction I might have more of an emotional reaction to the death of a pet than to the death of a person thousands of miles away, who I have never had any interaction with, or knowledge of, and who's death I don't see. But if the death of a pet is the only way this far away person can be saved, my ethical principles would call for saving the person even at the expense of the pets life.
Getting around to the basis for my position - When you ask someone the basis for their opinion, you potentially ask a very large question. They have one opinion based on another opinion based on another opinion ect. But I realize you don't want a book, so I'll try to keep this simple.
I believe in protecting human life and I believe that killing human life without strong and appropriate justification is wrong, more than just wrong it is a transgression against human rights. The fetus is a human life so it should be protected against being killed.
Tim |
