"Laws exist for the very reason that rights often conflict."
Laws exist to interpret, judge, and enforce. I would love to hear of a hypothetical where actual rights were in conflict. But I never have.
"Some consider finding it in the Bible or the Quran or some other popular "authority", including non- or anti-religious ones, to be "proof"."
Yes, I an aware that there are those capable of reading hundreds or thousands of differing accounts on (for example) the origin of people, and then picking one as being "proof". When I spoke of a rational proof I was referring to the ability of rational people to use their power to reason in order to logically examine evidence from which rational (reasoned) conclusions can obtain.
You may be right that there may not be universal agreement; but this does not mean there may not be rational agreement amongst rational people. After all...most rational people agree (for instance) that leprosy is not caused by demons. Superstitious "proofs" can (of course) never find agreement for the simple reason that there is no reason or evidence that may be appealed to on a logical basis. So for people who attempt to resolve issues such as abortion by an appeal to superstition there can, of course, be no agreement beyond a sectarian level. But reason can lead reasonable people to a fairly informed and universal consensus on most issues if we exclude superstitions from the arguments.
The reasoned position at which a creature with human dna becomes a LEGAL PERSON is at the point which it has inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In other words--when it is separated from the mother. Prior to this, there is no capacity for society to grant it these rights without aborting these rights in the mother. It does not mean the mother may not CHOOSE to love and nourish her fetus. It means she ought not be COMPELLED to do so.
People who wish to ignore the issue of rights and simply seek a developmental solution to the question find themselves in a quandary: firstly, they HAVE ignored the critical issue of human rights, and secondly, there is no point from a speck to a grown fetus where the unborn does NOT have human dna. So, if they say, for example, the fetus should be a legal person at 7 months, then why not at 6 months and 29 days--and so forth all the way back to conception and even before. Or if they say that the fetus should be considered as a legal person on the day it first develops a nervous system, well...what day is that?
So called "pro-life" people (what a misnomer) have their entire answer in human dna--as if this (in and of itself) gave value to a zygote. To the question of why, the common answer is "because". Another common answer is because when the sperm attaches to an egg the egg is given a "soul". I would say to those who have such answers--THEN DON"T ABORT YOUR EGG. And don't impose your superstitious beliefs on other people. Nobody FORCES people to abort. And nobody should be forced to carry an unwanted egg. |
