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Pastimes : The Boxing Ring Revived -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (3974)	1/22/2003 1:20:25 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7720

The degree of punishment, yes. But not the fact of illegality. There are some parallels that are worth considering. The only case where taking a life is justified (well, the only case where a citizen has that right, goverments exercise it through war, execution, justifiable police shootings) is in self-defense. And nobody that I know of has denied the right to abort to save the life of the mother, which is the self-defense justification. So that's taken care of. There is accidental homicide. There, there is no pre-planning or intent. This would be equivalent to a woman having an unplanned and spontaneous abortion, which does happen. The purist could argue, i suppose, that the mother is to some degree culpable for the death, but I think that would be a silly argument. Then there is negligent homicide -- where you don't intend to kill the person but are reckless or irresponsible and cause a death. That is punishable in real life, only, as you point out, with lesser consequences than murder. This might be equivalent to a mother acting irresponsibly in what she drinks or drugs she takes and causing an abortion or causing the fetus to be killed. Then there are manslaughter and murder, where there is a degree of premeditation and intentionality. This is the equivalent of abortion. Abortion is intentional, deliberate. I don't know of a single instance of law where a person premeditatedly kills another person when there is no issue of self-defense involved and where the victim has done nothing at all to the perpetrator, but where there is a factor solely affecting a third party which causes the perpetrator to kill the victim, in which there is not guilt to some degree. That is the equivalent case. So perhaps you can argue that in the case of rape there should be a lesser penalty, but I don't think, unless you are prepared to create an entirely new principle of law, that you can claim there should be no culpabilty. But what you're saying is that one can intentionally, deliberately, and with pre-planning (all of which are the case in abortion) take the life of a person Well, there are circumstances where it's legal -- war, police officers shooting people, self-defense,

To: Neocon who wrote (3974)	1/22/2003 3:21:03 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7720

If you planned the murder, you would get a heavy sentence. First of all, it's pretty hard to have an abortion without premeditation, particularly in states that have waiting periods. Secondly, I have said before (and you didn't like it when I said it) that you in particular and society in general are much more willing to show leniency to people for their bad acts while they are not in charge of themselves than I am. I can understand how you, I, and society might want to show mercy to someone who was the victim of a rape and reduce the punishment, say, not send her to jail, but, if abortion is murder, than she's just as guilty of murder as someone who substitutes abortion for birth control. Guilty, but she's suffered enough I understand. Not guilty, I cannot. And I don't think that my failure to understand is a function of being either brain dead or pond scum.