No, for consistency, killing would be entirely at the whim of the parents, for any reason or none. Slitting their throat sounds inhumane, but maybe I'm just being squeamish. As I said, the allowable age and method of disposal would be up for discussion by appropriate authorities, just as it is today for foetuses.

It would only be in a neither dead nor alive state if you were to place it in a sealed box with a vial of poison triggered by a single atom nuclear decay.

Schrodinger's Embryo... I bet Philip K. Dick would have loved to have thought of that.

Oh no, PS, you dont sound squeamish in the slightest!

Am curious to know why "consistency" should be worth so much more than the lives of untold numbers of children (but I can't prove why it shouldn't be, I suppose) ....but I am very wary of starting a second thread when we are not sure where even this one is going....

Am I detecting a suggestion here that a blastocycst might be a little more "alive" than a fertilised ovum?

I'm always struck my the irony of the fact that 99.9999% of Staunchly Pro-Life Republicans, are also Staunchly Pro-Death penalty

The embryo is in some form of stasis, whereby it cannot continue to develop but it retains the potential to develop. If you stamp on it, it will be broken and it will no longer have the potential to develop. Closest analogy I can see is plant seeds.

I've always been amazed how someone like Ivan Bacik would be a vociferous supporter of children's rights once their born but so staunchly pro- choice before they're born.

I'm pragmatic about abortion. I'd love to live in a world without it; but I accept that, right now, it is a necessary evil.

I realise this is an unacceptable position to both sides, but that's my honest position. There are just too many reasons right now why either absolute position on the issue is imposssible right now.

If deadbeat fathers were pursued for maintenance, they'd be less likely to have children they had no plan on supporting, & I mean right down to bone, if they are in reciept of any payments, they go to the mother, to the last red cent & beyond !

On the other hand, if unmarried mothers couldn't rely upon the state to keep them; they might control their own fertility a bit better. Consider; if a man & woman have a one night stand; & the woman has told the man that she is on the pill, & so he doesn't need a condom; if the woman gets pregnant, the man is still liable for child support. But on the other hand, the man can never have any say in whether or not a woman has an abortion.

Why is a woman, on the one hand, the only person allowed to control her body; & yet on the other, apparently not responsible for the consequences of her own actions if she gets pregnant thru unprotected sex ???

I don't absolve men of responsibility, but pregnancy takes two participants, & if one of them isn't screaming rape, then they should be prepared to take the consequences, because right now we have a very unequal relationship between the sexes. This is just evidence of the pendulum swinging too far the opposite way since womens lib, just look at the recent revisions to the statutary rape legislation if you need any proof of that. Equality between the sexes has to be exactly that, if it's unlawful for a 17 year old boy to have sex with a 16 year old girl; it must be unlawful for a 17 year old girl to have sex with a 16 year old boy, & both must be prosecuted with equal frequency & vigor. Remind me again the last time a woman was prosecuted for rape in Ireland ?, or for domestic violence ? The Charities will tell you that both of these happen, & female domestic violence is neigh on as prevalent as male, but one is reported, & one is not, one is prosecuted, & one is not.

Hard to see how we could live with a law that was utterly arbitrary. Especially one that was arbitrary with respect to who gets to live or die.




Not in the least. That was only for illustration. Let's face it, the gametes which fuse to form the zygote are alive too (although they are not organisms, let alone a genetically distinct individual). Unless they die and are resurrected which, let's face it, wouldn't be the typical scientific view, the zygote is equally alive. As the book said, life is a continuum.




Yes, quite. So it is alive. (It's not really germane [excuse the pun] to the discussion to point out that plant seeds enter stasis in the natural course of events, while embryos require intervention).



Yes, she needs a consistency check.

So do the Bean Ui Chribin types who like state intervention before children are born but hate it once they're alive.

http://www.independent.ie/national-news ... 11637.html

You're talking about Ireland ff, when was the last time a solicitor went to jail for defrauding clients? Ireland's judicial system is no more 'normal' than its political or media system. But in terms of statutory rape women are often convicted in the US and UK, its normally teachers who make the news but it is not uncommon for women to go to jail for having sex with underage boys.

http://www.buffalonews.com/city/police- ... 301840.ece
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/engl ... 206426.stm

Women often get lesser sentences as many people, judges and juries included, regard their offenses as less aggravated, which is arguably a throwback.

Law, as part of civilisation, is not created to be consistent, but to protect the people; are the people better off with it or without it? That is its main test, "consistency" or "lack of arbitrariness" is only a means towards a law/society that is PRESUMED to be better for the people, USUALLY, than "inconsistency".....

EG, imagine if the law said that anyone could kill anyone because they felt like it and paid for a 100,000 euro licence-to-kill/"retrospectively abort the unfit" which was a special specific exception to all other laws and rights; and the rich began to use ak47s to get rid of the beggars and yobs-in-hoodies and asylum seekers hiding in hostels that they feel are lowering the tone of the place and damaging their property values....carrying out a bit of neo-social-darwinism; and once they get a taste for it, anyone who looks at them cross-ways..that would be "consistent".....

But if the law says so many of the people can be killed that easily, then they WONT be "living with" a law, they will be dying with it; and yet it is the people who make the law, and they only made it to protect the people; The law has no existence without the people. Once it no longer protects the people, it no longer serves its purpose and it no longer matters whether it is consistent or not...?

Of course, you might say the can-be-legally-aborted "people" are not "people" because the law says they are not people, and so the law has not failed in its purpose to protect the people because the law itself says it has not failed.....hmmm.....there is a bit of a circular element to this....I am sure some professional philosopher could say something clever and profound here...

Me, I guess in PS's new model society it would boil down to the ability to kill as a definition of who is a "person" to be be protected by the law?

eg , if parents decide to kill 15 year old Johnny, and Johnny finds out about it and kills mommy and daddy in their sleep the night before they can make it to the registry to sign the forms, and tries to make it look like an accident; has Johnny proven that he is a "person" with legal rights, in the sense that Johnny and those 15 year olds like him like him are too dangerous to give no rights to, and should be given a seat at the table rather than putting them in a position whereby they have nothing to lose? Yet I say that knowing that the Jews in Nazi Germany saw the writing on the wall via the Nuremberg laws and their increasing exclusion from society some time before they got herded into the camps and yet didnt go out in a blaze of glory...and no, I am NOT accusing anyone on the pin of being a Nazi so please dont try to say that I did...similarly the victims of "honour killings" dont usually get to take someone with them even when they have a good idea that they are for the chop...

I guess I am like Winston in "1984", protesting that "Something will defeat it, Life will defeat it, such a society would never survive" without any real evidence to back it up....

Cash King, I take all your points. However, you are talking about a contradictory situation in which a right for one person is opposed to the same right for another person. I'm talking about a hierarchy of rights, consistently striking the following balances:

1) Humans are live humans from conception until death
2) Abortion kills live humans
3) Humans have a human right to life, except ...
4) ... Women have a greater right to choose
5) It would be inconsistent if the right to choose was exclusively for pregnant women; any parent who is expected to commit resources to a dependent child should be able to decide the child is unwanted.
6) It should be possible to abort dependent children from conception until the age they are no longer dependent, such age to be determined by the courts.

That's the only consistent pro-choice view. Some pro-choicers either disagree with point 1) or they introduce additional criteria for the attainment of humanity for the purposes of point 3) ... but they never provide any concrete, measurable criteria, which is because there aren't any.

Ron Paul with Piers Morgan on the subject of abortion -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWXym8vc2I4&t=26m16s