Responses below:
"L. Manning Vines" wrote:
> Jim writes:
> << In these cases I don't think, then, that common sense is a "method" of
> any sort. The phrase "common sense" seems to apply to the mundane facts you
> make reference to, not the way we manipulate these facts. >>
>
> I think you're being too narrow with your understanding of the phrase.
> ("The problem was difficult at first, but I used a little common sense and
> worked things out.")
In the example above, it may be possible that "common sense" refers to drawing
out "obvious" consequences from specific actions.
But you're probably right and I am being too narrow. What we need are more
examples like the one you provided above, maybe even in realistic contexts.
I'm suffering a failure of the imagination at the moment.
> Jim suggestions:
> << What would be helpful is if you could spell out how "common sense" leads
> one from "belief that life begins at birth" to "abortion is not morally
> acceptable."
>
> <<What you'll find is that the chain of reasoning really has nothing to do
> with any kind of logic internal to the facts presented, but rather with the
> actual rhetoric of the abortion debate and propoganda used by both sides to
> win the public over to their opinion.>>
>
> If a fetus at three months or weeks is a human, fully and entirely,
> deserving the same legal and other rights and protections, to abort a
> pregnancy is to commit a murder.
It doesn't necessarily follow that though a fetus is "fully and entirely human"
that it is deserving of the "same legal and other rights and protections." An
already born child doesn't have all the same rights and protections as a fully
grown adult (though, of course, we can't kill them at will no matter how much we
may want to at times).
Our law actually suffers Multiple Personality Disorder in relationship to this
issue. We can't execute a pregnant woman because it would kill the unborn
child, but the woman can terminate the pregnancy.
> If a fetus at three months or weeks is not a human, but a still-undeveloped
> mass of tissue with the potential to become human, it can be removed to
> prevents its Becoming.
Some argue that by preventing its "becoming" you have still ended the life of a
human being. You don't necessarily need the idea that a fetus is a full human
being to be against abortion, then. Of course, if you define "fully human" as
"one who has full legal protection," well, fine, but immigrants and visitors to
most foreign countries are not fully human, then.
What is further interesting is that in Mosaic law there's a monetary penalty for
striking a pregnant woman and causing her to miscarry, while if you strike a
woman and kill her you're treated as a murderer (there were different kinds of
murder, though. If it was an unintentional act, the person could hide in a
Levitical city and live safely within the city walls -- something like the
distinction between manslaughter and first degree murder).
At any rate, this example provides a clear differentiation between the value of
the life of the mother and the value of the life of the unborn child -- and this
in a culture that later produced a poet who could claim God knew him from his
mother's womb. There's no reference I know of to abortion in the Hebrew
Scriptures, though, although there are plenty of negative references to child
abandonment and sacrifice.
> I have always considered this -- the difference in belief concerning the
> beginning of life and human sanctity -- to be the bottom-line. Arguments go
> nowhere without facing it, and the rest of the respective positions manifest
> naturally from it. Thus the pro-lifers refer to the killing of "babies"
> while that word is not used by the pro-choice.
>
> -robbie
I would say the example above is as much a recognition of what works as
effective rhetoric as someone's real thinking about the fetus. Really, when we
argue whether or not a fetus is human, we're not arguing about certain
biological facts about the fetus, but about the definition of a word: human.
Whoever defines the word wins the argument and determines law. If the word
human can extend to fetuses, then the pro-choice camp is in dire straits. If
the word human excludes the fetus, then the pro-choice camp has won.
Because, as you point out, everyone already thinks it is wrong to kill a human
being, the real question is, "who is human and who is not?"
It's not clear, though, how all this bears upon your notion of common sense. I
don't see how it helps at all in this discussion.
Jim
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Received on Sat Jul 19 13:03:26 2003
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