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From: cbostrum@watdaisy.UUCP (Calvin Bruce Ostrum)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: The Nature of Rights
Message-ID: <224@watdaisy.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-Jul-83 01:49:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: watdaisy.224
Posted: Mon Jul  4 01:49:30 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 4-Jul-83 03:16:05 EDT
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 67

This should really be in philosophy, not religion. 
Direct replies there, and note this is not so much a discussion of
abortion as it is rights in general.

>From liz@umcp-cs.UUCP 
>	... What are the necessary morally relevant criteria for
>	possessing a right to life? ...  
>This is a religious question and a matter of belief.  Are humans
>morally special in some way different from the animals in the world
>around us?  I think most of us act like this even if we haven't
>verbalized the difference.  The laws of the US support this in that
>the cause of any human death (after birth, anyway) must always be
>known or found out whereas if my cat dies there is no such concern.

Whoa! Whether or not you have rights is a religious question? If
you mean by that there is a lot of heated, emotional and apparently
nonlogical argument about it, I will agree, but if you mean
the nature of rights or means of possessing them is religious, then for
all those athiests out there who believe in rights, I should hope
it isnt!
The laws of the US are hardly the last word on what is right and wrong,
are they? If they were, there would never be any argument about, eg, 
whether abortion were right or wrong, just check the books.

>How do you know it can't?  The instinct for survival is very strong.
>Even if it can't, it will be able to will if it does survive.  Think
>of someone who is comatose for a while but survives.  While they are
>comatose, they are no more able to will than the foetus.  Do they
>cease to be "morally special" for a while?

The fact that you have an instinct to survive does not mean that you
are capable of understanding the idea of your life as something extending
into the future that you make plans about. I can build a simple
machine that has an instinct to survive.

The issue about comatose people does seem difficult to solve for many
pro-abortion people who take a similiar line. I submit that it is simple.
It is totally analogous to the way that when someone dies, he can dispose
of his property (and in fact his body) for the most part as he sees fit.
Why? Because they *are* his property. Once you conceive of a peron's
body and his life as his property, this problem dissolves. Just as
murder and lying are considered wrong since they are an offense against
someones's property (and this is an *implicit* agreement) so killing a
comatose person should be accepted as wrong, without his previous 
permission since there is a similar implicit agreement that this is an
offense against his property.

>  			 	I object to such arguments not only
>because they endanger the foetus, but there always seem to be some
>other group of people who would not have full personhood by the
>same argument.  Such arguments endanger their rights as well --
>where will the line be drawn?

"Where will the line be drawn?". I dont know, I thought 
we were trying to decide that. The line we are talking about is the
criterion for right to life and rights in general. So by saying
"such arguments endanger their rights as well" you are engaging in the
fallacy of presuming they have rights to begin with.
It appears that perhaps you have an axe to grind, and have already decided
for certain that foetuses have a right to life, but no nonhumans do.
The question is, **On what ground do you base these beliefs??**. While
I admit that my criterion so far is not perfect, it is one hell of a lot
better than "X can have rights iff X is human",
or "X has rights iff God says so" (that last is a screamer).

		Calvin Ostrum, Dept Computer Science, University of Waterloo
		...{decvax,allegra,utzoo}!watmath!watdaisy!cbostrum