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> Is this a ridiculous opinion? I don’t think so. But I can see why someone might disagree with it. For one, what’s the “privacy” thing? Maybe I misunderstand
by throwaway894345 4y ago
> Is this a ridiculous opinion? I don’t think so. But I can see why someone might disagree with it. For one, what’s the “privacy” thing?
Maybe I misunderstand the court's rationale, but it seems really flimsy to hang abortion on "privacy" in this way.
> We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.
Whatever your thoughts on abortion, this seems poorly reasoned. Legalizing abortion implies asserting that life begins after some date. If first trimester abortions are legal, then it seems to imply that the law views human life (and thus human rights) as beginning sometime after the first trimester.
- riskable 4y ago> Legalizing abortion implies asserting that life begins after some date. I think you mean, "human life" not just "life". Because as far as we know life began about 4.2 billion years ago. With that out of the way we must now talk about, "what makes human life special?" and "at what point does it become special?"
- throwaway894345 4y agoYes, that's implied because we're talking about abortion in humans. > With that out of the way we must now talk about, "what makes human life special?" and "at what point does it become special?" Ugh, I'd rather not. There's no good reason to dive into this, and it always ends in ugly eugenics territory. E.g., "Just hear me out, what if the mentally disabled aren't really people?". I'd prefer to keep a wide berth around that--the great thing about human rights is that (apart from the abortion issue) every human gets them.