having sex is not choosing to become pregnant. even rational means to avoid pregnancy may not work. tellnig a woman to abstain from sex unless she is willing to become pregnant is asking her to be a slave. unacceptable.

That depends on the mistake. Thinking that your term paper is due on 6/5 instead of 5/6 can cost you a letter grade. Sending a racy text ["hubby working late! Meet me in an hour!"] can cost you your marriage. Mistakenly driving through a stop sign and causing serious injury or death can most assuredly make a huge difference in the rest of your life.

An important part of any integrated system of morality is that actions have consequences. You would not say that in the list of mistakes above, the person making the mistake has the right to shrug off the consequences of the mistake and bear no responsibility at all -- no diminution of the grade, no impact on the marriage, no wrongful death action for the person haplessly in the intersection. Why, then, is this particular mistake exempted from the general principle that one must bear the consequences of one's choices?

Is sex without marriage irresponsible?

Allow me a hypothesis. We take as a given that rights cannot conflict. [I am tempted to put that statement in ALL CAPS since it recurs so often in this discussion.] However, it is not a given that rights cannot be affected by choices that one makes. Your right to liberty, for example, will be severely restricted if you are convicted of a serious crime and incarcerated. Even your right to life is not absolute -- if you murder someone [and you're down here in my neighborhood], you stand a good chance of losing your right to your life. Your right to your property is not absolute, either; you may be forced to give up some or all of your property as a consequence of your actions in harming or defrauding another person.

Therefore, as a consequence of your actions, you may lose, in whole or in part, your life, your liberty, or your property. That loss will be entirely moral, because it will reflect your unwillingness to respect the rights of others to their life, liberty, and property, and you must suffer the consequences or there will be no effective societal deterrent against the sociopath or general bad guy who says, I don't care, I'm just going to break down your door and take all of your best stuff.

Then, if you engage in consensual sex, one of the foreseeable consequences of which is pregnancy, why is it taken that your "absolute" right to your body overrides all consequences of your actions, and you are free to destroy the incipient life that you have willingly or stupidly taken steps to create, with no more thought than blowing your nose? As someone else has commented, the incipient life was invited to the party, dragged in through no choice of its own, but totally at the mercy of the decisions of its parents, primarily its mother [or its irate grandparents]. Left to the normal course of events, it will develop to the point where any compassionate individual can pick it up and parent it, and that point is now earlier than the point at which the mother can terminate its life.

In "Of Living Death", Ayn Rand stated: "One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months." Leonard Peikoff wrote, "The status of the embryo in the first trimester is the basic issue that cannot be sidestepped. The embryo is clearly pre-human; only the mystical notions of religious dogma treat this clump of cells as constituting a person." When did it become Canon Law that abortion is a moral right up to and past the point where the child is viable outside the womb? If "one may argue", why is the dominant response in the Gulch to any consideration of abortion basically: it's the woman's right to choose, and that right cannot be questioned at any point in the pregnancy until she delivers the child?

Did Ayn Rand in fact ever state that abortion is an unfettered right from conception until 10 minutes before delivery? That's not sarcasm; I would like to know. If the statements that I just quoted are her "ex cathedra" positions, then does Objectivism actually and necessarily hold that abortion is morally permissible no matter what the viability of the fetus?

Believe me, you wouldn't inspire me to any urge at all.

+1. If a point cannot be open to discussion, let alone reexamination, then it must be defined as dogma. However, if certain topics are off-limits for discussion, then how can one be one's own highest authority? One great strength of Objectivism is that it stands up to such scrutiny. In order to survive, Objectivism does not need people saying that certain topics are off-limits. Objectivism is quite able to stand up on its own.

I question your notion of "the humane woman", unless by that you mean a woman who has made the effort to really think, and understand, her best interests and her responsibilities. If if were generally the case that women did that thinking, rather than giving in to a moment's urges and the importuning of a randy male, I doubt we would have the level of abortions that we have.

I don't understand your comment. What do you mean when you say that "abortion is not a practical issue toward the end of pregnancy." Are you saying that, although there would be no moral impediment, as a practical matter most mothers in their {ninth} {eighth} {seventh} month of pregnancy would choose to carry the fetus to term, even if they were reluctantly pregnant and had been inclined to abort the fetus at an earlier stage? Or that, as a practical matter, such late term abortions are so difficult to obtain or so fraught with danger to the mother's health that the mother or the doctor don't do them? Or that they are so rare as to be statistically insignificant in this discussion?

Most of your argument here and above is extremely cogent. Children do acquire rights when they have earned them. Then you say that the fetus acquires the right to life upon birth. This is where the centerpiece of the argument is. What has a fetus earned by being born? Clearly it is less dependent than in the womb. Your arguments elsewhere in this thread about the newborn knowing what to do in order to survive is correct, but it is quite incapable of acting on that without the mother's agreement. This is why I said elsewhere that a newborn has enough cognitive abilities to generate a sufficient number of self-sustaining actions, but that the newborn cannot perform such self-sustaining actions independently. Rand's definition should be written the way you have interpreted it, puzzlelady. Your interpretation allows for a gradual assignment of rights in accordance with one's abilities to think and do, which is the way that everyone who has raised children can agree with.

My fundamental problem with the Objectivist position on assigning rights at birth is as follows. "A right is that which can be exercised without anyone’s permission." It is not unreasonable to deny a fetus a right to life, as it would require the mother's permission. This changes significantly at birth, but not anywhere near sufficiently for one to say that a newborn's life is not still subject to the mother's (or someone else's) permission. The newborn is incapable of sustaining its own life, even though it can do certain tasks associated with that, as you correctly point out. Likewise, someone either mentally or physically incapacitated during old age can do certain tasks associated with sustaining his/her own life, but cannot sustain his/her own life.

Even if they were so inclined, I would be hard-pressed to believe that the most rational of rational philosophers at ARI would ever entertain the notion that this tenet -- what many seem to think is central to Objectivism -- could be open to discussion, let alone reexamination. They would be, ahem, excommunicated.

I am a woman, and I am commenting. I {had} a dog in this fight...

If we are talking about women heeding religious dogma, we are clearly in another discussion altogether. I doubt that any woman who considered herself bound by the Pope's diktat would find Rand's analysis pertinent to her decision.

Unless one of you bought a rider to your ticket that gave you a guaranteed seat in the life raft, neither has a "right" to a space, and it's a scramble to survive.

AJ, Objectivism has nothing to do with someone making "pronouncements" to "followers". Ayn Rand didn't issue "edicts". Quite the opposite, in fact. Just because AR said or wrote something doesn't make it true. It's the rationale in those statements that has to stand up to rational scrutiny. I think (not believe) she got the philosophy right.

Your comments reveal a misunderstanding of the integrated nature of Objectivist philosophy and, I hope, were not intended as subtle 'digs' at people that have a reasoned appreciation of Rand's philosophical discoveries.

There are no contradictions involved. An unborn human fetus is not a "child".

Only if she hired a sperm donor.

Men should think with their brains, not only their penis. Knowing that their act may incur future liabilities should encourage them never to be without extra condoms.

Rand consistently defended individual rights, and an adult human has priority over a potential or not-yet person. We don't let children drive, drink or do brain surgery. They acquire those rights when they have earned them. The fetus acquires the right to life upon birth, and the mother has the right, not just the responsibility, to safeguard the child's welfare. That includes the right to refuse vaccinations or other medical procedures an overreaching government may demand. Parents have sovereignty over their offspring without expecting society to support them.

None of these questions would come up if we did not live in a society that continues to grow and encroach upon our freedom of action, and demand that we contribute more and more to the social good.

The new information does not negate the definition of life. Experts at ARI - rational philosophers - have not, and will not, concede to your point.
You are equating any "new info" with definition-changing info. Again, you and others here do not understand Rand's definitions; you need to read more of her works.

"accident" is not a key word here.
Using the proper definition of life is, and you refuse to understand it.

There's no insult meant. I'm an old man and learned the term prior to the 60's when Downs Syndrome was adopted. And to be honest, I don't pay any attention to PCology.

A quote that comes to mind: "At its core, then, political correctness is nothing more nor less than the unjust intimidation of others into thinking and speaking a certain way. As such, it is pure totalitarian mind control." —David Kupelian

Yes, she would. Rand put it very plainly: Life begins at birth. Birth is the moment when the fetus can sustain life (have an independent existence) outside the womb, whether leaving it full-term or premature. That is the moment it acquires personhood.

"Independent existence" does not imply the newborn should have a well-paying job with which to supply itself with the necessities of life. The mother's hormones in most cases work adequately to assure her love and nurturing for the infant, to say nothing of the breast milk pressing her to suckle the baby. Any mother cat or dog would do that. The mother's instincts drive her to accept caring for the child until it grows and learns enough, day by day, to become self-sufficient. Any mother cat or dog also does that.

The newborn is equal to the task of sustaining itself in that relationship; it is born knowing how to suck. It also has a brain which is very busy downloading everything from the environment; integrating all that input may take years before a child reaches "the age of reason". Do not ascribe reasoning powers to the nascent electrical brain activity in the womb. The operating system has not yet been programmed for anything but receiving.

In a social structure, which humans form for mutual benefit, certain responsibilities arise, which become couched in rules and laws, the social contract, otherwise labeled as a moral code. Among these are that one's children are one's own task to look after, and not let them become a burden on others. That is not to say that some social groupings, like communes, can't have collective child care. The Bonobos do that.

Living things are genetically predisposed to protect their own offspring, their own DNA, above all else, in their own self-interest. That is what makes an abortion such a difficult decision in most cases. It is, however, an individual decision that no one else has a right to demand or forbid. The principle of self-ownership is prime. Too bad most societies do not live by that principle.

As for why some people have many children, mandated by their religion or politics, it is to outpopulate rival groups. That is the DNA operating on a larger scale of kin survival. Pyramid-scheming governments also need growing populations for future tax extraction, and when not enough new workers come online or too many old ones live too long, economies tank. But that's another subject.

Observe that most people mate from physical urge, the eager gene driving for its perpetuation. Rand had an idealized view of romantic love and sex as its grandest expression. To her, sex was an end in itself, a celebration of self and partner, not the means to a reproductive end. In the real world, few people fall in love after a deep intellectual introspection about a potential partner's highest qualities. A guy will skewer almost any female. Females will yield to almost any charismatic pursuer. Humans today are still far closer to their animal roots than to the exalted philosophical ideals of which Rand gave us such a heroic vision.

I seriously doubt she would just ignore technological advancement and the availability of chemicals to prevent pregnancy from beginning in favor of irresponsibility. Stuck on something written long ago, without being open to new information, sounds more like religious dogma that Objectivism.

Yeh - all (babies born) or nothing (fetuses).

Ben Carson recently stated that he feel life begins when a heartbeat can be heard. Thinking about his statement it makes sense to me. A mass of cells is just a mass of cells. But a heartbeat is a deliberate sound of life, whether that life is thinking or not.

I can respect his assessment. I also think there are far too many options to "fix" the "problem" stemming from two individuals irresponsibility that allowing the cells to propagate the point of a heartbeat should be unconscionable to any person. This is why I asked the original question, because I could not reconcile how Objectivists saw this topic.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/m...

If you understood them, you were not make the arguments you have.

Absolutely. Nothing has changed definitions.

1968...as-if there are very many strenuously devout catholics today. I'd say in the US we have successfully compartmentalized out beliefs.
Why on the woman? Seriously? Because the woman is the one carrying the child for 9 months regardless. Frankly, any man who would lay with a girl or woman today without a condom is a fool unless he intends to stay with her (or don't mind giving up a chunk of his income).