Ayn Rand answered the question with her ethics. Moral concepts do not pertain to fetuses. It is not a matter of when living cells in some form are created, but the nature of the living entity as a person.

Why not? Because the concept of rights does not pertain to animals, trees and rocks. "Rights" is a moral concept. Morality is based on the nature of man. We must make choices to live and the decisions we make make a difference. Those are the facts that giver rise to the concept of and need for ethics, not a claimed divine decree to sacrifice. Rational humans "rate above" the rest because human value is the basis of morality.

Morality cannot be properly enforced by government without regard to protecting rights. Imposing prohibitions on human actions over what someone else decides is "abuse" towards "non-sentient beings" is a flagrant violation of rights, but that is the viro mentality. The fallacy is ignoring human rights and its basis in morality, not a "slippery slope". The rights of the individual is a moral concept. A right is a moral sanction of freedom of action in a social context.

Demands by both viros and religious conservatives to decree entitlements and rights of non-human objects enforced by coercion under law ignore the moral basis of rights and the basis of morality itself in the nature of man.

"Rights of nature" is a famous theme in the viro movement stemming from their religious belief in the intrinsic value of nature regarded as superseding human values and rights for human purposes. With or without the vocabulary of "rights" it is constantly used to rationalize restrictions on human activities, especially our private property rights.

The viros have even tried to elevate "rights of nature" to a legal standing, as in their call for a "bill of rights for all wild creatures, everywhere" and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas endorsing in a dissenting opinion the Sierra Club's argument that "trees should have standing" before the court, represented by viro activists in the name of 'rights of nature', in Douglas' words: "conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation".

There is a long and sordid history of this misanthropic philosophy on behalf of nature against human beings. they mean it. See for example Roderick Nash's The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics.

What you call the "stuff" about "the alliance between the viros and the Pope gives a viro rationalization for banning abortion and contraception in terms of a duty to preserve and sacrifice to 'God's Creation'" is in the Pope's recent encyclical Laudato Si' of the Holy Father Francis On Care for Our Common Home http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/fran..., as been discussed on this forum several times.

I, personally, have serious issue with the parting out of fetuses. I have been to the belly of the beast and am completely sure that there are forces at work who couldn't care less about human life.

I no longer am a donor per the system where they put a dot on your driver's license and can part you out. I have a few big problems with that system.

I have part of a dead person in my knee. If I could, I'd thank the family of the person it came from...maybe treat them to a big dinner. I appreciate it very much. I think the beneficiaries of the person who dies and donates parts should be financially rewarded. Until then, no.

There have been real suspect cases where people died in questionable circumstances and were parted out. One of the more high-profile ones was in the very hospital where I had an emergency appendectomy when I was a kid. Yikes...

"concepts of rights and morality do not pertain to fetuses."
Keep in mind I never used the word rights in the context of fetuses. Non-sentient beings may not have rights, but what about the morality of our actions toward them? Does their lack of rights make it okay to abuse them? I say no.

I have intuitive notion that curtailing people's rights in any way when they become pregnant, but I think I may be making the slippery-slope fallacy.

I didn't understand the stuff about "viro rationalization." and rights of rocks and trees. I don't know why rocks and trees would have rights or what any of that means.

Excellent comment from evw.
However, - "rights" for animals, trees and rocks,
Well why not? As for criminals, infants, fetuses and lunatics.
Animals, trees and all living things have rights.
But rational humans rate above the others.

There is no valid moral "balancing of interests" between a fetus and the woman: the concepts of rights and morality do not pertain to fetuses. No one has any right whatsoever to interfere with the woman's choice over her own body, no matter what the degree of harm to her.

Viros who claim "rights" for animals, trees and rocks as the "rights of nature" are no better. They have no concept of the nature and source of rights and no concern for them because they start with a religious premise of an intrinsic value of nature superseding human values and rights. With no understanding of rights they are no better at distinguishing between persons and fetuses than the anti abortion rights religious conservatives and can include fetuses either way in their misanthropic nature worship.

It should not be surprising that the latest dogma in the alliance between the viros and the Pope gives a viro rationalization for banning abortion and contraception in terms of a duty to preserve and sacrifice to "God's Creation".

It is why hospitals hire ethicists and philosophers. I don't know how that is effected, but I have seen the job listings.

Thanks for your thoughtful response "A more fundamental "education" is needed, a morality of self-interest based on reality and reason."
Certainly a good part of the solution to unwanted pregnancies is responsible behavior to avoid unintended consequences.

I feel that organ transplants are an amazing medical tool to help those in need. I think donor designations on ID'S is beneficial. When my son died his eyes saved someone else from becoming blind , and his skin helped a severely burned child. But I believe in full disclosure to the donor or the donors family and would expect
ethical behavior from the physicians.

That is a different discussion, one more disturbing. Those women at that banquet were ghouls. I believe that it had less to do with their political views than with their moral choices.

We could have an equal and opposite discussion about capital punishment. The two issues have collateral considerations. It is easy to claim that if you willingly take someone's life, then yours is forfeit. However, the facts of jurisprudence and jurisdiction do not support that. Innocent people have been convicted and executed often. There is no way to undo that.

Do two wrongs make a right? How does the government have any rights that an individual does not?

On the street, in a state with no capital punishment, a police officer can execute a suspect. The enforcement officer has a power not granted to the courts. It's pretty scary when you stop and think about it. (And I have no easy answer.)

Thanks for your insight and I agree that a blanket statement is not an accurate statement for all.
Just been grappling with this thought.

I agree with you that more effort should be put into "education" that is into moral, philosophical education. I believe that it has been shown that sex education in high school has no effect on teen pregnancies. Given the broad failures of public education, that should not be surprising. A more fundamental "education" is needed, a morality of self-interest based on reality and reason.

Just to say, though. I was working the local GOP booth at the Ann Arbor Street Fair (2007, perhaps). And I was discussing this issue with my team mate who was Catholic. "What about... what about... But you can't ... You can't..." we went back and forth pretty quickly and agreed that the question is, as he put it, "brutally complicated." Just as we stopped, this "liberal" woman came up began to harangue us over the GOP position on abortion rights. "We just went through that," I said. "It's brutally complicated," he said. She went away.

Based on his suggestions, I made several donations to a local Catholic charity for expectant mothers. One of my assertions is that a human life should not be terminated for purely economic reasons. It is a principle that I hold to working security in Texas. Here in Texas, you can shoot a man in the back for stealing your neighbor's property. I do not believe that property is worth killing for. (The right to property is different than that. But the stuff itself is not worth a human life.)

Nice work. Thanks for the parsing.

Kucinich is a Catholic. He is not alone. In upper Michigan, they had a long-time Congressman, Bart Stupak, also a Democrat and a Catholic. He was pro-welfare and pro-life and was constantly re-elected by a rural population.

In fact, not to derail this, but in support of your quadrature, in Detroit, they have a long history of pro-labor Democrats who are also NRA members. Not all liberals are anti-gun, or anti-hunting animal welfare rights advocates.
To cite a friend, "It's brutally complicated."

How do you feel about organ transplants? Do you have any objections to "Donor" designations on driver licenses? I have a Donor "heart" on my license now, but I do not always. I go back and forth on how I guess the doctors would be willing to chalk me up as a loss in order to get my parts. You gotta wonder...

I cannot speak for all who self-identify as "liberal." I only point out that the basic question is about choice. They are not pro-abortion. You, too, are "pro-choice" for yourself.

I think that the essential question is why you cannot understand them. I have no answer. We all like to think that we are morally superior to those we disagree with. But that aside, liberals, being open-minded and conjectural tend to "understand" the authoritarian response in others better than authoritarians understand the pragmatic approach.

For the best - and I suggest saddest - example of how liberalism fails to rally the troops, consider Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies. The entire book is a long plea for toleration based on ultimate ignorance. Science demonstrates that truths are approximate, Popper said, so, we must not impose ourselves on other people. Well, the authoritarians of his time, the fascists and communists and their allies, certainly thought that they had absolute truth and they had no reason to be tolerant. End of story.

It comes up in this discussion because those who are pro-choice certainly embrace the choice to carry a baby to term and raise it in a loving household. They ask only that you do not interfere in the choice of a mother to terminate a bad pregnancy. You have no reason to be tolerant.

The arguments here on this never resolve anything because all sides assume that they are absolutely right. Very little about this is conjectural.

"I do respect all living things as long as they don't tread on me."
The rub with abortion is we don't have the technology to incubate an embryo or fetus. So by telling a mother not to abortion, we're asking (pro-life people want to use force) her to do it. Having a baby entails risk and physical limitations. There is a continuum of balancing the interests of the embryo/fetus with the mother's. On one extreme, once you become pregnant, you are an incubator and the gov't can use whatever force on your to protect the fetus. They might enforce medically-recommended bed rest, deny you the right to take medications that put the fetus at risk, deny you the right to work a job that has risk. On the other end of the spectrum, the mother's rights are all that matter.

I know I'm veering close to the slippery slope fallacy, but it's much easier for me to understand the extremes that the fetus's or mother's rights are paramount. It's harder for me to understand arguments that the mother should lose a fraction of her rights when she becomes pregnant. A pro-life supporter might say she cannot abort because the fetus has some anomaly and will probably need to be born by C-Section, but she can take medications to treat stage 2 cancer. I imagine another pro-lifer saying it has to be stage 3 before she can take medications that would harm the fetus.

Actually, the pro-choice position is based on the concern for the expectant mother, for her rights and for her health.

Thanks for your reply. I recently saw a billboard that showed the harvesting of those" living "parts and it was disturbing to me , and prompted me to consider this question.

I was not making the utilitarian argument but only a utilitarian argument. I happen to believe that the claim is valid. My intention was only to show with the list of arguments that "liberals" (so-called) can have any number of reasons for their assertions.

Note that most arguments on this subject here tend to stated pro or con in terms of one absolute or one principle. That is a "conservative" way to look at a problem.

Dobrien is not alone in his opening that he cannot understand how liberals think this way. We get that a lot here on many issues. It is absolutist thinking.

And of course absolutes do exist. But not every truth is absolute. Lowercase-o objectivism is rational-empiricism, so by uppercase-O Objectivism, many truths are contextual. Leonard Peikoff touches on some that in Understanding Objectivism. Many students of Objectivism - especially men, he says - are absolutists and monists: they want to derive all truths from A is A. They set metaphysics below epistemology as more fundamental, when in fact, the two are interdependent.

On a question like this one, of ending a life, the emotions of a woman whose understanding of Objectivism is integrated are probably a better indicator of truth than the rationalizations of a man. (Again, Peikoff's claim.) I think that the case in point was Leonard and the Boys discussing whether, when, and how it was immoral to take a robot apart until it no longer functioned as an analogy to understanding the same issue about a human. Mrs. P. was shocked at the very idea that you would deconstruct a living being. And I am sure that she had her reasons.

Thanks for your thoughtful comment

Ah...the eternal question which cannot be answered here.

It hinges upon when somebody thinks a person is created. Society can't agree on that. That said - A lot of liberals are eugenicists. So, for them it doesn't hinge upon when a person is created.

The recent rash of videos showing that PP was harvesting the unborn for their parts was too much for me. It was barbaric in my eyes.

Your claim is "championing for the under privileged" is correlated with supporting abortion rights. I'm not sure of the statistics, but I can think of clear counter-examples.
- Catholic Religion: Supports help for under-privileged and is pro-life
- Liberals/Progressives: Support gov't help for under-privileged and are pro-choice
- Libertarians: Oppose gov't help for under-priviledged and are pro-choice.
- Religious Conservatives: Oppose gov't help for under-priviledged and are pro-life.
So we could draw a constellation diagram with these two issues on perpendicular axes. I'm not clear there would be much correlation.

I think we create these words, like liberals, as short-hand for being in one quadrant of the diagram. You really have to look at each person's ideas rather than their group membership. For example, Dennis Kucinich is known as being one of the strongest supporters of gov't help for the under-privileged and animal rights and says he does not support abortion rights for the very reason you pose in your question.

"it is easy to argue that that prevents the greater harms and wrongs that are inevitable from an unwanted child."
Are you making the utilitarian argument yourself or are you saying people who are utilitarian may champion the under-privileged and support abortion rights fro the same reasons?