For the nature and source of rights see Ayn Rand's essay "Man's Rights". They require a rational being who must choose to use his rational faculty to live.

There is no conflict between rights. Cells do not have rights. When someone "chooses" to arbitrarily ascribe "rights" as floating abstractions the resultant conflicts are overwhelming.

Cells, embryos and fetuses do not have rights at all. The concept does not apply. The woman has the right to her own body. There is no clash and no one else has any say in what she chooses to do on behalf of her own life.

An infant begins to have rights at birth because that is when he is a biologically separate being and begins using his mind to comprehend external reality, literally exercising reason for the first time to integrate his sense perceptions of the world. But he doesn't have all the rights of an adult because he is incapable of exercising them. The concept of rights does not apply to cells at all. Rights are not 'intrinsic' properties that pop into existence regardless of context and meaning, simply because human genes are biologically present. The first requirement is a rational being making choices as a moral being.

For the nature and source of rights see Ayn Rand's essay "Man's Rights".

"'Rights' are a moral concept—the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual's actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others—the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context—the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law."

And:

"A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.)"

I'll say it again, voting should be limited to veterans, land owners and business owners. Those with a vested interest in the country's continued success. Those on welfare should temporarily lose their voting privilege until such time they remove themselves from the government teat.

Take away the looter's ability to affect government, but defend his other constitutional rights. Universal suffrage is a disaster for individual liberty and free markets. I don't care why the looter loots. He should not have the ability to vote himself more loot.

But slavery to the government starts at birth with SS registration.

And yet my kids understood their basic Constitutional rights by 10 or so?

Are Rights subject to an arbitrary number imposed to society? Or is the matter of comprehension involved? Or does simply being alive entitle someone to fundamental Rights to life, liberty and property?

A person dropped into an environment with no other human around would certainly have Rights, no?

Just curious, when you put your money in the bank who legitimately has access to it? Who can use it? Who can give it away?

By what right does ANYONE assert their authority, for ANY reason, to do ANYTHING with that unborn child?

I contend, and always will, that the time for the mother to be to assert her right was before she lay with a man.

This is straying off topic. I'd rather shy away from the abortion discussion.

I believe full rights start at the age of 21.

"the mother that is told she will die if she continues with her pregnancy, or the unborn fetus within?"
There is a whole spectrum along this. There could be a condition where she might die. Or she could have a cancer that might kill her anyway but is less likely to if she does a treatment that kills the fetus. There's also the scenario where she must be in constant bed rest or risk killing the fetus. In that scenario, do we use force to make her stay in bed? It would be nice to see technology to incubate fetuses and even embryos, so the fetuses' welfare isn't weighted against the rights of the person carrying them.

The 13th, 14th and 15th amendment are known as reconstruction amendments specifically because they were written to empower freed slaves AND protect them as citizens from southern democrats seeking to negate their rights. The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments are tired examples of good intentions with disastrous consequences and should be retired.

In the scenario given, it isn't two subordinate rights being discussed, however, but same rights. The only argument which can be made is that because the mother must live for the infant to survive to birth that there is that question. I happen to know a couple just down the street from me, however, who were told this very thing and though the mother was bedridden for much of the pregnancy, both she and the infant survived. That little girl is now almost three. What-if scenarios are a terrible moral case to make for precisely this case.

Agreed. Rights are inherent. Privileges - such as welfare - however are a completely different story... I've often wondered about what our nations laws might look like if those living off government largess were thereby ineligible to vote.

If one wants to constrain the application of the 14th Amendment strictly to former slaves, one must do so for all applications of the 14th Amendment - not just cherry pick. That would mean that it is largely irrelevant today and any cases relying on it (such as those involving gay marriage or rights of illegals) would be similarly void. I'm not so sure that would be a bad thing to be honest.

What the author of the paper does is examine other legal documents of the times and how they treat the legal idea of a "person". From those, he is convinced that the Amendment as written for that time would surely include the unborn and that only modern legal arguments of the past 50 years have brought any question into the matter.

The 14th Amendment was written post Civil War (1868ish). I doubt original intent, as misguided as the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendment were, had developing children in mind (people sanctified life back then and it would have been unnecessary). If any argument can be made it makes sense to me to take it back to the Declaration of Independence as a core philosophical principal for us as a people.

fundamental Rights are those everyone has: Life Liberty and property.
There can be no "bigger" right and these fundamental Rights are not an entitlement. If all else is stripped away these Rights are what a person has by simply "being".

I can simply choose to say that rights are inherited at conception for human beings, but it gets very interesting when we discuss who has the "bigger" right when 2 are at odds with each other: the mother that is told she will die if she continues with her pregnancy, or the unborn fetus within?

The reason we don't give animals rights is because we separate homo sapiens from the rest of living things because of our singular capacity to control our own destinies through thought and reason. We spend our entire lives learning and maturing. There is no question that the unborn are human with the potential for thought and reason. The question is whether or not they deserve protection of their lives until they can fully take control of their own destinies, for there is no significant difference between the unborn and the infant in my mind which justifies denial of protection.

I have thought about this a lot with no conclusion. I think there is something between rights and an inanimate object. A dog clearly does not have rights, but we consider it a crime a to torture one for no reason. It seems to me that fetuses would at least be in that zone, maybe actually having true rights. I don't know.

I say no way he forfeits his rights. He may wrongly think he has a "right" to other people's stuff. That doesn't undo his rights. I see nothing about disability that undoes rights. It's not even a blurry issue to me.

I just found this as well: http://www.lifenews.com/2017/06/02/ha...

A Harvard law legal study analyzing original intent concluded that the 14th Amendment covers the unborn. It's an interesting legal analysis.

Rephrasing your final question, should moochers have rights? Hmm. Interesting question.

"Ayn Rand's reasoning on the topic of human rights is based on the ability of a human to self-generate a sufficient number of self-sustaining actions."

That seems a bit off to me. I do understand where she's coming from. Should one have to qualify, measure up, to have the most fundamental Rights? Certainly those without the mental capacity to assert their Rights need representation (family, a loved one, etc.) but the slouch that sits on his couch waiting for the next welfare check, as deplorable as that is, forfeits his fundamental Rights?

Ayn Rand's reasoning on the topic of human rights is based on the ability of a human to self-generate a sufficient number of self-sustaining actions. That part of her philosophy is entirely reasonable. The problem comes in defining where the borders are, given that definition. Certainly an infant is incapable of self-generating a sufficient number of self-sustaining actions to perpetuate its own life. The line for paraplegics and for senior citizens, particularly those with debilitating diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or ALS, is likewise blurry, especially when it comes to power of attorney issues when a senior waits too long before granting power of attorney to another family member.