Not arbitrary at all, baby is the stage of development from birth to one year as defined by medical dictionaries.
No, society has a right to establish rules for maintaining order in society. Maintaining order, preventing chaos, protects individual rights. People have a right to decide what is right in their own lives UNTIL it interferes with order in society. We have a right to have individual morals and ethics up to that point. We will never agree 100% on what is right. If you're not talking about legislation, then you're leaving women free to make their own decisions.
You're just saying that you want to establish the "overarching structure" on your own arbitrary points, so that women cannot decide for themselves.
You are talking about a man made description. When life begins is by no means agreed upon. - - - Updated - - - That is totally incorrect. You are now "assuming" you know what that overarching structure would be.
Right, so instead of trying to decide when life begins, how about a simple agreement on life and choice? The simpler the better.
Are you denying that you want to have input on the "overarching structure"? Are you denying that women would somehow be required to conform to the "overarching structure", which even if decided upon by a majority would deny individual choices? I'm pretty sure you're not advocating for an "overarching structure" to expand women's choices, the whole idea is to limit choices in some manner.
Requiring someone to conform implies external force. At this point in time I am not addressing external force.
Good, then let's go over some basics. First, it is in man's nature to reduce opposites to black and white to make decisions. This is natural or a person could not make decisions. That means that an agreement on what the reduction is may be important. That does not mean that decisions from that point are always black and white, it just means that you have a basis to make a decision from. Let me ask you a question. Do you believe (because much of decision making is based on belief) that life (in general, not in the context of abortion) has value or does not have value?
How do you expect people to conform to your "overarching structure", if you don't provide some incentive, either in the form of applied punishment via government or some rewards, probably financial, via government?
Could be true, particularly considering that in the Western World, humanitarianism has it`s roots in Christianity. We haven`t done a very good job on the humanitarian aspect, but magine the bloodbath that we would be living in, without those Christian values. As an agnostic, it`s plain to see the positives that Christianity has brought to Western Civilisation.
Please excuse the interuption, but on the basis of equality, if the father of an unborn baby is to be held equally responsible for the child, he should be able to have an equal say in the matter. No taxation without representation?
That was not my question. Do you value your own life? For the most part, if you let nature show you the way, you do by default or you would not bother to try and survive. Nature dictates that you do value your life enough to stay alive. The evidence for that is overwhelming. Do you agree?
All animals have a basic instinct for self-preservation. I don't think that necessarily means they value their lives.
That is not the question asked, there is no scientific reason why human life should be considered special. Human life has only the value another human puts upon it.
Tell me where do morals and ethics have there foundation, and science does study morals and ethics - http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2010/10/science-and-morality/ http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=176 these are obviously not "hard" sciences, such as biology, chemistry etc but they are social sciences which are studied.
