‘Where negative rights are “negative” in the sense that they claim for each individual a zone of non-interference from others, positive rights are “positive” in the sense that they claim for each individual the positive assistance of others in fulfilling basic constituents of well-being like health.’
‘Negative rights are considered more essential than positive ones in protecting an individual’s autonomy.’
So when one individual’s positive right to do something is at odds with another’s negative right to protect them from something, as much as it would be ideal for both parties to have exactly what they want without harming or inconveniencing/upsetting the other, since that’s often not possible, the negative right to ‘protect’ an individual from something seems to trump the positive right for an individual to ‘do’ something in hierarchy of moral importance and most ethicists seem to agree.
For example, I think people’s ‘positive right’ to choose animal-based product or service options when there are equally suitable plant-based options that achieve all the same purposes, isn’t as important as sentient animals’ negative right to not be unnecessarily exploited and killed, and to be protected from those undesirable experiences, states or conditions. Hence the position of veganism is very clear and obvious for me, and resolves an “easy” ethical issue with a clear solution (essential negative (protective) right prevails over others’ ultimately unnecessary positive (“doing”) right).
When it comes to abortion however, I do believe that it’s a tricky situation ethically. I’m pro-choice, but I say that with difficulty, because considering both sides it’s not an easy position and I see it as much more ethically complex than the issue of unnecessary animal exploitation. That’s because I think you can make the argument that either forcing a person to undergo pregnancy, or terminating the life of an (admittedly unconscious, undeveloped) fetus, are in both cases breaching a sentient (or would-be sentient) individual’s negative (protective) right. It would seem to be a clear ethical dilemma, where neither outcome is desirable, in almost comparably important ways. However, ultimately I had to decide that protecting a woman/person from an enforced pregnancy (and the physical and life-changing, even life destroying (or killing) effects, results and experiences that can have), a person being a fully formed, conscious and sentient individual, is more tangibly important than protecting an undeveloped, unconscious “mass of cells” from being prevented from developing into a human being.
My thoughts on the matter aside… It seems like in one way the right to abortion is a positive right by claiming assistance from others to “do” something being terminate a pregnancy, while in another way it’s a negative right by “protecting” the person via preventing undesirable states and experiences that would be imposed on them by others ‘interfering’ and forcing them to undergo pregnancy, by denying them an abortion.
I’m honestly just wondering what kind right this would be considered. Positive right or negative right? Or both? Thanks :)
IMO whether abortion turns out to be a negative or a positive right depends on the laws in the country in question. In the US the legal status of abortion is currently up to the states. In the couple states where abortion is explicitly a legal right you have a positive right to an abortion. That is, the state will ensure you have access to one.
In most states it’s a negative right—the state guarantees that if you pursue an abortion you’ll be protected from people who might want to hurt you for doing it. Sort of like being protected from religious persecution is a negative right in many places.
So, to me whether abortion is a positive or negative right (or not a right at all) depends on the legal jurisdiction.
I don’t believe any state has a law that says that abortions must be provided to you. The legal right ammendments that activists are trying pass are simply to bar the state from restricting abortions.
For me it’s a basic question of who gets to make your medical decisions, you, or someone else.
It isn’t a person yet it’s not a baby and it is “human” only by DNA. At that point it is indistinguishable from an embryo of a dolphin or other mammal. It can’t even think yet, but for some reason people think of is special enough to be worth denying you your body autonomy.
“At that point it’s indistinguishable from an embryo of a dolphin”
So we don’t know if embryos in humans are actually human?
The argument you are actually making is that it is visually indistinguishable from other embryos .
But this is meaningless, visual inspection is not the only allowed method for determining categorization. One wouldn’t look at a human in a realistic bear costume, and a bear and declare that they are the same thing. Or a stick-bug and a stick.
“It can’t even think yet”
There are numerous intervals of time were you don’t think, are you not worthy of protection? Can you be killed so long as neural synapses are severed faster than axons can fire? (Highly intense radiation can do this). Keep in mind that your argument completely falls apart once you consider that consciousness is a pattern of activity not a definite property.
That’s a great point, we we should probably stop killing all thinking beings immediately and become vegetarian then.
Or maybe protected status is based on species membership, and not level of thought.
Keep in mind that infants have a lower level of thought than pigs. If it is permissible to kill and eat pigs based on their low capacity for thought, then it surely applies to infant humans as well? After all anything otherwise is “specieism” which is totally the same as racism Singer argues. (Referring to Peter Singer who makes the same dipshit argument albeit more effectively than you).
My weak arguments aren’t meant to convince you, they are meant to lead you along a train of thought. Here’s the last piece…
Just because cancer cells are human doesn’t mean they get species protection, that would be stupid.
Once we have acknowledged that our protective feelings for the bundle of cells that can’t even think yet are species based, that we routinely kill creatures with brains more well developed than a newborn, and that we do routinely kill clumps of human tissue that put the host at risk, it’s clear that the mother’s well being should always take precedence over the well being of the fetus.
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Weak arguments aren’t going to be effective in leading to any train of thought. They are going to be immediately refuted.
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Your arguments are popular and extremely stupid. This is because the vast majority of people spend little time on ethics, ontology, and formal reasoning. This is like producing a theory of QM, when you flunked Calculus. Anyone can do it, everyone makes the same serious mistakes, and I have to hear the same arguments every single time.
“Once we acknowledge”…
How do we acknowledge something that isn’t clearly true? (i.e not a tautology) First we must prove it to be true, then we can draw conclusions from it. As I already pointed out trying to prove that “human tissue only has value if it is thinking” fails because it’s actually false.
Here’s a formalisation of your reasoning.
- An entity has no value unless it is thinking. Or less value than the mere desires of a thinking entity.
- Fetuses do not think, therefore they have no value.
Problem is first premise is false and we can see that by determining what “thinking” is. Thinking or consciousness is a categorisation of intermittent and emergent behaviour. No human continously thinks, and even if they did it would not make sense to be able to classify them as thinking at any specific point of time. Individual firing of neurons is not thought, it is required for thought but it is not consciousness itself. It requires a system of neurons engaging in electrochemical action that meets some definition of thought (the exact definition doesn’t matter, what matters is that it is emergent not instantaneous).
Your assertion leads to the claim that human moral value must collapse when they are in a non-thinking state. But as already shown every human regularly satisfies this condition, so it must therefore be permissible to kill them. In other words if abortion is permissible by your criteria, so is killing the mother.
Of course we can avoid this clearly immoral conclusion by changing the criteria by which we value humans to “members of a rational class”. (Cancer cells clearly aren’t this). This completely avoids the problems of killing people arbitrarily, killing people who don’t solve a puzzle as fast as a rat, eating babies because we eat pork, all of which are logical conclusions of systems that only value thinking. (If you think this is motivated reasoning, simply research how moral systems are constructed and analytic descriptivism. You also used analytic descriptivism, you just horribly botched it by assuming that unproven premises were true).
Of course the only problem with this new system is that it doesn’t permit killing fetuses (except to save another human life), which you really, really want.
“Just because cancer cells…”
I can’t believe people delude themselves into thinking that this is a strong argument (again a very trite and silly argument). I fervently believe that we need government-mandated academic philosophers screaming into people’s ears every time they say stupid shit like this. Or maybe get shocked by their keyboard.
Wow, I’m not reading all that
This attitude is why you’re still a moron.
When you encounter a lengthy description of why something is true or false, your response is “OMG so many words!”
Guess what buddy? Life isn’t about punchy one-liners and vapid analysis.
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In the academic sense of the term, negative rights include the right to not have things done to you (e.g., to not be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law).
Positive rights include the right for you to do something, generally as against others (e.g., the right to have food, healthcare, or education be provided to you by other people).
I’m not sure it is useful to try to categorize abortion rights, for similar reasons why it would be difficult to categorize the right to try and grab the only parachute on a crashing plane. Even if it causes injury or death to others, our general tendency is to treat positive acts of genuine self-preservation as a negative right, if only in the sense that we would never enforce a rule that prohibits the person from trying.
A funky brain teaser on the topic might be whose right of life prevails when a perfectly healthy person turns out to be the only match for 5 patients with failing organs, one needing a new heart, another needing a new intact liver, etc., who are each about to die if we don’t kill the healthy person and harvest their organs for transplant. And would the answer change if this wouldn’t kill the healthy person, but severely decrease their quality of life - such as involuntarily taking one of their lungs and one of their kidneys?
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Once you assign rights to the unborn, you very quickly end up in an “no abortion except to save the life or health of the mother or prevent unnecessary suffering of a non-viable fetus”.
And this is exactly why most jurisdictions have limits on abortion.
In my country, elective abortions are only legally allowed up to 24 weeks of gestation and the doctors only perform it up to 22 weeks.
Above that, there needs to be a serious medical situation that falls in the exceptional categories.
Practically speaking, it’s mostly an ethics discussion. The vast majority of abortions take place within the first 12 weeks, most even within 8 weeks.
It’s only complicated because of people different spiritual beliefs, which really shouldn’t affect anyone outside of themselves.
If you take it from a scientific point of view, when a fetus has no brain or thoughts or feelings or sentience, there is nothing to protect or give rights to.
The mother on the other hand clearly should have a right over their own body.
“There is nothing to protect or give rights to”
- We protect inanimate objects. Are you asserting that fetuses don’t even exist?
- There is nothing “scientific” or empirically derived about an application of moral valuation. This is simply you confusing yourself over word salad.
- “It’s only complicated because of different spiritual beliefs”- And yet the poster gave a non-spiritual reason. So why didn’t you show that it’s either not complicated or that the user is actually relying on spiritual beliefs?
“Clearly should have a right to her own body”
This is actually not clear at all. Consider self-harm, if people actually do have a right to their own body to do whatever they please then we have absolutely no right to take any measures to prevent self-harm; it is a violation of their rights. So if someone says “I want to cut my arm off”, you have no basis for saying “no you really shouldn’t” because it is “their body their choice”. The minute you say “Actually self-harm is irrational” means that it is not what the person wants that matters, but what a rational person would want. And then one could easily argue that a rational person wouldn’t want to engage in self-mutilation or killing a fetus. This is known in the literature as the “suicidal Bob problem” or the “argument of the idealised self”.
This and many other issues with defining bodily autonomy in such a way as to permit abortion is why it has largely been rejected in serious ethics; it’s only popular among the public because it’s essentially an elaborate appeal to emotion fallacy.
We dont protect inanimate objects over the life of innocent people. Before a fetus develops a brain it doesn’t have thoughts or feelings to protect. It can’t. That’s scientific. If you think it has some kind of soul to protect then you are legislating based on your religious views.
Exploiting a double meaning; nobody claims that a fetuses right to life is greater than the mothers. You are conflating someone’s lifestyle choice with a right to life. Guess what? Society is based on restricting lifestyle choices, you can’t just scream and yell at everyone you meet. You’ll face repercussions that deter such behaviour.
“It doesn’t have thoughts or feelings to protect”
And you think this is why killing is wrong? You realise that these are emergent properties of neurological behaviour? You can’t even possess thoughts or feelings without some time interval, so by that criteria you should be killable so long as your brain hasn’t established a pattern sufficient to be considered a thought? In other words you can be killed at any moment so long as it is fast enough.
“That’s scientific”
You say to a scientist. Boy do I love when lay people try to incorrectly appeal to abductive reasoning.
FYI, also an atheist, another hilarious intellectual faux pas on your behalf.
If the fetus can survive on it’s own, it’s a person. If it can’t survive on it’s own, it’s a parasite. Parasites on a living host have no rights.
the right to abortion is just a subset of bodily autonomy: noone should be able to make decisions or take actions upon your body except you/with your consent.
you can survive with half a liver, and livers regenerate. you can also donate significant amounts of your blood, and even more plasma, without ill effect. these things are lifesaving, but despite that, you cannot be forced to do so against your will.
abortion is no different. just because it can’t survive without you doesn’t mean it gets priority over your own bodily autonomy.
My main reasoning is “actual people before potential people”.
My view on the matter is that access to abortions falls under the umbrella of the right of bodily autonomy; specifically, protection from being medically exploited. Which by your phraseology would make it a “negative right”.
My go-to comparison is, perhaps oddly, bone marrow donation. Someone with bone cancer is likely doomed to die a horrible death, unless they can find a compatible donor who will consent to share marrow with them. For any given recipient, only a few people at best will be a viable match. Maybe only one. But that person has the absolute right to refuse. You cannot be forced to use your body for the health of another person without your consent.
Some people would say, that’s not comparable to pregnancy, and that having sex/getting pregnant is in itself, somehow, initial consent. But, at least here in Canada, they stress heavily that you can withdraw consent at any point during the procedure. They also explicitly let you know that, at a certain point in the procedure, the recipient’s bone marrow will have been irradiated, and that if the donor backs out at that point, the recipient will die, but that they’re still allowed to do so. The right to bodily autonomy means any ongoing use of one’s body requires their continued consent, even with a living, breathing human person on the scales. Morally is certainly another question, but the diagram of law and morality is not a perfect circle.
If I’m protected from being the life support of any person, surely that covers an unfinished fetus.
Think of it this way, any negative right can become a positive right if someone gives it to you. A positive right can’t exist without it.
The 2nd Amendment states that you have the right to keep and bear arms. This means that you can own and utilize a gun for self defense, which is a negative right. It can be made a positive right if the government provides everyone with a a gun for this purpose, but the right to self defense is different from the right to be given the means to accomplish it. Meanwhile the right to vote is something that can’t exist without the government providing it. For $20 I can make a gun with supplies from Home Depot. With $1,000,000 I can’t vote without an existing government system.
Abortion is a function of the right of bodily autonomy and freedom of religion. It’s not the right to have the government “un-pregnant” you on demand, but the right to decide what biological functions you wish to perform. The primary argument against it is based in religious morality, which violates the 1st Amendment’s separation of church and state. The government cannot establish an official religion and impose a specific religious doctrine on you. Since it is something that require you to seek it out and implement it is a negative right.
The real reason abortion is such a delicate political issue is that its true morality is based in religion. If you believe that the soul (a religious concept) begins at or before conception, it is murder which makes it inherently evil. If you believe that the soul becomes a person at viability or birth, it is simply a regulatory restriction like a highway having a speed limit of 60 vs 65 mph. The inability of either side to acknowledge that personal religious beliefs determine whether or not it is literal murder makes a lot of the back and forth shouting an exercise in futility. At the end of the day “Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise.” Saying you can’t do something because someone else’s religion forbids it is a direct violation of that, but ignoring that to some people it is literally murder makes it harder to have honest debates on it. At least having a basic awareness of why the other side is so rabidly opposed to it is very useful in breaking through the emotional arguments that dominate the discussion over the fundamental factors of what is and is not an actual right.
Abortion is not a religious issue. It is merely correlated with religious beliefs. Many religions have no position on abortion, and even the Bible holds no clear position on it, it’s presence in Christianity is a secular synthesis.
SCOTUS also reaffirmed in every single pro-choice case (e.g Roe v Wade Casey v. PlannedParenthood ) that the government has a right to regulate abortion in general just not in certain cases. At no point was it ever considered to be enforcing religious beliefs. This has never been considered a religious issue by any but the most retarded people.
Nonya damn business
Is the right to abortion belief based to MY belief system?! … again. no. It’s an intrinsic right of autonomy. Until you can prove ‘the soul’ this isn’t even academic.
The issue when discussing abortion is that there is no generally accepted point in which a blastocyst/zygote/foetus becomes a fully-fledged, sentient being. Some argue that the point of conception instills personhood; others make arguments based upon how developed a foetus is and if it has differentiated sensory organs; some make an arbitrary distinction based on the elapsing of time; and others still agree that personhood is conveyed only once a baby is born and survives labour.
Those arguing this point have a tendency to become entrenched in their opinions, be it because of religious or cultural norms, or even just the basic human condition of stubbornness. This creates permanent rifts between people who share FAR more in common than they differ.
My personal opinion is a technocratic one - I don’t believe that this decision should be made by anyone other than relevant medical professional(s) and the pregnant person. That means that legislatively (or constitutionally), I’m advocating for no legal restrictions on abortions whatsoever and empowering health professionals to determine what is reasonable or safe.
This position is often (intentionally) misunderstood as not believing that the unborn have rights as well - they absolutely do. I’m a child protection caseworker and we regularly work with pregnant people who show signs there may be risk of harm after birth (issues like substance abuse, mental health issues, domestic violence, disability without sufficient support etc.) in order to preserve the best start to life that an unborn child can have. I just don’t accept that there are any circumstances under which the right of an unborn child trumps professional medical opinions. Doctors are best placed to determine when and if an abortion is appropriate or necessary.
Each individual maintains the right to not have an abortion forced on them, but then gains the right to engage in an abortion if it’s medically safe and sound.
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