When does human life begin?

[Arwon]

On the other hand, there are parts of the world where the question of abortion is pretty much settled.

To be honest this is very much the norm in the rich/developed world. And I noted earlier, outside of the rich developed world, while it's often not settled, it's not settled because the overwhelming trend is towards liberalisation.

Here's the global current view:

Both shades of blue mean very broad access, yellow can vary from broad access in practice (especially if mental health is explicitly a reason) to much more limited.

Getting to this current situation over the last 25 years has involved a lot of countries liberalising while only Nicaragua, Poland and El Salvador have backslid prior to the upcoming US regression. Here's a timeline of the liberalisation process, with letters meaning new reasons were added. It's about 50 countries, which is like a quarter of all countries:

And it doesn't show some others, especially in federal systems like Australia where decriminalisation has now reached all states and territories in the last few years.

Broken down by global population, global access is spread like this:

It sucks mightily that the US is going backwards but it pays to remember that as a rich protestant country that still has a significant anti-abortion political movement, they are quite a freakish outlier on this. They will literally be the first non-Catholic country to roll back abortion freedoms in a quarter of a century.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Well... everything is a life. That police speed radar trap? The tree? The wind? The ocean... all life.... nothing is dead, can die.... all just...patterns...arranging and reaging. Nothing new, under the sun.

That said... souls do exist... and you just ripped one to pieces, and such things have consequences.

for the fetus.... a good death matters, you know... and sooner or later also for the butcher. For since all is divine, and one, God does not actually pick winners or loosers. Yet, unfairness is the precondition of any happening. So it has to remain hidden. Otherwise, we could resist the great game of life. And its evolution and devolution.

But don't hug trees.... no need to humanize them. But a light touch, here and there...just letting them know, that you see them.... that would come very appreciated... and a forest is to be viewed and treated like a big extended family... not like say we treat animals... mutating them into mutants.. cows are so wise. Got it figured out. Need so little to be good. But for us? We just take as much as we can.

And in a world of duality, there are bees... and locusts....

Are supposed to be the gardener of this world. Not its virus.

Spoiler :

 

[Samson]

Relevant to the question of personhood: US court mulls if elephant has human rights

Happy, by species, is an Asian elephant. But can she also be considered a person?

That question was before New York’s highest court on Wednesday in a closely watched case over whether a basic human right can be extended to an animal.

The advocates at the Nonhuman Rights Project say yes: Happy is an autonomous, cognitively complex elephant worthy of the right reserved in law for “a person”.

The Bronx Zoo, where Happy resides, says no: through an attorney, the zoo argues Happy is neither illegally imprisoned nor a person, but a well-cared-for elephant “respected as the magnificent creature she is.”

The group said that in 2005, Happy became the first elephant to pass a self-awareness indicator test, repeatedly touching a white “X” on her forehead as she looked into a large mirror.
Miller said right now there’s more evidence showing elephants are extraordinarily cognitively complex with advanced analytical abilities.

Last October, at the urging of a different animal rights group, a federal judge ruled that Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s infamous “cocaine hippos” could be recognised as people or “interested persons” with legal rights in the US. The decision had no real ramifications for the hippos themselves, given that they reside in Colombia.
​

 

[Lexicus]

Relevant to the question of personhood: US court mulls if elephant has human rights

Happy, by species, is an Asian elephant. But can she also be considered a person?

That question was before New York’s highest court on Wednesday in a closely watched case over whether a basic human right can be extended to an animal.

The advocates at the Nonhuman Rights Project say yes: Happy is an autonomous, cognitively complex elephant worthy of the right reserved in law for “a person”.

The Bronx Zoo, where Happy resides, says no: through an attorney, the zoo argues Happy is neither illegally imprisoned nor a person, but a well-cared-for elephant “respected as the magnificent creature she is.”

The group said that in 2005, Happy became the first elephant to pass a self-awareness indicator test, repeatedly touching a white “X” on her forehead as she looked into a large mirror.
Miller said right now there’s more evidence showing elephants are extraordinarily cognitively complex with advanced analytical abilities.

Last October, at the urging of a different animal rights group, a federal judge ruled that Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s infamous “cocaine hippos” could be recognised as people or “interested persons” with legal rights in the US. The decision had no real ramifications for the hippos themselves, given that they reside in Colombia.
​

My question for these animal rights groups is always "if an animal is a person can it then be charged with murder for killing someone?"
I think if you wouldn't charge the animal with murder on the basis that it's not responsible for its actions,you can't simultaneously claim it has the rights of a person.

 

[El_Machinae]

I think if you wouldn't charge the animal with murder on the basis that it's not responsible for its actions,you can't simultaneously claim it has the rights of a person.

Hi.

I work with people who have human rights, but don't bear legal responsibility for their actions. Your point might not be applicable.

Edit: also not sure I even agree with your take on the Justice System here.

 

[Samson]

My question for these animal rights groups is always "if an animal is a person can it then be charged with murder for killing someone?"
I think if you wouldn't charge the animal with murder on the basis that it's not responsible for its actions,you can't simultaneously claim it has the rights of a person.

That certainly sounds like a good argument against corporate personhood

I think I generally agree that this is not a terribly good argument, for much the same reason that I do not thing the personhood argument is very useful in the abortion debate. We use "personhood" as an all encompassing attribute that confers rights and responsibilities, and apply it in many different circumstances where the actual pro's and con's of the situation are vastly different. Happy probably should be the right to live in an environment appropriate for her mental needs but should not get prosecuted if she kills someone, and perhaps not a right to life. Corporations do not have the right to life, but probably should be prosecuted when they kill people. Rivers probably should have the "right to life" (or something analogous). These are completely different things and I do not see how the concept of "personhood" helps with any.

 

[Lexicus]

That certainly sounds like a good argument against corporate personhood

I think I generally agree that this is not a terribly good argument, for much the same reason that I do not thing the personhood argument is very useful in the abortion debate. We use "personhood" as an all encompassing attribute that confers rights and responsibilities, and apply it in many different circumstances where the actual pro's and con's of the situation are vastly different. Happy probably should be the right to live in an environment appropriate for her mental needs but should not get prosecuted if she kills someone, and perhaps not a right to life. Corporations do not have the right to life, but probably should be prosecuted when they kill people. Rivers probably should have the "right to life" (or something analogous). These are completely different things and I do not see how the concept of "personhood" helps with any.

Corporate personhood discourse is a bit confused because the basic definition of a corporation is a group that is treated as a legal individual. So in that sense corporate personhood is inherent to what a corporation is, on a basic level.

The issue arises from giving corporations many of the same rights as actual persons, evidently without some of the same responsibilities, to which you allude. To me it's more that corporations are allowed to exist for the benefit of the public, and so they should have no "unconditional" rights as such. Whatever rights they have exist on sufferance. If they're abusing their rights or if, for whatever reason, granting them some right is leading to injury to the public, the right should simply be taken away. Incorporation should also be considered a privilege rather than a right.

 

[Samson]

To me it's more that corporations are allowed to exist for the benefit of the public, and so they should have no "unconditional" rights as such. Whatever rights they have exist on sufferance. If they're abusing their rights or if, for whatever reason, granting them some right is leading to injury to the public, the right should simply be taken away. Incorporation should also be considered a privilege rather than a right.

This should be so obviously the case, kind of as defined by history.

 

[Lexicus]

This should be so obviously the case, kind of as defined by history.

In the US right-wing judges began to pervert the 14th amendment into the basis of plutocracy almost as soon as it was ratified. Most of the ridiculous privileges enjoyed by corporations derive from this jurisprudence.

 

[AmazonQueen]

My question for these animal rights groups is always "if an animal is a person can it then be charged with murder for killing someone?"
I think if you wouldn't charge the animal with murder on the basis that it's not responsible for its actions,you can't simultaneously claim it has the rights of a person.

We may not hold trials for them but we frequently kill animals on the basis that they are dangerous to people. Being charged with murder and tried in a court would be an improvement in animal rights. At the moment a dog can be killed if a vet, council or the police deem it dangerous. It doesn't have to have killed someone.

 

[Narz]

It's ridiculous to say dogs are people they're obviously much better than people.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

To be honest this is very much the norm in the rich/developed world.

how much "gestational limits vary" is a non-trivial detail, however. there are a lot of countries with rules quite similar to florida, for instance. unless it has a trigger law to change it based on scotus that i haven't heard about.

the major outliers in us are states like texas/louisiana and to a lesser but still notable extent policies like oklahoma's.

 

[Lexicus]

We may not hold trials for them but we frequently kill animals on the basis that they are dangerous to people. Being charged with murder and tried in a court would be an improvement in animal rights. At the moment a dog can be killed if a vet, council or the police deem it dangerous. It doesn't have to have killed someone.

That's a good point.

It's ridiculous to say dogs are people they're obviously much better than people.

People are the only animals that consciously choose to work evil and do cruelty. Even bacteria are our moral superiors.

 

[EgonSpengler]

If the goal of an abortion ban is to get rid of abortion then no single abortion ban has ever worked anywhere - they have all been dismal failures.

I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that the number of abortions may have gone down after Roe v. Wade. It would be hard to know for sure, because of course one effect of making something illegal is that people who do it anyway try not to leave a paper trail (I wonder: did the number of "miscarriages" recorded by physicians go down after Roe v Wade?). The hypothesis I heard for the reduction in abortions from the early '70s was that various other progressive measures achieved as part of 'second-wave feminism' helped empower women in various ways: The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963 (obviously, pay equity is still an issue, but people starting chipping away at it in the '60s); Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 made birth control legal for married women; spousal rape started to become illegal in the early '70s; etc.

So if someone genuinely wants to reduce abortions, maybe they should be a feminist.


EDIT: Oh, yeah. Title IX was 1972. Of course that's most famous for funding women's sports in colleges and universities, but it technically applies to any higher-ed program that uses federal funding. I did a quick Google search to find an example of a non-sports program that benefited from title IX and didn't immediately come up with anything. Every reference to it seems to point to sports. Still, I think it's been shown that women with higher education degrees have better pregnancy outcomes. Maybe also fewer abortions? Not sure about that. Anyway, anything that encouraged or enabled women to attend and/or graduate from university in the 1970s may have indirectly helped bring the frequency of abortions down. (Of course today it's men who are lagging behind in higher ed, but that's a different topic...)

 

[Samson]

This paper just came out, about elephant death behaviours. I find it hard to not imagine them anthropomorphically.

Videos uploaded to YouTube have given fresh insight into how Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) respond to death. Researchers used the videos to describe, sometimes for the first time, behaviours that had been known only anecdotally. These included what seems to be keeping vigil over the body of a peer, trumpeting or roaring, and females carrying deceased calves. “These rare and extremely important natural-history observations suggest that an awareness of loss is present in elephants,” says elephant researcher Phyllis Lee.
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[RobAnybody]

People are the only animals that consciously choose to work evil and do cruelty.

And cats.

 

[Lexicus]

And cats.

no kitties are good

 

[AmazonQueen]

no kitties are good

no kitties are good or no, kitties are good?

Totally different meanings

 

[RobAnybody]

AC(ats)AB?

 

[Lexicus]

no kitties are good or no, kitties are good?

Totally different meanings

The one with the comma