BryanH wrote:No it doesn't. If parents can't or don't want to take care of their children, they have an OBLIGATION to take them to social services where they can be cared for. They cannot just neglect their well-being. If they do, they are rightfully punished by society.
SOCIETY CHANGES. [I don't need to remind you what they did with some of the children in Ancient Sparta, right?]
Of course, but that has nothing to with my point. We are discussing whether or not secularists ought to consider abortion immoral and push for it to be illegal. You are allowing a "way out" for secularists by arguing that women should not be required to care for their children. I am showing you why you are wrong on that. It is called providing a counterexample. There is no principled difference between a woman being required to care for her child prenatal and postnatal. Of course, you could always just be consistent and argue that women ought to be allowed to starve their children to death if they so choose, but somehow, I don't see you making that argument. Because you know such a thing would be irrational. Society knows it to be irrational, too, which is why society forbids it. If they were to change to allow it, society would degenerate. Just so, the society that allows its women to kill their prenatal children has degenerated as well. In your example, Sparta was a degenerated society, and in that respect, they were very wrong.
And by the way, current law proves your argument wrong in another way. Absentee fathers are still required to pay child support even if they don't want the child--even if they took measures to avoid having the child. Therefore, you are wrong when you say that we cannot force someone to take care of another human being. On the contrary, one of the basic premises of society is that parents are required by law to take care of their children. They don't get to "opt in" for that responsibility, and the sure as heck don't get to "opt out" of it.
All I can say about your comment is: LOL.
Paying money? Who cares about money when your father isn't there for you? So I am not wrong at all. You can force the father to pay, but you can't force the father to actually raise the child. That is what I am talking about. Financial compensation? Really? So actually fathers can opt-out and PAY.
Never heard of mothers opting out and paying child support. Have you?
If all you can say is "LOL" then you have no business discussing this issue, because you are showing a breathtaking naivete and frankly a childish intellectual capacity and response.
Unfortunately for you, it would have been better to have left it at "LOL," because the remainder of your response (such as it was) demonstrates just such inability to think clearly.
So you ask about who cares about paying money? How about the mother and child receiving that money so that they can actually afford to live? Or do you think that men should be able to abandon their children and
not pay child support? I certainly don't, and society has rightly agreed with me. So we, as a society, care.
And no, we can't force the father to
raise the child. In fact, society has (again rightly) taken the right upon themselves to disallow some men from raising their children after concluding that such men would be a threat to those very children. But even those men are still required to
support the child. To confuse raising and supporting a child is unforgivable. It also goes to a terribly insufficient view of both manhood and parenthood. As I have heard it said, "Son, any boy can make a baby. It takes a man to be a father." If you want to continue to defend a "boyish" -- that is, a childish -- approach to society and ethics, then feel free to do so. The rest of us
adults who wish to actually be rational about these things will carry on without you and will write you off for exactly what you are.
Look Jac, you are arguing with me for PERFECT LAWS in a society that is far, far, far away from being perfect. So coming back to what you said to me on the other thread where we were talking about using the RIGHT TOOLS when trying to prove the existence of GOD, what tools do you want to use in this society? Utopic tools?
Again, your reading comprehension seems to be failing you. I've not argued for perfect laws, and even if I were, that wouldn't change matters one bit. I have argued that the principle you are espousing--namely, that no one can force you to care for another person--is wrong. It is wrong philosophically and ethically, and it is wrong legally. It is wrong legally because society has recognized that it is wrong, and they have done so correctly.
So, in fact, people can and should be required to care for others. To answer the age old question, yes, you are your brother's keeper. Of course, it is an open debate as to what your responsibility to your brother is. And the answer to that will always depend on the nature of the relationship. In the case of mothers, at a minimum, they are required to care for the child at least long enough for them to find a better place. It is quite right that perhaps the best thing a mother can do for her children is to give them to someone else so that those children can have a better chance at life. It is quite wrong to say that a mother can therefore go ahead and kill her child because it is an inconvenience to her.
All I want is for you to be consistent. Like all childish thinkers, you will not be, but I want that all the same. I want you to either argue that women should not be allowed to murder their unborn children, or I want you to be consistent with your own logic for allowing the possibility of murdering their children and go ahead and allow them the possibility of murdering their born children. If one is an inconvenience and can so be "terminated," then so, too, can the other. There is simply
no principled difference.
edit:
And as an aside, not only are you demonstrating a foolish naivete, you are also demonstrating remarkable ignorance only surpassed by the arrogance with which you defend it. Case in point, you argue that euthansia does exist. FL was too kind to you by allowing a
de facto and
de jure distinction. For on that point, you are wrong in all but 47 states. It is true that four states (OR, VT, WA, and MT) have legalized physician assisted suicide, which is euthanasia. Yet in 47 states, it does not exist, and yet in those same 47 states, abortion does. Once cannot consistently say that we do not have the right to take people's life with their consent and then argue that we do have the right to take a child's right to life when they are incapable of giving such consent. In fact, if you wanted a real parallel, you would do well to point out that under current law, if any child's caretaker makes decisions for the child that go directly against its interest, then society has rightly decided that it has the authority to take away that caretaker's parental authority and transfer it to someone who will look out for the best interests of the child. The same principle, by the way, is true at the other end of the spectrum. If it can be shown that any given person's healthcare agent (including the person themselves) is making decisions that are against the best interest of the person, then their right to make those decisions can be stripped by society (via the court system) and given to another who will make decisions in the best interest of the person. And, yet again, the same principle holds in financial interests for daily life as well (that is called fiduciary responsibility).
On this, you can trust me. I am a hospital chaplain who works in an LTAC (long-term acute care) with an acuity rate of about 70%. I deal extensively with end of life issues, advance directives, DNRs, etc. So, yet again, you are just wrong.
