Is it ever one human being’s right to murder an innocent human being?

All your examples imply guilt. The unborn have no guilt, do they?

Try that with the rent house you own and let me know how it turns out.

In this case the owner willingly and of free will entered into a contract with the tenant prior to the tenant entering the premises. The owner is then contractually bound to honor the agreement going into the future. If on the other hand the owner accidentally left the door unlocked, allowing a trespasser to enter and squat in the building, the owner has the right to evict.

I find it highly amusing that those of you who are entirely comfortable with government telling people what to do with their bodies in other contexts (no illicit drugs, no smoking, less salt, wear your seatbelt, wear your helmet, no medical treatment unless we approve it first, no hair cuts unless we approve the cutter, etc ad nauseum) suddenly get supposed limited-government principles when the uterus is involved.

And what prompts you to assume that I am in favor of these things?

In none of these examples, none, is the violation of the individual anywhere near as egregious as that pertaining to forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term. You talk about “9 months” as if it were just some minor inconvenience. Do you have even the foggiest idea of what carrying a pregnancy entails?

Pregnancy puts a woman at risk of heart failure, stroke, hemorrhage, pulmonary embolism, osteoporosis, and produces hormonal imbalances that increase the risk of future breast cancer, just to name a few. The drain on a woman’s metabolic resources is equivalent to carrying a large (not small) malignant tumor.

We talk glibly about “only when the mother’s life is at risk”. Every single pregnancy puts a woman’s life at risk. Before modern medicine, childbirth was the number one cause of death for women, and the risk has only been reduced, not eliminated, by modern medicine.

Now if it is a wanted pregnancy, that is fine – an adult woman chooses of her own free will to assume the risk, and medical science is at hand to try and minimize the risk as much as possible.

But if the pregnancy is unwanted? Well, if the fetus is not a person, and just a lump of cells, then it is just an unfortunate bit of unfair biological reality. But if the fetus is a person, then this is assault, and the woman is entitled to self defense.

And this is solely considering the biological aspects, without even mentioning the sociological consequences of treating women as objects – baby incubators that are the property of the state.

You can justify a limitation of an individual’s rights, a violation of an individual’s autonomy, if the benefit you hope to achieve can be demonstrated to outweigh the harm. The harm accrued by enforcing a seatbelt law is small, the benefit large. This one’s a no-brainer. The salt issue is less clear. Each one must be considered independently of every other one.

The harm accrued by forcing pregnancy is enormous. The benefit too is large, I’ll grant that. But it is not large enough.

I find it highly amusing that those of you who are entirely comfortable with government telling people what to do with their bodies in other contexts (no illicit drugs, no smoking, less salt, wear your seatbelt, wear your helmet, no medical treatment unless we approve it first, no hair cuts unless we approve the cutter, etc ad nauseum) suddenly get supposed limited-government principles when the uterus is involved. Of course, since the primary purpose of government is to protect the lives of its citizens, you missed the boat.

Here’s an example of allowable state oppression: you’re upset that a woman might have to be a slave for nine months. But those of us who work end up paying over 40% of our income in taxes once they’re all considered. So adding up a standard 45 year career of 2000 hours per year, you end up working 4+ years (that’s 24/7/365) of your life just to pay for a government that could carry out its proper role for 1% of that. How’s that for involuntary slavery? (Well … I suppose you could just decide to not work & sponge off someone else …)

Try that with the rent house you own and let me know how it turns out.

Incidentally, personal responsibility IS RELEVANT here as well – if your home is invaded, you may legally employ lethal force. But if you invite someone in and sign a lease contract, then want to boot them out before the lease ends, things are different. Also, to make the analogy less inaccurate, the person you invited to live in your house will immediately die if they don’t live there.

“given that 95% of human conceptions end in spontaneous abortions, the potential time taken from the fetus is more likely to be zero.”
We only start calling the child a fetus at the 11th week or so, at which point it’s got a 98% chance of living to be born unless someone kills it. Also, “potential” explicitly acknowledges that it’s not a sure thing. I chose my words carefully.

“… I noted previously that in all the posts nattering about the personhood of the fetus, there was not a single mention of the woman.”
You came along at June 28th 11:47 am. I had already considered rights to both life and freedom of the mother at 7:48 am.

“… not a single mention of the man. … what should the state require of the man?”
To physically support the children he was involved in creating. The state already does this.

m Andrea: “the kidney argument (or however people usually refer to it) is the ONLY argument in support of abortion rights for which no actual rebuttal exists”
Wow! arrogant…
I presume you refer to “… does any entity have the legal right to force another into sacrificing a kidney? …”
There are two major holes in this argument / analogy:
First, if I caused you to be in the condition to need my kidney, that force may be justified.
Second, if I caused you to be in need of a kidney, and only my kidney will allow you to live, and I can continue to live without that kidney after a period of recovery …

m Andrea: “ChH, if you’re going to pick and choose which parts of the bible you’re going to accept and reject”
What part have I rejected? Where in the Bible does it say, as you seem to think, that followers of God should not use medicine?

Oh! Does this site allow italics? Let’s try, I hate using all caps.

We have to be careful with our distinctions or it will bite us later. For instances, there are many women who desire “equality with men” but what’s so wonderful about the right to dominate others since that is the precise right which men do indeed claim for themselves? Plus it begs the question: if everyone is equally able to dominate, then who precisely is left to dominate? And if a woman doesn’t think men as a class are dominating, then the oppression which arises from domination cannot exist! So instead of “equality” I prefer “freedom from sex-based oppression” because it doesn’t have domination as it’s implicit goal, doesn’t automatically assume men are deliberately hurtful, and still manages to include what most people mean by “equality”.

And since the most fanatical can’t tell the difference between an actual argument and a justification (witness their shotgun approach to excuses) I give them a distraction and then clobber them with logic. I have never lost an argument, btw. Ever. They want to base their non-logical beliefs on their magical bearded sky fairy friend, okay, let’s chat about god’s REAL plan for their life. Ergo: They need to give up relying on modern medicine lest they become a hypocrite.

ChH, if you’re going to pick and choose which parts of the bible you’re going to accept and reject, then it’s not the Word of God Almighty you are relying on, but your own opinions and your own interpretations. In which case, why aren’t my opinions equally valid in your eyes? How ’bout we use logic instead of fairy dust?

Amphiox Says: “We do allow and accept some limited forms of such state oppression when we feel that the consequences are worth it. ” Could you give me some examples please? Don’t mean to appear rude at all, but I can’t think of any. People usually bring up war as an example and I hope you’re not going to do that. The government OCCASIONALLY restricts a SOLDIER’S rights to BODILY AUTONOMY in times of war, and so unfortunately the comparison is made to CIVILIAN women in PEACETIME as if women should exist in a perpetual state of SIEGE. Who is attacking us, precisely? Because if men are constantly attacking us with our very humanity under constant threat, then it’s time to end it, using any means necessary. Actually, even in wartime, men are not forced to donate the use of their bodily organs. Fluids, maybe, but not organs. People keep trying to imply women are a *special* category of humans whereby our bodily organs are literally the property of the state, and I keep saying that that is only possible if women are considered non-human. Personhood of the host for the exclusive benefit of the trespasser is indeed the primary issue.

Labor without appropriate compensation or consent is the very definition of slavery, btw ChH. Again, abortion is a terrible thing to contemplate, but so is the dehumanization and subsequent oppression of half the population. It’s easier for men to not notice the sexism because they don’t have to deal with it unless they want to, and then only up to the point where they are bored with the subject. Women must find some way to cope with it every day whether we want to or not, and I personally am sick to death of it. Which is why I’m so crabby. Deepest apologies.

As for disallowing pregnancy verses forcing kidney donation – bad analogy:
1. In all cases except rape, the mother chose to take actions she knew could result in pregnancy.

So let’s say you’re the one who actually caused my kidney failure by T-boning my car, giving me a muscle-crush injury that overwhelmed my kidneys. Let’s say you took all the required precautions, but just by freak chance, your brakes failed. You KNEW there was a chance for an accident when you CHOSE to drive your car that day. Do I have the right to take your kidney?

2. The mother – not just a woman or any woman, but that particular individual, is required to sustain the life of the new person for the first 5 months or so.

Or were you referring to something biological here? You are aware of a historical profession known as a wetnurse, aren’t you? You do know that numerous historical personages had mothers who died in childbirth and survived those first five months just fine, right?