Abortion and Women's Rights

[DeistPaladin]

For this purpose, yes, he equated them: Actually, infants do "think" as do animals. The thoughts may be simple (I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm wet, etc.) but they are "thoughts".

...which was in response to your implied question of whether or not it's OK to kill infants because they don't 'think'.

He dodges the question of whether people who eat meat are therefore accessories to murder.

I didn't dodge the question. I answered it. YOU keep dodging my follow up questions.

Eating animals is unfortunately part of the natural order and arguably required. It's a less than perfect world. I draw the line at gratuitous cruelty, such as tossing kittens over a cliff for fun. You keep dodging that question, by the way.

Is tossing kittens off a cliff for fun something that's OK to do since kittens don't have human DNA?

Let's say we encounter an unlikely planet called Pandora and find an equally unlikely alien race of giant catlike humanoids. Can we just bomb them and take their stuff because we can and they're not human?

You don't like Star Trek, how about the movie A.I.? If we create self-aware androids, can we continue to treat them as disposable property or what?

We're waiting.

We'll wait forever because you don't want to answer any of these questions because they'll expose your thinking as, at best, a sloppy post-hoc justification of your desire to deny women their rights or, at worst, a deeply amoral, arbitrary and selfish view of "rights".

By your "reasoning" on the rights of others, if you see a over-the-cliff kitten toss, meh, fuck 'em; kittens aren't human. If we encounter a peaceful alien civilization, fuck 'em; they aren't human. If we construct self-aware androids who ask for their rights to be respected, fuck 'em; they aren't human.

But it gets worse than that. There's no legitimate reason, beyond arbitrary and bare assertion, that the line needs to be drawn at human DNA. Why human DNA? What is so special about human DNA? There really can be no answer better than "because we're human and that's what we want. Fuck everything else".

OK, then why stop there? Could the line be drawn along gender lines? Only those who have y-chromosomes have rights. We're men and that's what we want, right? Or couldn't we draw them along racial lines? Or restrict that to your family? Or maybe just you?

Only people with your unique DNA signature have rights. Everyone else can be treated as you see fit. Fuck everyone else. Existence is all about you.

My approach to understanding our moral obligations, flawed as it may be with regards to our biological need to consume meat, at least speaks to the reasons we feel compassion and empathy for other beings and why we think certain actions toward other beings are right or wrong.