Originally posted by: Honoko
Throwing in a smoldering coal here. You guys can argue against it if you wish. These are statements based on what the Catholic Catechism teaches.

3 Basic Arguments Against Abortion:
technically, this is one argument consisting of three premises and a conclusion. But that's just hair-splitting, and there's better things to object to, and I'm in a "devil's advocate" mood again today. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

1. The fundamental purpose of law is to protect human rights; the first and foundational right is the right to life.
I disagree. The fundamental purpose of law is to protect human social structures. Human rights are an afterthought. There are not many laws that permit things, but a LOT of laws that restrict them.

Think about it ... there are about 30 laws involved in the concept of driving that restrict what you can do. You can't drive at all until you have a license. Even with a license (that is, explicit permission from the state to do something you otherwise couldn't do) , you can't drive in an impaired state, you can't drive faster than the posted speed limit, you can't disrupt traffic flow (ie: driving below posted minimum speeds on the highway), you can't drive without insurance, you can't drive at night with nonfunctioning lights, you can't pass other cars under certain conditions ... it goes on and on. None of these things defines something you explicitly CAN do. This defines a set of allowed behaviors by taking a default-open set and masking off the parts of it that are forbidden.

Speed limit laws are the best example of my point though. Just because a street is "rated" for 30, or 35, or 55, doesn't mean that street's not perfectly safe for everyone involved at 55, or 60, or 80. Why preserve these artificial and often meaningless restrictions?

Moreover, human laws have ALWAYS restricted freedoms. Even biblical laws, dating back as far as Eden, are formulated this way. "Do not eat the fruit of that tree". You can do anything else, but there's this one freedom which you don't have. Similarly, the Ten Commandments are all "Do Not" (or "Thou shalt not" or whatever, depending on your translation -- even the fifth, the only affirmative commandment, is easy to restate as a prohibition to dishonor rather than a prescription to honor). Were I a Jew in 2000 BC, I wouldn't have the "right" to worship idols (another word for picking a different religion), because such a thing is denied to me by the law. As an agnostic in 2006 AD, I don't have the "right" to drive an appropriate speed on the interstate at 3 in the morning, because such a thing is denied to me.

Affirmative laws are very few and far between, and are usually the result of overturning restrictions deemed unjust by modern society. Such, in fact, is the legal precedent determined by Roe vs. Wade -- overturning a law that society's advocates found to be unjust. The bill of rights is another such example -- the people violently rising up against one oppressor's perceived injustices felt it necessary to affirm a basic set of rights as fundamental -- something the Magna Carta was also supposed to do, to some extent. However, these tentpoles of affirmation only guarantee a bare minimum set of liberties, which nearly every other law serves to restrict.

2. All human beings have the right to life.
Legally, this isn't the case. Many, many people support the death penalty. If the right to life is fundamental, how can the state selectively deny it based on an arbitrary set of conditions? How can even imprisonment (which is fundamentally a denial of the right to life for a set period of time) be justified without discarding this?

3. Already-conceived but not-yet-born children of human beings are human beings.
If I take some human DNA, and use it to clone an ear, it's pretty obvious that the ear isn't a human being, it's an ear. If I take some DNA from two sources and artificially combine it in such a way as to accomplish this (for instance, inserting a gene from one person into cells from another, and growing a culture from the result), this is also not a human being.

A human being (qua "person") is more than a couple dozen strands of tightly coiled DNA. And as far as I know, catholics still support dualism (that is, the idea that human beings are made up of both a body and a soul, and that the soul is an entity independent of the body, via Descartes and others). The test is, when does a soul get "created" or just "bound" to a set of DNA? There's a whole large set of implications to consider, that depend on when you believe that that clump of DNA gets a soul.

1. Some people will admit that all persons have a right to life and that unborn kids are persons BUT deny that this right should be protected by law. The Catholic Church argues that this is a serious legal error and it undermines the idea of equality by denying certain individuals the right to life. This right should be guaranteed to everyone, including the unborn.
Again, if you accept the universal right to life, then any criminal corrections systems are inherently unjust. This premise HAS to be discarded (or at least severely damaged) to rationalize the mere existence of such formal norm enforcement mechanisms.

2. Other people might admit the law should protect the right to life and that unborn kids are humans BUT claim that not all human beings deserve the right to life. Personally, this is a tad appalling to me because now you have "people like us" determining who should live and who should die. Should we be really killing off those whom society today deems "useless"? Once we start accepting this idea, I feel like we begin to lose our humanity. And by "humanity" I mean our conscience, our compassion, etc.
Harping more on the correctional system, I'd be interested to know what you think about that subject. Again, criminal justice is inherently inhumane, unconscionable, and utterly devoid of compassion. It has to be, to do the things it does.

It seems that a lot of pro-life people also support capital punishment. There's a certain element of hypocrisy to that... make SURE they come INTO the world, so that we can choose when to take them back out of it.

3. And finally, there are people who might admit that the law should protect the right to life and that all humans have this right BUT deny that unborn children are human beings. Did you know that before Roe v. Wade all science textbooks taught the biological concept that life of any individual of any species begins at conception when sperm and ovum unite to create a new being with its own complete and unique DNA code? So all growth and development thereafter was just an unfolding of what was already "there". This concept stopped being taught not b/c of any new science proving otherwise but b/c of politics. How's that for general public manipulation?
This depends entirely on your definition of "human being". For example, there was a person born a few years ago with a cyst that had developed on the end of her brain stem, which prevented the development of any brain function beyond an autonomic nerve system. I don't know that I would consider such a person human, as they are incapable of what I consider to be the fundamental essences of humanity (thought, emotion, and will). While doubtless they belonged to the species human, such a person fundamentally lacks humanity. I don't think that I could defend such a creature's fundamental right to life. Further, if such a person attains a soul at conception, the duration of their existence isn't going to affect, nor be affected by the presence of such a soul. Why, then, should such a person continue to exist?

Besides the fact that I am pro-life, I felt like there were very few pro-life arguments for it here in the thread and just offered some (hopefully) solid views for once. I think I did a pretty good job avoiding most of the theological grounds (granted, these arguments are what the Catholic Church adheres to) but other than that, pick it apart and/or respond if you wish. I'll try to respond when I can. School and anime have been taking up most of my time lately
So, I can find objections to all three premises, and various combinations of them [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]. I look forward to your responses.