SHS Poll: When Should Human Rights First Apply?
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 4:34 PM
20 Comments
Secondhand Smoke: Your 24/7 Seminar on Bioethics and the Importance of Being Human
This Blog considers assisted suicide/euthanasia, bioethics, human cloning, biotechnology, radical environmentalism, and the dangers of animal rights/liberation. My views expressed here, as in my books and other writings, reflect my understanding that the philosophy of human exceptionalism is the bedrock of universal human rights. Or, to put it another way: human life matters. (The opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of any organization with which I am affiliated.)
Monday, August 18, 2008
About Me
- Name: Wesley J. Smith
- Location: Castro Valley, CA, United States
I am a Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at the Discovery Institute and the author of 12 books, including A Rat Is A Pig Is A Dog Is A Boy, which is relevant to the issues considered by this blog.
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20 Comments:
Depends entirely on what you mean by "human rights" and to what degree. Certainly the potential legal rights for protection of the developing child take a marked leap forward at viability & survivability outside the womb.
Too hard too answer this question as framed. Human life is sacred but it also develops slowly on a continuum. I remain suspicious of any ideological position that seems latently aimed at exacerbating maternal-fetal conflicts, especially with regard to certain prohibitive medical risks associated with some pregnancies or with some terminally ill pregnant women who struggle how to balance end-of-life care with the attempted preservation of the unborn child.
Have seen some truly horrible & heartbreaking cases in which there were simply no good choices or outcomes.
Like the poll format, by the way.
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Oh,O, spoken like a true philosopher. Just give it your best shot. It isn't binding and it's anonymous.
Add "none of the above" and I'm in :)
Hey, why is there quotation marks around "personhood"?
But at least you added that option. I'm a bit surprised at the many who think that human rights begin at conception when twinning and chimeric merging can occur after conception. How can we give human rights when we don't even know how many beings are going to result from the embryo at that stage?
If you are told that there's at least one person lying unconscious inside a building that's about to be razed, do you still hit the plunger because you don't know exactly how many are in there?
I believe life becomes viable when blood is formed by the organism. In humans that is about 4 weeks after implantation.
The Bible tells us and provides examples of how blood constitutes life in several different instances.
bmmg39: as long as we're floating hypothetical scenarios... A raging fire is consuming a medical building you're in. As you attempt to flee the building you run past a fertility clinic where you see a tray of 12 fertilized embryos on one side of the room and a two-week-old infant on the other side of the room. You only have time to navigate to one side of the room (both equally distant - no cop out answers!) - who do you rescue and why?
Wesley: if you answer my "poll," I'll vote in your poll ;)
Made the mistake of looking up "chimeric merging". Now I feel really sick.
bmmg39, that's a fair point. Realistically, it's like somebody saying that there could be anywhere from 0-30 people there.
darkswan, hypothetically do you suppose that if science one day allows somebody to survive without any blood in their body, that a person living like that would be a zombie with no rights?
okakura, I'd rescue the infant because the infant would feel pain, not because I think infants have rights.
kimba, can you explain why the idea of a chimera occurring is so horrible? Say we have two human embryos, call them Tom and Jerry, and they merge to form a tetragametic chimera. Has somebody died, even though no cells have died?
And if it is horrible for two embryos to merge, is it equally horrible for an embryo to not split into twins?
minor clarification to my answer to okakura's dilemma, I meant that I don't think that infants have the right to life. i do think that they, like cats and dogs and chickens, do have the right not to be caused pain.
darkswan, hypothetically do you suppose that if science one day allows somebody to survive without any blood in their body, that a person living like that would be a zombie with no rights?
Joshua, don't take the bait. Dark Swan is a non-believer who apparently advances this "Biblical" argument for his own amusement. We debated this one into the ground from scientific, philosophical, and theological angles to no avail some time ago.
Wesley, I agree with Okakura in the sense that the poll implies assigning "human rights" is an all-or-nothing proposition. I think embryonic humans should be protected, but would not necessarily place that on exactly the same grounds and extent as "human rights" as envisioned for full adults.
I chose "conception" in the poll despite this, however, because it was the best answer for the *spirit* of the question.
Okakura, regarding your hypothetical, I would choose the child, but not because the embryos have no moral value. This is essentially a triage situation, and thus I would choose to save the most viable individual(s). As with triage in general, this is a pragmatic consideration under limited action and says nothing about the moral value of the subjects being classified.
Joshua writes:
minor clarification to my answer to okakura's dilemma, I meant that I don't think that infants have the right to life. i do think that they, like cats and dogs and chickens, do have the right not to be caused pain.
OK, OK, I change my decision: I simply knock out the child, then flee and leave it to burn to death! No harm, no foul! ;-)
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Bernhardt Varenius said... "Okakura, regarding your hypothetical, I would choose the child, but not because the embryos have no moral value. This is essentially a triage situation, and thus I would choose to save the most viable individual(s). As with triage in general, this is a pragmatic consideration under limited action and says nothing about the moral value of the subjects being classified."
Well played, bv - best answer I've seen to date.
OK, OK, I change my decision: I simply knock out the child, then flee and leave it to burn to death! No harm, no foul! ;-)
I'm guessing that by 'knock out', you mean in a painless manner, right?
Even so, I think that rescuing only yourself is clearly the worst option. One need only accept that embryos and infants are at least slightly extrinsically valuable for that to be clear.
and okakura, perhaps this infant should be replaced with a comatose nine-year old who has a chance of recovery equal to the chance that an embryo will develop into a child. But that may prove to complex to intuit.
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Joshua: You're going deep into the ethical forest with that one(!)
My simplistic ethical 'ticking timebomb' scenario was meant only to illustrate that a large majority of "pro-life" folks would make a reflexive moral distinction in this scenario to save the infant over the tray of embryos based on the developmental stage of the child rather than a lifeboat ethic which would otherwise automatically favor saving the 12 lives over the 1.
For a conservative to concede this rationale does not mean that he/she is hypocritical or that he/she can no longer maintain that life begins at conception. Rather, simply an exercise to better understand the rationale of those who support abortion rights. If one can duck the sometimes vicious verbal crossfire, moderates on both sides of the abortion divide typically share a lot of common beliefs. Unfortunate that this fact keeps getting obscured in the national debate.
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