Timothy Murray lost his father earlier this year and had been asking his principal for counseling when she called in the police
Timothy Murray lost his father earlier this year and had been asking his principal for counseling when she called in the police
This is an incorrect phrasing of the situation. The actual question is what moral principles do we already accept? Which ones are more fundamental than others. Instead you are literally affirming the consequent by presupposing that bodily autonomy is morally relevant.(Otherwise,if that’s not what you are doing,your phraseology is just bizarre)
Laws force people to use their body regardless of how they feel about it. We agree that it is moral.
Prohibiting abortion is denying the ability to perform an action. We assert that this is immoral.
However, forcing an action is stronger than denying an action. So which premise is wrong? Is it the one that leads societal rules unenforceable, or the one that makes a quarter of the population temporarily unhappy?
There is also the extrinsic teleological argument that pregnancy isn’t a violation anymore than your pancreas producing insulin. A belief can be irrational if it contradicts a biological function.
“Would a fertilised egg be human”
As long as it is a separate entity that is living and functional with a probability of future conscious experience. Note, that I don’t make the unique DNA distinction because that would render killing clones permissible.
Now unlike some people I don’t think that all abortion is immoral, just one’s where we have a reasonable expectation of future human experience so long as we do not take action to reduce this expectation. Like how rendering someone brain-dead so you can kill them is just a more elaborate active killing , something like drinking alcohol to render your fetus brain dead is also active killing.
Why?
Do you consider a fertilized egg to have the same moral weight as a person?
Because denying an action is simply requiring that the existing circumstance continue, while forcing an action is to require that the person engage in a conscious action (to specify, it’s a stronger control over someone else’s body).
“Do you consider a fertilised egg to have the same moral weight as a person”
I already answered this more generally, fertilisation is not the revelant part it is that it is a distinct organism with a reasonable expectation of future conscious experience. Many fertilised eggs do meet this standard, but not all. Likewise fertilised eggs are not the only things that meet this standard. Things like pluripotent stem cells that are being created to form fetuses, also meet this standard.
(I strongly suspect that you are fishing for a specific response, which you find absurd despite ultimately accepting all the premises.)
I’m not. I thought you were pretty clear, but I wanted to check. I’m sort of exploring what you believe, rather than fishing for anything in particular.
So, in your view, if a building were burning, and inside was an artificial womb of some sort with twenty viable eggs that will eventually become people, then would there be a moral duty to save them over one five-year-old child?
Do you believe that it isn’t?