May 29, 2012
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Kill the passenger.
You and your Fiancé are in the car. You are driving through the desert. On the other side of that desert is Los Vegas where you have agreed to marry each other. You get cold feet and decide you don’t want to marry her. You’re afraid that she is going to be a financial burden. You have decided you’re not “good enough” to be a married man. You think that you will most likely cheat on her, I mean, all men do right?
So you decide the best option is to stop along the side of the highway, pull her out of the car…
…and shoot her in the forehead.
There was nothing else you could have done. You would have had to take care of her, provide her food and water throughout the rest of the trip if you didn’t kill her. You would have had to go through the pain of a break up when you got there. And you didn’t want to scar her emotionally. It was just better this way.
And besides, it’s your car, your life. You have the right to choose what happens to it. Nobody has the right to tell you what to do with it.
Comments (24)
You make murder seem reasonable. I assume smarter people than I will see that this an allegory.
Totally reasonable.
Makes sense… to some…
Damn! I wish I had thought of that before it was too late.
I see what you did there.
Maybe you should have used a condom.
Of course, you must kill her only if she’s in the car. If you stop at a restaurant and she leaves, she’s a free woman.
if they come up with a way to remove a fetus without killing it, then i’ll be pro-life. otherwise, i don’t see how your argument even compares. an independent, sentient being isn’t required to survive off of a single other human being.
@flapper_femme_fatale - So we should be allowed to kill babies up until what age?
@flapper_femme_fatale - Should we also “abort” the elderly? Mentally handicapped?
I have been born, therefore I AM. It is disturbing to see people coming up with ugliness to apply to abortion, when there are actual people who need the concern of others. Including pregnant women. Distractions don’t change the facts, and there is enough human suffering without making up more of it.
@justfinethanku - i’m not sure how they’re relevant. infants, the elderly, and the disabled don’t rely on a particular person to take care of them. unlike a fetus, the responsibility of that care can be passed to anyone. to my knowledge, they haven’t come up with a way to transplant feti from one womb to another. and i don’t believe it’s right, or even logical, to expect a woman to drop everything and care for a pregnancy she doesn’t want.
@flapper_femme_fatale - let me see if I’m actually understanding what you’re saying, the person who is responsible for the child’s very existence should not be held accountable…?
@flapper_femme_fatale - i’m not sure how they’re relevant. infants, the elderly, and the disabled don’t rely on a particular person to take care of them.
INFANTS DONT RELY ON PEOPLE TO TAKE CARE OF THEM?
@nyclegodesi24 - not with the same exclusivity as a fetus. if that were true, all of the following would be physically impossible to do without an infant dying: daycare, babysitting, adoption, single-parent fathers, etc. anything that would involve the infant being cared for by anyone other than the birth mother would be impossible, if feti and infants had the same level of dependence.
@justfinethanku - not if the dependency and responsibility is forced. i fully support parents being able to relinquish responsibility over their children at any stage. after birth, that obviously easier to do that when responsibility can be transferred to another party. before birth, however, it cannot happen without harm coming to the fetus. while i do find that unfortunate, it doesn’t change my mind about whether women should be forced into motherhood.
and last i checked, it takes two to make a baby… yet, men are legally able to walk away from the moment of conception. why? because their bodies don’t become incubators.
besides, most of what constitutes a healthy pregnancy is not enforced by law. drinking or smoking while pregnant is not a crime. nor is it a crime to refuse medical treatment, not change your diet, not take prenatal vitamins, and a whole lot of other things generally accepted as necessary for a healthy, successful pregnancy. what makes you think a woman will accommodate a pregnancy she didn’t want to begin with and would happily get rid of? or do you plan to make other laws controlling how pregnant women behave?
@flapper_femme_fatale - ”not with the same exclusivity as a fetus.”
Ah! So your argument is
1. in order to be a person, one must not require that finely-tuned and single-person-exclusive degree of care that a fetus requires.
2. A fetus requires that finely-tuned and single-person-exclusive degree of care that a fetus requires.
3. Therefore, a fetus is not a person.
Justify, or clarify and then justify, your first premise, please. Without justification, you’re merely restating your conclusion.
@nyclegodesi24 - i’m not sure what you propose that i justify. it’s simply my opinion on what rights should be based on. there are cases every day in which an “inalienable” right is limited because it interferes with the rights of others, and we are forced to make judgment calls on whose rights are prioritized. for me, any rights of a fetus are trumped by any rights of a person.
besides, i think SCOTUS’ Roe v Wade ruling put it best:
“The Constitution does not define “person” in so many words. Section 1 of theFourteenth Amendment contains three references to “person.” The first, in defining “citizens,” speaks of “persons born or naturalized in the United States.”…But in nearly all these instances, the use of the word is such that it has application only post-natally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible pre-natal application….All this, together with our observation, supra, that, throughout the major portion of the 19th century, prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word “person,” as used in theFourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.”
@flapper_femme_fatale - but again, all I’m asking you to do is look at it from the perspective of someone who believes that a “fetus” is a person. And stop it with all of the “girl being forced into pregnancy” stuff, 99.999% of the time it was her own decisions and not someone else’s that got her pregnant. It’s not fair, to the life that she helped create, to allow her the “choice” of whether or not the child should be allowed to live.
That’s my opinion, and you are entitled to yours. But understand, since I DO believe that an unborn child is a person, I will be do my best to persuade others not to abort them. What kind of horrible monster would I be if I fully believed a child was a human being and I didn’t make an attempt to prevent it’s death??????? It’d be like me watching a small child walk out into the middle of the road and doing nothing.
@flapper_femme_fatale - it’s simply my opinion
It’s not simply an opinion. It’s a matter of knowledge, a matter of public discourse, a matter that requires justification. You cannot simply say a black man does not have the rights that a white man has and support legislation for that matter and then say “It’s just my opinion.”
What’s astonishing about the Court’s reasoning is (1) how it begs the question, and (2) how it uses its reasoning conveniently only as to the meaning of “person”, and not as to the meaning of “privacy.”
(1) All of the matters that the Constitution addresses itself to is for post-natal application: citizenship, age requirements to be a member of the HOR, and so on. The Constitution does not address itself to the question of what is a person. So the Court’s generalization from (a) ‘the Constitution’s references to people only involve post-natal application’ to (b) ‘”persons” within the Constitution only exist post-natally’ is as fallacious as saying (a) The Constitution’s references to privacy only involve searches and seizures, and thus (b) “privacy” within the Constitution is only protected from searches and seizures.
(2) The Court did not apply this logic to privacy rights. It used an expansive doctrine (that it later rejects in Planned Parenthood) of the right to privacy to choose to have an abortion, which is neither expressly stated anywhere in the Constitution nor inferable from its provisions, and was prohibited by most states at the time of the ratification of the 14th Amendment.
@nyclegodesi24 -
“You cannot simply say a black man does not have the rights that a white man has and support legislation for that matter and then say “It’s just my opinion.”"
um… sure one can. people did it all the time. maybe i should clear something up first: i don’t believe in “inalienable” rights. i think that whatever rights we have are guaranteed only by whether or not we use and preserve them. once upon a time, a black man did NOT have the same rights as a while man. i would argue that that was bad for society, but i would never argue for inalienable rights. all rights are alienable at one point or another.
look, i appreciate your candor and thoughtful discourse. but the reality is, i will never value a fetus as much as i value an independent, thinking, feeling human being. i will never look a pregnant, frightened, depressed woman in the eye and tell her i care more about the blob of cells inside her. and i will never support legislation that forces women to become mothers. i don’t think SCOTUS was wrong in its decision, because the only thing it has to work with is the Constitution. for me, the privacy argument is irrelevant. it’s all about whether a fetus deserves rights comparable to an independent person. i don’t believe it does, because the very existence of the fetus is dependent upon an already-independent person giving up her rights.
@justfinethanku -
“And stop it with all of the “girl being forced into pregnancy” stuff, 99.999% of the time it was her own decisions and not someone else’s that got her pregnant. It’s not fair, to the life that she helped create, to allow her the “choice” of whether or not the child should be allowed to live. “
one, i don’t consider sex as consent to be a mother anymore than i consider dressing slutty as consent to be raped.
two, it’s not an issue of fairness for me. it’s simply a matter of what rights a woman has over her own body, and more broadly what rights people have to relinquish responsibilities they don’t want. as i mentioned before, i support parents being able to give up their children at any point. and especially if men are allowed to walk away at the moment of conception, equal rights in that regard should be given to the woman. the fact that the fetus dies is unfortunate… but it’s not my main concern.
don’t get me wrong, i understand. but that doesn’t mean i agree with you. i know several women who have had abortions, including my mother. while i can understand, i still find it disgusting that someone would care more about a blob of cells than my thinking, feeling, breathing mother, and that they’d have no problem forcing her to care for a pregnancy she doesn’t want, regardless of how that affects her. so for me, the issue is incredibly personal. i cannot, in good conscience, support anything or anyone who would see my mother as a murderer.
@flapper_femme_fatale -
“it’s all about whether a fetus deserves rights comparable to an independent person. i don’t believe it does, because the very existence of the fetus is dependent upon an already-independent person giving up her rights. “
But notice what you’re doing. You’re formulating an argument, believe it or not. It goes like this.
1. If one owes its existence to an already-independent person, then it does not have rights.
2. The fetus owes her existence upon an already-independent person
3. Therefore, the fetus does not have rights.
All I’m asking you to do is justify why you think (1) is true, and why it doesn’t permit the killing of newborn infants as well. Calling it an opinion doesn’t change a thing because you’re supporting your opinion with reasons. And when I speak of “rights”, I am merely employing a language in which I ascribe moral obligations and entitlements. To say that blacks have rights as do whites, the way I use it, is simply to say that it is “bad” for society to treat blacks as inferior to whites.
Furthermore, to say that the woman is losing her “right” is to assume the very thing at dispute, which is whether she has a right at all to kill another human being. If she had no such right to begin with, she couldn’t have lost it.
@nyclegodesi24 -
“All I’m asking you to do is justify why you think (1) is true,”
because in many other instances, we still honor a woman’s right to control her body over the rights of the fetus. smoking or drinking while pregnant is legal, despite overwhelming evidence that it is harmful or even deadly to the fetus. pregnant women also aren’t required to do a lot of things that evidence shows promotes a healthy pregnancy: frequent doctors’ visits, taking prenatal vitamins, avoiding things like sushi and other seafood high in mercury, etc. in short, we already allow women an amazing amount of autonomy at the expense of the fetus’ health. the only way i could justify abortion being illegal is if we make all of the above illegal as well. after all, you might be able to force a woman to carry a pregnancy to term, but you can’t force her to care about the fetus.
as someone who would have an abortion, i certainly wouldn’t change my lifestyle for a pregnancy i’d rather get rid of. i’d continue to drink, smoke hookah, eat my cocktail shrimp, etc. i’m on anxiety medication that i’d probably have to stop taking… which means i go back to having suicidal tendencies (something that would be WAY worse while dealing with an unwanted pregnancy). i also probably wouldn’t see a doctor for anything, because i’m uninsured and can’t even afford to see a doctor for the problems i have now. if i’m not willing to go bankrupt for my own health, why would i do it for a fetus i don’t want? are you, as a pro-lifer, willing to impose laws that will force me to choose the fetus before myself, and imprison me if i break those laws?
“and why it doesn’t permit the killing of newborn infants as well.”
because if a woman doesn’t want to care for an infant, the responsibility can be transferred without harm coming to that infant. infants can be cared for by anyone capable of heating a bottle and changing a diaper.
“Furthermore, to say that the woman is losing her “right” is to assume the very thing at dispute, which is whether she has a right at all to kill another human being. ”
a woman has a right to manage her pregnancy as she sees fit. whether that ends up in the death of a fetus is a result, not a goal. i’m sure most women who would have an abortion would continue to do so if they came up with a way to preserve the fetus. and obviously, she has that right… abortion is legal, after all.