Bourgeois pigs kill suicidal 16 year old boy.

[kandrathe]

Oh, lovely. That certainly won't go horribly wrong.

It's part and parcel of the emerging nanny state, just as wrong as the government raising the children, or giving everyone "make work" jobs.

Which then raises the question - what threshold are we willing to accept? I don't, for instance, believe it is a crime to take someone off life support, if they are no longer able to survive without it or make decisions for themselves, so long as the decision is made by those legally entitled to do it.

I think it is a dangerous idea to allow the "decision is made by those legally entitled" to be anything other than the individual, and even then circumstances are key. One of our fundamental Constitutional rights is the right to life, so it should be extraordinarily difficult for the government to take away a life, even when the owner is deserving in the case of heinous crime, or willing in the case of suicide.

First, I wouldn't advocate any such thing - I think birth is the threshold, not "quickening," which in the modern world would pretty much just mean viability anyway. Even if we did replace it, we would replace it with what? You persist in thinking science has answers to these questions. But science cannot, even in theory, answer these questions.

Embryology offers at least 4 answers; 1) Zygote has the DNA of a human and unless interfered with will be born as human, 2) formation of systems including beating heart, 3) functioning nervous system including brain activity, and 4) viable to survive outside the womb.

I believe current position is based on misapplication of common law against quackery in selling abortifactants. It was known as the "born alive" rule. As ecclesiastical laws governing criminal conduct receded with the rise of parliamentary law, this rule rose as the Aristotelian / ecclesiastical definition of "quickening" fell away. All that was left was this civil law relating to quackery.

If only the anti-abortion agenda wasn't being driven by people who don't actually give two figs about the stats, and whose clear and persistent goal is control over women.

The trouble with democratic society is all the other jerks who don't think like I do.

Precisely. But I don't consider fetuses to be people.

We'll have to disagree about it. I believe that at least when they are viable outside a womb they are human fetuses and should at some point be afforded human rights.