Bourgeois pigs kill suicidal 16 year old boy.

[Jester]

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.

A truly dystopian vision: A nanny state where make-work jobs means hiring bureaucrats to police expectant mothers.

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.

I agree. Circumstances like, say, not having been born yet.

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.

Excellent point.

The right to life is set out in the 14th amendment: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Note: your rights as a citizen start when you are born. Not when you are conceived, not when you are a viable fetus, not when your heart starts beating. You can extend the definition of personhood to include fetuses if you can muster the support to amend the constitution, but it is neither currently enshrined in the constitution, nor the product of common law.

Embryology offers at least 4 answers; 1) Zygote has the DNA of a human and unless interfered with will be born as human,

"Unless interfered with"? What's interference? Lots of human pregnancies end in miscarriage. The death of a fetus happens all the time, and so far, we don't pursue negligence cases. Nor, I would argue, should we.

2) formation of systems including beating heart,

And those systems are "formed" when? They begin developing, in the most basic of forms, almost immediately, and continue developing until after puberty. At what point are they "formed," and what bearing does that have on the question of rights?

3) functioning nervous system including brain activity,

The nervous system also starts developing to some limited extent almost immediately, and continues to develop after birth. Where is the line?

4) viable to survive outside the womb.

With a sufficiently advanced lab, we could keep a fetus alive from almost the moment of conception. What's "viable," and to what extent are we willing to enforce it? Some babies aren't "viable" even after birth - is it not murder if you stick a knife in one of them?

These are NOT decideable by science. At best, the developmental process suggests some thresholds at which we might consider granting rights. I think birth has by far the strongest case. But it does nothing more than that.

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.

It seems to me to be a reasonable threshold. (It also happens to be the one in force in Canada, if the wiki has it right.) I don't know by what non-circular reasoning you call this a "misapplication". If you're just assuming that fetuses can be murdered, then of course, the rule is misapplied, but that's just assuming your conclusion in your premises.

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

Yes, of course. Majoritarianism has always run the risk of trampling on minority rights, and of perpetuating inequalities in power. If a powerful enough political coalition wants to reinstate slavery, or deny women the vote, or abolish free speech, what's to stop them, if all we have is an appeal to the rawest possible form of democracy?

I'm a social libertarian. I am not a communitarian. I don't believe people should impose their *cultural* values on others, unless they can make the case for an *ethical* imperative. I don't care if they can drum up a majority, a super-majority, or even unanimity. Freedoms are safeguarded by democracy, but they must also be safeguarded against democracy - this is the essence of the liberal paradox of tolerance.

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.

They are also human fetuses before they become viable. I just disagree about the "some point" at which they should be afforded full human rights. But perhaps we will have to disagree about that - unlike most problems, I don't think there is a way to resolve this by reference to any accepted principle or empirical reality.

-Jester