[exodus]

To: MHGinTN
Infants and toddlers are not dependent specifically on the mother. An embryo/fetus in the womb is. Totally different situations. Other people can offer to care for infants and toddlers, so that no one is being forced against their will to provide for another.
# 52 by GovernmentShrinker
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For the "viability" argument to logically hold water, a mother would have the "right" to abandon her child any time it became inconvenient, even if no one wanted it, even if it meant the kid would die of exposure.

If the mother can't be "forced" to care for her child, you can't force other people to do it for her. That means that up to about age ten, a child has no "right" to live at all, because he still can't survive on his own.

[exodus]

Here's a good discussion of what a "Right" is.

[exodus]

I tried to ping @e-bot, but it said "Could not find anybody named @e-bot"

Free Republic chat server is open at http://chat.agitator.dynip.com, if anyone wants to discuss this issue.

[hocndoc]

Good comments.

The mother actually has a duty - parental obligation -to the child who she has created in his or her dependent state.

The dependent state is a factor of our biology, but there are consequences to our actions. Even when we try to avoid a certain outcome, if that outcome occurs due to our actions, we are responsible for protecting anyone who might have been harmed. The child isn't harmed or in harm's way by existing unless the mother moves to intentionally abort or abandon and neglect him.

[exodus]

Here's a discussion you might enjoy, William Creel.

[Clinging Bitterly]

>> If the mother can't be "forced" to care for her child, you can't force other people to do it for her. That means that up to about age ten, a child has no "right" to live at all, because he still can't survive on his own.

Thanks for the ping. Not sure exactly what you mean by this, but I think the law generally prohibits abandonment.

As for the ones who are abandoned regardless, no proper society is going to leave them out in the cold, and I don't think legal compulsion is what makes a society "great".

As a payback to society, since one way or the other it is going collectively expend resouces to see to the well being of the helpless, criminal sanctions should be sought against neglectful parents. But it'll be a cat's ass whatever you do, because youll get into those areas where things like housekeeping standards or bona-fide religious beliefs don't jell with what the tyrannical majority might consider proper, that sort of thing. Stories about those situations have been discussed on FR at length, some of them get fairly heated.

But we can have some absolutes, and purposely killing a child for the sake of convenience is one of the things that ought to be at the top of the list.

I lean way more toward the libertarian than probably the average Joe, but I don't let that get in the way of my belief that abortion is murder if decent human moral standards mean anything, and that it ought to be under legal standards as well. I'm not out there crusading for a reversal of Roe V Wade, but rather preach a more reasoned wait & see approach. I believe that science will one day prove the humanity of the "fetus" in more certain terms than it does today, and that in the normal couse of events the pro-life community will reach a critical mass that will, if necessary to remedy a consequence unthinkable by the founding fathers, bring about a constitutional amendment declaring that the rights reserved by the people apply to all human beings, whether or not yet born.

It'll take a while, but I think it would come quicker absent the virtual state of war that exists today.< /$.02 >

Dave in Eugene