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J. C. Lester's avatar

“A one week old embryo is not a human being.”

It is a human being (Homo sapiens) but it is not a person (in the intellectual sense of that word).

> Few supporters of legal abortion, even those who set no limit on how late in the pregnancy it should be permitted, are willing to support infanticide

And that is an error: infanticide does not kill a person. But then we do not need to draw a line for when an infant becomes a person because we do not initiate an imposition on it by allowing it to die. Unfortunately, this “double argument” is more complicated than most academic philosophers can easily understand. https://jclester.substack.com/p/abortion-and-infanticide

“At what point does it become an assault, a rights violation? …one ends up picking some arbitrary line…”

At the point at which most reasonable people would usually deem it to be so if it were done to themselves. That does not strike me as arbitrary. https://jclester.substack.com/p/avoiding-interpersonal-utility-comparisons

“A 50% chance of guilt means a 50% chance of innocence; scaling criminal punishment as described above would mean that half the time we are putting an innocent man in jail.”

But if the accused has a prior fully voluntary (no fraud or duress was involved) contract to accept some free-market system of arbitration and “punishment” (restitution seems more likely and desirable), then 1) he is contractually bound to accept any mistaken guilty verdict, and 2) he has judged that process to be the best one for himself (out of the competing options, at least).

“Taken to its limit, the implication is that punishment requires certainty of guilt.”

And as that is not a safe requirement it is not the one into which most people would contract. https://jclester.substack.com/p/libertarian-rectification

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William H Stoddard's avatar

There is at least one major difference between the nine month fetus and the neonate: the presence of the fetus interferes with the functioning of the pregnant woman's body, both physically and biochemically; the neonate can be taken away to a different location where it has no such effect. Drawing a line exactly at birth may not be the uniquely right answer, but it's about as far from arbitrary as you can get.

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