re: #741 jamesfirecat

It all comes down to being murder or not.

Given the above definition of murder and your concession of “human being” (as well as “intentional” and “killing”), the question of murder is equivalent to “is there or should there be a (higher) law against it.” Congratulations, you’ve reduced the question of “is abortion wrong?” to “is abortion wrong?”

I think, again, there’s room to disagree on the answer — there’s room to take either branch of your catch-22, or to take some other direction. There’s room to say “the organs are yours, so you can kill it if you want”. There’s room to say “the organs are yours and killing it is reprehensible but not actually wrong.” There’s room to say “as long as the human is innocent, it’s wrong to kill it.” There’s room to say “as long as the risks to your life or health are below such-and-such level, it’s wrong to kill it”. There’s even room to say “you shouldn’t kill it even if it means your death”. There’s room to invoke God, the Bible, Jewish tradition, freedom of religion, and so on in the way you answer. This isn’t anything new; this is the same disagreements people have had over abortion for decades now.

Your series of follow-on questions are subject to the same sort of disagreement. There’s room for people who agree on the first to disagree on the second, and so on. There’s room for one person to say “it’s murder if you don’t invite the guy in to protect him from freezing and give him half your liver while you’re at it” (hits close to home; my dad’s homeless friend froze to death last week), and another to say “you’re under no compulsion because of the risk he poses to your family”, and another to say “you’re under no compulsion because his life isn’t your responsibility”, and another to say “you’re under no compulsion because you didn’t know for sure he’d die.”

The answers aren’t so simple as “you have the rights to your organs, so it’s not murder” or “it’s murder and therefore so’s all the other stuff, so you have no right to property”. There’s not merely a third way; there’s every combination of every way I laid out above, and plenty more.

(I’d love to continue, but baby needs fed and changed and dinner needs made, and I have a date tonight. Sorry…)