Your donating blood illustration does not work

When you refuse to donate blood, someone dies because of your inaction. When you murder your own child, someone dies directly as the result of your action. These are two completely different scenarios. I believe in natural, God-given rights, not human rights. Sometimes they are called "negative rights". A right to life means no one can murder you, a right to liberty means no one can enslave you, and a right to property means no one can steal from you, etc. You, however, seem to believe in "positive rights" were instead of having a right to be protected from the harm others may inflict upon you, you have a right to DEMAND FROM OTHERS CERTAIN THINGS. The example of donating blood is an example of someone demanding something else FROM someone else (which defies the right to liberty as it is involuntary servitude) whereas abortion deals only with the negative right of the baby not to be HARMED BY someone else. Negative rights protect you from harm, positive rights allow you to harm others. That's why I only believe in negative natural rights and why your blood illustration makes no sense. The same can be applied to your argument over donating organs – both are VERY different from murder.

The true definition of a government is an organization with the legal privilege of using force on persons who have not harmed anyone. Inevitably it creates a hierarchy, because the government has political power, and the non-government people don't. So if you truly believed in abolishing hierarchies you certainly would not support the expansion of the political elite ruling class of Washington DC for ANY reason.

I await your response.

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@VulcanMan6 from Kansas commented…5mos5MO

Firstly, my blood donation example was not meant to be a comparison to abortion, it was simply another real-world example of a right that you have (consent and bodily autonomy) that is held above other people's right to life, which was the sole point I was making. There is no perfect analogy to abortion anyway, so I ultimately find it easier to just argue in support of abortion directly. As such, if you agree that 1) you have the sole right to decide who can or cannot use your body, at any time, for any or no reason, and you also agree that 2) no one has the right to use your body against your consent, then there is no logical reason why you should be opposed to "pro-choice" without blatantly omitting one of these premises. That is literally all this comes down to: can another person use your body against your consent? If not (which should be the only correct response), then a fetus does notRead more have the right to use its mother's body without her constant consent. It is that simple.

Secondly, you seem to be either maliciously and/or ignorantly misrepresenting positive vs negative rights due to your personal biases. Your claim that "negative rights protect you from harm, positive rights allow you to harm others" is blatantly biased and untrue. The idea categorizing positive vs negative rights, even according to its original Kantonian analysis, is not of "harm", but of duty. Negative rights don't "protect you from harm", they just grant a "negative" duty upon others (hence the name), whereas positive rights don't "allow you to harm others", they just grant a "positive" duty upon others (again, hence the name). More importantly, you need both for either of them to be worth anything. Having the negative right to something, without also having the positive right to access that thing, means that you don't actually have a right to that thing at all. Having the "right to life" is worthless if you can't actually access the things necessary to live, having the "right to freedom" is worthless if you can be denied access to the things necessary to hold and maintain it, etc. Without a combination of both positive AND negative rights, you end up not genuinely having either. Additionally, I am pretty sure your own god even said "For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, 'You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.'", which is a clear and explicit call for the positive right of welfare for anyone in need. So, ultimately, your insistence on exclusively negative rights was either a simple mistake, or is blatantly against both reason and your own religion.

Lastly, your "definition" of a government is also blatantly biased and untrue, in nearly the exact same fashion as your previous claim. A government is not "an organization with the legal privilege of using force on persons who have not harmed anyone", nor is that even a dictionary definition (if that's what you care about), which is simply: "the governing body of a nation, state, or community". However, I do absolutely agree with your next points:

"it creates a hierarchy, because the government has political power, and the non-government people don't. So if you truly believed in abolishing hierarchies you certainly would not support the expansion of the political elite ruling class of Washington DC for ANY reason"

Correct, I do NOT support the political ruling class of Washington DC, nor do I support the mere structure of our current political system to begin with, largely for this exact reason. As I know I have repeatedly expressed in other discussions of ours, I am fundamentally against the idea of a hierarchical government structure (or any structure, for that matter). Again, I believe the government should BE the public, meaning that I do not believe that a government should consist of two distinct classes, but instead should be comprised of a single democratic class. The only justified government is one in which ALL people share equal decision-making power, with no distinction between "the government" and "the people", hence no hierarchy. It is BECAUSE I am anti-hierarchy that I am against our current political and economic systems.

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@Patriot-#1776Constitution from Washington commented…4mos4MO

If the donating blood illustration was not intended to be a comparison to abortion it's pretty ridiculous that you used it as an argument for abortion. I do not believe that abortion has anything to do with a woman's rights to use her own body (how many ties have I said this now) because it is scientifically proven that from the moment of conception the baby and the mother are two separate bodies. I agree that no one should use your body without your consent, but I also agree that no one has a right to kill another human being. Therefore I must evaluate which right is more important… Read more, and the right to life is always more important because if you're dead you cannot enjoy any other right. Natural rights can come into conflict, but because some natural rights are more important than others, with life being the most important of all, these conflicts can be rationally resolved. I don't know how I can put it any simpler than that for you, if you still don't understand my position I guess it's a lost cause trying to explain it to you.

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@VulcanMan6 from Kansas commented…4mos4MO

If the donating blood illustration was not intended to be a comparison to abortion it's pretty ridiculous that you used it as an argument for abortion.

I didn't. As I directly stated, I was using that example to argue in support of my point that there are a plethora of situations in which one of your rights are held above another person's right to live. It was not, as I stated, a comparison to abortion, it was merely a tangential argument regarding the autonomy of individual rights. I was not directly talking about abortion during that specific argument, I was talking about righ… Read morets...which I had explicitly clarified last time.

it is scientifically proven that from the moment of conception the baby and the mother are two separate bodies.

According to who and with what criteria? At the moment of conception, the baby is not even a "body" at all in the first place, so I highly doubt that any evidence supports the choice of wording you used of "separate bodies". If you had said that they were both "living things" or "separate organisms", then obviously that would be correct, since both you and the growing fetus are clearly two separate organisms made up of living cells, but "separate bodies at conception" sounds like an odd misunderstanding of human development.

More importantly, the fact that the mother and the fetus are two separate organisms actually SUPPORTS my argument that abortion is justified. In fact, nowhere in my argument did I suggest that the mother and the baby are the same person, because I do not believe that is true, nor would this specific argument of mine make sense if they were. The reason abortion is justified is because no one has the right to use another person's body without their constant consent to do so, and therefore BECAUSE the mother and the baby are two separate people subsequently means that the baby does NOT have the right to use its mother's body without her consent. Using someone else's body without their consent means that you are violating that person's bodily autonomy, therefore they have the right to take whatever action necessary to stop you from continuing to use their body, which, in this case, includes an abortion.

I agree that no one should use your body without your consent, but I also agree that no one has a right to kill another human being.

I also agree that no one should simply have "the right to kill someone else"; that is why it is exclusively a conditional permission granted to you in response to a violation of you or other rights. You cannot simply kill someone just because you want to, nor should you have the right to, but what you do, and SHOULD, have the right to is defending yourself or others from those who violate you or others, respectively. Just as you do not have the right to physically harm anyone, you DO have the right to prevent yourself from continuing to be harmed by someone, of which inflicting harm yourself is permitted. If someone is violating you, you have the right to stop them from doing so, by any means necessary. Without that right to do so, what exactly are people expected to do when someone is violating them? Stand there and let them? If someone pulls a gun on you, then you have the right to shoot back, and are protected in doing so, even if they die...that is not "the right to kill", that is "the right to protect yourself against violators".

and the right to life is always more important because if you're dead you cannot enjoy any other right.

Sure, but YOUR right to life does not come before OTHER peoples' rights. YOUR right to life may be the most important right that YOU have, but it does not take precedent over any of the rights of OTHERS. That is why, if you are dying and need a kidney, you would still NOT have the right to violate another person's right to bodily autonomy by taking their kidney, even though they wouldn't die to do so. The right to bodily autonomy of a healthy person with two kidneys comes BEFORE your right to life, as they have the right to let you die by denying you their kidney. In this sense, other peoples' rights DO take precedence over YOUR right to life, which is what I mean by "your right to life is not the most important". YOUR right to life is most important to you, but any of MY rights cannot be overruled by YOUR right to live. Hopefully that clarified this.

In order to secure human rights you must necessarily violate other rights.

I feel I should reiterate, since you consistently seem to use terms like "human rights" and "natural rights" as separate from just "rights": all rights are made up. We made up the concept of rights and we, as a society, decide what rights we will or will not have. There are no objective rights, so your insistence on distinguishing between "human/natural rights", that you agree with, vs "delusional rights", which you don't agree with, is silly and unfounded on anything but your own personal beliefs on what should or should not be rights. This is all subjective...

For example, if humans have a right to housing/shelter, food/water, government must necessarily tax other human beings in order to guarantee these delusional "rights," and taxing involves taking one's money without consent, thus violating the right to private property.

See, this is why it is subjective. You are basing this argument on the premise that only the rights you agree with should exist, which I obviously disagree with. For example, I do not view taxation as an inherent violation of private property, because we have differing ideas of what "private property" entails. For example, I view taxation on goods and resources as merely a fee for maintaining society, the one which we all live in and benefit from. However, I do agree that taxation on personal income is unjust, as your income is the product of your own labor, therefore it would be unjust for another individual to take any part of the product of your own labor...although I use that reasoning in both government AND business, whereas you only use it in regards to government.

Finally, if you agree with my last point that government creates hierarchy, why do you believe in social welfare programs, which must necessarily be supplied by the government? If you were truly an anarchist, or something along those lines, you'd be totally opposed to that.

As I previously explained, government does not inherently create hierarchy, but our current government is absolutely hierarchical. Again, you have a misunderstanding of what "a government" is, as you seem to be under the impression that this is the only way governments can be structured, which is obviously untrue. A government is simply whatever means of decision-making a society utilizes. A government can be hierarchical, like nearly all current governments are, but they can also be non-hierarchical, like a direct democracy. I only support non-hierarchical systems, because that is fundamentally what Anarchism is. Anarchism, as an ideology, is not simply "anti-government", it is anti-hierarchy. I believe the only good governments are those that are non-hierarchical, which we don't currently have, but we should. And not just governmental hierarchy, I am against ANY structural hierarchy, including economic hierarchy, social hierarchy, etc. That seems to be a fundamental difference between us...

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