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My use of the example of the bald eagle was aimed at putting into better perspective the difficulty (or lack thereof) of establishing whether or not the human fetus would be considered a human being, at least by the standards we use for endangered species. I haven't seen the spell-out of the law either, but I'm betting that the destruction of a bald eagle's egg is a prosecutable offense, whether or not it's specifically written into the law, because destroying it is essentially destroying a bald eagle. I would think that it being so glaringly true in the eagle's case, the "difficulty" of establishing whether or not the fetus is a human being could be put aside as just about non-existe nt.

The killing of a fetus I imagine would have to fall under the category of killing a defenseless human being who has done nothing. That doesn't fit with excessive self-defense or legitimate self-defense or war, so I think we'd have to concede that it best fits in category A.

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Your example of the disabled person only goes so far, because while almost everyone would agree that you shouldn't take a gun and shoot him, a lot of people aren't so sure that allowing him to die of neglect, while certainly not praiseworthy, is quite the same thing.

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I think the law agrees however, that letting him die of neglect is prosecutable, and that's what we're discussing, right?

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But if [the fetus is a person], we also need to resolve the distinction between actively killiing something as opposed to allowing it to die from neglect (which includes removing its life support, i.e., the mother's body).

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You're right that my analogy of the disabled person only goes so far, but that's because a healthy human fetus is not disabled, it's a healthy, whole human being in the process of growth. Is it more wrong to kill an adult than a child because the adult is composed of a greater number of cells?

Assuming now for a moment thet the fetus is a person, taking away its life-support system (the mother's body, i.e. that which it needs in order to proceed with the normal, healthy life that it has) while it is still in the womb would be legally equal to denying it its mother's arms, milk and protection ( i.e. that which it needs in order to proceed with the normal, healthy life that it has) after it emerged from the womb. This would be prosecutable. As would be removing a 5-yr old's life support system (home, food and caregiver).

But comparing these situations to a sick individual on life-support does not hold, because the fetus, the newborn and the five-yr old are not sick.

Assisted suicide doesn't fit as a comparison to abortion either, obviously, since the fetus hasn't expressed his feelings on his possible death.

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Nor is it really dispositive to say that since God has started the fetus on the path to life that we can't intervene; that's basically the Catholic objection to birth control.

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Simply because it's the Catholic objection to birth control doesn't mean that it's wrong. In fact I guess this is one of the questions about which Catholics and Protestants can agree on wholeheartedly. But again, it is dealing with the moral and religious reason to not abort, and I understood your aim to be to discuss the legal aspect.

I agree with you, these are complicated issues, there's no doubt about that. Maybe you perceive people to be trying to make them simple because you're seeing the end result of a process: in any decision that we have to make, of any compexity, we must carefully weigh the pros and cons and then, based on what our priorities are with regard to the issue in question, we must narrow it down to what's most important about it. Then a decision must be made, having decided that the pros are important enough to outweigh the cons, though the consequences of our decision may also bring about situations or circumstances which we would rather not bear. The fact is, we've decided that those consequences are of lesser importance than that which we gain by what we have decided. Every decision made goes through this same process, otherwise it would never have been made.

If suddenly a group which promoted legal murder began to gain momentum, would you feel it to be right to stand up for keeping it illegal? People could bring up all sorts of awful hypothetical situations where person A was squashing the life and freedom of person B and denying him his rights to freedom of movement, thought, speech, etc., etc., thereby making it very much less morally wrong for person B to kill person A. But it would still be murder - one human being taking away the life of another human being. I'm sure that I would decide that, in spite of the moral and legal wrong perpetrated by A upon B, it must still be a prosecutable offense for B to kill him.

Let society and us and private institutions and public funding all be directed at improving B's situation and helping him to live a life of freedom. But let it never be that the inconvenience and oppression that he is suffering is a justification for murder 1, murder 2 or manslaughter.

And let us also do everything in our power to help, financially and in moral and practical support, women who find themselves expecting a baby that they do not want. Let us construct a network of communications that can quickly and effectively settle the newborn in one of the thousands of families in which hundreds of thousands of dollars are being spent for fertility procedures and drugs because a pregnancy just will not come. But let it not be that the inconvenience or lack of freedom of the mother is a justification for terminating another human life.

in Christ,

The easy one:

My point had nothing to do with the eagle being an endangered species, or the why of the law against destroying it, its egg or its nest. I simply wanted you to look at the legal and logical reality: an eagle egg is an eagle to all intents and purposes. If you kill the egg, you've killed an eagle. Sure, if you do damage to its habitat you're also doing it no favors and are prosecutable, just as if you burn someone's house down. But it's evident that you're not killing an eagle, or the inhabitants of the house.

My original comment was that you must decide whether or not you recognize the fetus as a human being. I've given a couple of considerations, other than the God-centered one, for believing it to be a human being (1. an eagle egg is essentially an eagle, and 2. it's no worse to kill a man than to kill a child, simply because the man consists of more cells). I think you need to consider carefully your reasons for doubting that the fetus is a human being, because there isn't really any starting point for the rest of the discussion, until you've established that in your own mind. You're of course going to find any number of people these days who will argue that it is not. You have to decide who you agree with.

I made a lot of other considerations in my post to which you did not reply. That's okay, but did you not start the thread in order to discuss this?

in Christ,