Animal rights vs. Abortion rights

[James]

Most liberals are pro-choice on some level or another.

Most environmentalists are liberals; a lot of liberals are environmentalists.
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Now, I've heard some of you pro-choice people say that they believe unborn babies are alive and human beings, but they have no rights. Alright...

Do animals have the right to at least life?
If you say they do, then what about unborn animals? If they have rights, then why not unborn people??? :eek:

There are laws against killing bald eagles, but also against stealing or smashing their eggs.

Why is that?

[belverron]

The last white tiger should be strangled with the intestines of a right whale.

[Flip Jackson]

Oddly enough, I think he has a point. Why are endangered animals protected before they are born, but not humans? They both involve potential.

If we are willing to say that animals are animals before birth, the same should apply to humans, thereby prohibiting the murder of the unborn. If we want to stop the population growth, then abortion shouldn't be the answer. That is killing a human, it would seem. We should just be more careful about what consequences our actions bring.

If we would stop having sex with everything that has legs, we would have a lot fewer kids with problems, and the need for abortion would almost disappear.

[tman_ndsu08]

A baby gets no rights until it's born.

That's the simplest way to do it.

[SteveA]

It's ironic that a lot of the laws protecting endangered species do more harm than good. An innocent fox walking around, if it's an endangered species, quickly becomes a threat to property in the area under the laws stated as intending to protect them.

I think if someone wants to save some species, it would be a lot better to just offer to buy any that are found and set up a reserve to protect them. It's more of a win/win in that it truly gives an incentive to people to preserve them and it works just fine under capitalism and doesn't harm property owners in the process.

Abortions could be deterred in the same fashion - people who want to see fewer abortions can offer to take care of or even compensate someone else to have the child. Though it might be irresponsible to have a child you don't believe you can support, it's also irresponsible to force someone else to have a child they don't desire without at least offering some personal assistance. Things used to be simpler in that people relied on themselves and their immediate family or communities more for these things ... and I don't believe that's a bad direction to head.

[Sonart]

Quote by: Flip Jackson Oddly enough, I think he has a point. Why are endangered animals protected before they are born, but not humans? They both involve potential.

Because, in the case of the Bald Eagle, which were an endangered species, although they're now listed merely as "Threatened", when you threaten the lives of any Bald Eagle, born or unborn, you threaten the existance of all Bald Eagles, as a species. To say nothing of the symbolic irony of destroying forever the very symbol of the power of the United States of America.

You can't say the same thing about humans. In fact, you probably can't say that about other animals other than those officially listed as somehow endangered as a species. Are pigeon eggs protected? Robin eggs? Duck eggs? I doubt it.

You're talking apples and bullfrogs here.

Quote by: belverron The last white tiger should be strangled with the intestines of a right whale.

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[belverron]

When we protect animals we're just preventing nature from taking its course.... Extinction is a part of the cycles of our world. We should protect them because it's our fault they're dying? Why? That's just another example of us thinking we're not another part of the ecosystem. That we're regulators.

[Sonart]

Quote by: belverron We should protect them because it's our fault they're dying?

Without question! Extinction over millenia is a natural event. Mass extinction over the course of a couple hundred years is a catastrophe, an 'Extinction Event' with consequences we can't begin to comprehend.

It's all a piece with phenomena like Global Warming. Naysayers used to say, nah, impossible... us mere human beings couldn't possibly change something as massive as the global climate. But that's exactly what we're doing and it's not just climate.

Look around you, belverron! We've changed the very ozone layer at the top of the atmosphere, we're destroying the ocean's great fisheries, something we once thought boundless, we've caused deforestation, leading to global desertification and land degredation, we're causing the very water tables to recede, we're destroying the vast coral reefs that have sustained the oceans, we're...

...we're destroying everything. The white tigers and right whales and fairy shrimp are the canaries in our coal mine. This is not about extinction as a natural event, it's about our exponentially expanding population combined with our exponentially expanding industrialization...



...combining to make the world unihabitable by any life. We're the fruit flies in the jar, mindlessly reproducing exponentially in our confined space, consuming everything until one day we look around and there's nothing left but our own extinction.

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[SteveA]

All we need is more subsidized irresponsible reproduction

I don't think we're likely to see too many limits in the near future on what number of people we can support though. We can purify seawater if we had water shortages. There are plenty of available energy sources we aren't using and food ... well it's not impossible to even have a green housing the desert and recycle water vapor if people were desperate enough. Hopefully we'll tet into space eventually and then at least if something major did happen, it wouldn't be the end.

You can tell how difficult it is to increase population merely by looking at the cost of raising children. Many places it's just too difficult to have more than a child or two, so people refrain. I think expecting everyone to pay for others reproductive irresponsibility is a mistake though and only aggravates the problem.

[Sonart]

Quote by: SteveA We can purify seawater if we had water shortages.

All that means is that the earth can't sustain us as we were originally designed as a species. If we can't find enough fresh water to sustain ourselves, then how does the rest of the planet? From then on, you're into the realm of Rapa Nui... thriving on an amazing technology built on deficit resources.

To put a more draconian spin on it... we'd have islands of technologically sustained civilization in a sea of drought and famine plagued earth.

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[G. Adams]

Quote by: James Most liberals are pro-choice on some level or another. Most environmentalists are liberals; a lot of liberals are environmentalists. ________________________________________________ Now, I've heard some of you pro-choice people say that they believe unborn babies are alive and human beings, but they have no rights. Alright... Do animals have the right to at least life? If you say they do, then what about unborn animals? If they have rights, then why not unborn people??? :eek: There are laws against killing bald eagles, but also against stealing or smashing their eggs. Why is that?

An unborn baby dies it's a tradegy for the family. A creature on the endagered list dying is a tragedy for everyone.

We continue to live on this planet in spite of ourselves, not because of ourselves.

[SteveA]

All that means is that the earth can't sustain us as we were originally designed as a species. If we can't find enough fresh water to sustain ourselves, then how does the rest of the planet? From then on, you're into the realm of Rapa Nui... thriving on an amazing technology built on deficit resources. To put a more draconian spin on it... we'd have islands of technologically sustained civilization in a sea of drought and famine plagued earth.

The earth can't sustain us as we were originally designed? Hmmm... I thought it was up to us to sustain ourselves. I understand what you're trying to say but humans have been living and thriving through intellegence, not claws or leaves. It might be considered inhuman to pack animals into a 40 story skyscraper but people are more flexible in how they live.

What's wrong about purifying seawater anyway if we needed to? Nature does it all the time anyway. We grow forests and raise animals and farms etc. too. I admit there's less room for natural wildlife and it's a bit sad that the river with frogs and snakes that I caught as a child is no longer there but would I still prefer to be alive? Sure and we can actually support more animal life as well. Technology isn't limited to supporting human life but animal as well. Consider a fish farm - as fish become more scarce, we'll work toward alternative ways of maintaining life on earth. If I were a fish, I'd probably prefer living in a river, even if an occasion bear tried to scoop me up but given the option of living in a fish hatchery or not living at all, I'd probably go for the hatchery.

Anyway, yes, it's good to be careful of what environmental factors can cause trouble but in the scheme of things, we've hardly even become applying technology to creating new habitats for life. There's a long way to go before we run out of room on Earth and though it would be sad to see a lot of natural areas disappear, well things change. Other people need a place to live also.

It's true that we can't keep growing exponentially forever either - we WILL slow down in population growth but look at the U.S. and Europe and you'll see that populations are actually declining (though immigration likely offsets this), so it could very well be that humans have the natural ability to limit population growth when resources are more difficult to come by. I guess we'll find out.

[G. Adams]

I'm not so sure if we will be able to technologically support ourselves. I've seen numerous reports commenting that we are becoming less fertile, especially men. And frankly, the quality of children, healthwise, could be better. Our lazy lifestyles, bad diets and permittance of companies (and the general population often) to poison our land and water is hurting us as a species. The only good that can come from this continuing is that eventually those who are too damn lazy will not be able to reproduce, leaving healthier people.

Sorry, have been reading a book on Sparta and am feeling a little elitist today. But still agree with it, despite how shitty it is for those people affected. If they would just get off their arses and care for themselves, maybe I could too.

[SteveA]

I'm not so sure if we will be able to technologically support ourselves. I've seen numerous reports commenting that we are becoming less fertile, especially men. And frankly, the quality of children, healthwise, could be better. Our lazy lifestyles, bad diets and permittance of companies (and the general population often) to poison our land and water is hurting us as a species. The only good that can come from this continuing is that eventually those who are too damn lazy will not be able to reproduce, leaving healthier people. Sorry, have been reading a book on Sparta and am feeling a little elitist today. But still agree with it, despite how shitty it is for those people affected. If they would just get off their arses and care for themselves, maybe I could too.

For those who believe in evolution, consider that in the past people didn't live as long and selective pressures were higher (from that graph, it makes sense that the human population was relatively constant for a long unto technology showed up) yet mutations still occur. I'm trying to say anything too bad but removing selective pressure without reducing the likelyhood of mutations can lead to an increased percent of defects.

Just like most herds of animals tend to be healthy and run fast because of predators, technology has protected a lot of people from natural forces in many ways. Though that's not bad in itself, it can breed both physical and social apathy.

I'd prefer living an easily life but I think ultimately the bills have to get paid. In many ways, we're rather lucky today ... but who knows how long it will last.

[G. Adams]

As a mean average life span, yes, we do live longer today. We save many more babies these days than we did in the past, driving up the average. And we prolong the lives of people so sick they should have just died years ago, rather than drawing out the agony. However the mean age of death is predicted to be lower for the current new generation than it is for their parents. This is because of two reasons. The health of the parents, and preceeding generations, in combination with the poor diet, lifestyle and environment of the children. If your a poor specimen of humanity, as is your spouse, your child won't be so top notch. This effect is compounded by the laziness and bad diet of the child. If this continues generation after generation, what the hell are we gonna be left with? For the last century, we in the West have been getting lazier, and our diet progressively poorer. Is it any wonder that while we have cured the diseases of poverty, we are spreading diseases of 'afluence' so fast?

This isn't total ramblings. In the '40s Dr Francis Pottenger carried out his experiment with cats. He fed one group of cats raw milk, one pasteurised, one evaporated, and one sweetened condensed milk. They were all also fed supplements. The raw milk group was healthy, active, had good reflexes. Each other group was progressively worse than the last. Then he monitered each group as it produced litters, and the offspring was fed the same diet. The raw milk group produced strong, healthy kittens, that in time produced more strong healthy kittens. The pasteurised group had sickly kittens, who in time had kittens in worse condition. The other two groups were much worse, not being able to produced a third generation.

We will, in time, see similar results with our own children, unless we do something. Personally I see it as my responsibility to be as healthy as I can for the sake of my future offspring, and make sure they understand their responsibility.

[SoccerfreakAB2]

Quote by: Sonart All that means is that the earth can't sustain us as we were originally designed as a species. If we can't find enough fresh water to sustain ourselves, then how does the rest of the planet? From then on, you're into the realm of Rapa Nui... thriving on an amazing technology built on deficit resources. To put a more draconian spin on it... we'd have islands of technologically sustained civilization in a sea of drought and famine plagued earth.

I don't see what endangered species has anything to do with what Flip said. He's asking, in general, why we perform abortions to save a potential human life, but why we let people perform abortions on potential animal lives. Good question.

[belverron]

I agree that we must be responsible with the environment. That does not mean going to absurd lengths to protect species whose time may simply be up.

[SteveA]

Quote by: belverron I agree that we must be responsible with the environment. That does not mean going to absurd lengths to protect species whose time may simply be up.

Yes, something people often forget is that there are new species of animals being created/found all the time as well. Humans aren't the only ones playing around with genetics. Nature's been doing her share for a lot longer.

(Oops, how can I get back on topic? Aww yes! Conclusion: nature sometimes aborts things also! )

[SoccerfreakAB2]

Quote by: SteveA Yes, something people often forget is that there are new species of animals being created/found all the time as well. Humans aren't the only ones playing around with genetics. Nature's been doing her share for a lot longer. (Oops, how can I get back on topic? Aww yes! Conclusion: nature sometimes aborts things also! )

I don't know about "all the time." Nature takes millions of years to create new species. We take a few hundred years to get them extinct.

[SteveA]

Quote by: SoccerfreakAB2 I don't know about "all the time." Nature takes millions of years to create new species. We take a few hundred years to get them extinct.

Well, millions of years is the time frame over which large scale evolutions occur but it takes many millions of tries to get there. As far as I know there are actually new species of animals (especially insects) created almost daily. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. Of course those changes are small and something like a fox wasn't a single lucky random mutation from a beaver but a long chain instead.

Yes, we can wipe species out faster than nature creates them but I wanted to point out that people often forget it's not a static system but has new additions on a regular basis as well.