One of the more watched ballot initiatives this week was the Mississippi Personhood initiative that would have granted full human civil rights to a fertilized human egg. Almost half of the voters were for this measure. Here’s the CBS report, but you can find it everywhere this week.
Basically, it would have outlawed most birth control and, of course, abortions.
The issue as I see it is the tension between the rights of a host and a guest. Should an unexpected guest be permitted to stay as long as they feel necessary, no matter how the host feels? What if the guest makes unreasonable demands, such as requiring up to half of your assets and most of your attention while living there? Note that the laws are set up to require you to support the guest for an additional 24 times as long as she stayed after she decides to move out.
But the inspiration behind this ballot initiative really was the need to make sure that Republicans get out to vote. It is a pity that the Democrats cannot figure out how to seed a ballot with an issue that will fire up their base in this manner. Maybe an ERA initiative would do; that hasn’t come up for a few decades.
Interesting here that you would choose to frame the argument with the term “guest” and “host.” For the sake of argument, I will tell you why this comparison makes very little logical sense.
(It is also intriguing that you would first call the fetus/blastocyt a group of dividing cells, and then equate it to a person with the term “guest.”)
First of all, a “grouping of dividing cells” living inside of a pregnant woman is not an “unexpected guest.” Adult human beings understand that heterosexual intercourse without the use of a contraceptive will result in a grouping of dividing cells that develops into a blastocyt into a fetus into a baby into a person. Causality is a fascinating understanding of the human mind. So this scenario does not apply. The “guest” is not some foreign, unrelated person or entity. This cluster of cells was very much invited (in most circumstances…in instances where this is not the case, well, that is a different discussion).
You go on to say that the law requires you to support the guest up to 24 times the amount the guest had while “living” inside you. Here, of course, you are talking about child protection and custody laws. Right?
Are you suggesting that a mother should therefore be legally permitted to not only kick out, but murder, a child who has taken residence in her home “without her permission?”
Because, essentially, a child that is born takes up a great deal more time and energy from the mother than before it was born. Even though it is not physically attached to the mother and not living inside her, it is still very much emotionally, psychologially, and sociologically attached as well as dependent on the mother and still living inside her property…
Are you implying that these laws also be stricken and women be allowed the option to – essentially – abort a living baby? That is what is sounds like to me…Thus, I believe that THAT particular argument is fundamentally flawed.