Rape and Consent

 Posted by  Abortion, Issues, Judicial System, Legal Reform  4 Responses »
May 162007
 

This story is about a week old now, but I just had it come to my attention yesterday, and I was curious if any of my readers here had an opinion about it. The case revolves around an alleged rape that happened between a girl and her boyfriend’s brother. According to the girl (the brother had a different story) here’s what happened:

At about 3 AM a man climbs into bed with her, while she’s sleeping in a dark room that she shares with her boyfriend. She says her boyfriend’s name, but gets no response. They man starts to have sex with her, and while she’s groggy, she willingly complies. Afterwards, the man walks out of the room, and she sees his face when he steps into the lit hallway and realizes that it isn’t her boyfriend, it is in fact her boyfriend’s brother. (The boyfriend, by the way, claims that she came and got him in the middle of the night, took him back to her bed, and instigated the sex; that’s a moot point, however, as you’ll see.) She decided to press rape charges against the brother, arguing that while she consented to have sex, she would have never consented to have sex with him, if she knew who he really was. The case went all the way to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which ruled that (in Massachusetts) no rape occurred because the sex act itself was not coerced. This has caused a bit of an outrage, and there are legislators trying to change the law here in Massachusetts.

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Morality, Legality, and Genetics

 Posted by  Abortion, Creation and Evolution, Healthcare, Issues, Legal Philosophy  17 Responses »
May 142007
 

I want to talk about genetic testing, but first, allow me to play at political philosophy for a second. First a proposition: it is possible for an action to be both immoral and legal. In fact, an action’s legality should have no bearing on its morality. (Note that the same is not true of illegal actions; most people would consider breaking the law to be a morally suspect act, even if the law was asinine.) There are two ramifications of this. First, some actions may be immoral without necessitating a law. You shouldn’t lie to your mother, but neither should lying to your mother be worthy of a criminal fine or jail time. Second, the mere fact that an act is legal should not, and does not, imply that the action is moral. Once again, just because the government won’t fine imprison you for lying to your mother, does not mean that it is OK to do so.

Now to the question of genetic testing. As genetic testing becomes more prevalent, more powerful, and more economical, society is increasingly coming to a point where we can know an awful lot about what the genetic makeup of a fetus from a very early stage. In particular, these tools can be used to determine a child’s gender, and they can tell us the likelihood that the child will suffer from a growing number of disabilities. At the moment, this opens up the possibility for parents to abort children that they don’t want, at a point in the pregnancy where abortion is relatively cheap, painless, and unregulated. In the future, it opens up the possibility that people will be able to “custom design” their children to some extent, while those children are still in the womb.

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Abortion and excommunication

 Posted by  Abortion, Religion  15 Responses »
May 092007
 

The pope recently said that Catholic politicians who support legalizing abortion risk excommunication. I don’t actually have a problem with that. If the Catholic faith believes that life starts at conception, and that therefore abortion is murder, then it makes sense to censure those who would condone it.

What I have a problem with, is that there is no similar warning about starting wars, creating foreign policy that allows genocides to occur, reducing aid/assistance to starving children, etc.

If, as the pope claims in his statement, “life is always a gift”, then it is ALWAYS a gift. Not just when the gift is in fetus form. Its not the fact that the pope would try to protect what the Catholic faith considers life that disturbs me. Its that he protects it selectively.

Abortion confusion

 Posted by  Abortion, Judicial System, Legal Philosophy  9 Responses »
Apr 192007
 

Can somebody please explain to me what the pro-choice folks are all up in arms about this supreme court decision? From what I understand, the supreme court upheld a ban on a particular procedure (partial birth abortion). They didn’t allow a ban on abortion, or make it significantly harder to get one.

Medical procedures are banned all the time because of safety or ethical concerns. Heck, lifesaving drugs are regularly banned by the FDA because of risk of side effects etc. Nobody gets up in arms about that.

I guess it just seems to me that because this procedure has to do with abortion that people are up in arms. If it were a cancer treatment, you wouldn’t have this sort of reaction – even though a cancer treatment could save a life.

A lot of people seem to be saying that this is proof that the Bush administration has succeeded in loading the court with folks who will overturn Roe v. Wade. But I just don’t see that. A majority of Americans are pro-choice in general, but a majority of Americans are opposed to this particular procedure. Seems like the court could similarly allow the banning of this procedure, without overturning Roe v. Wade…

Is it just me, or is this court decision being blown way out of proportion? Is it just that abortion is a highly politicized issue, so the people who care about it just note the topic and ignore the specifics of the case when getting riled up? Maybe someone can enlighten me as to why an upholding of a ban on a specific procedure should be viewed as a terrible tragedy for the pro-choice side of the debate…

Justifications for Abortion

 Posted by  Abortion, Issues  3 Responses »
Jan 232007
 

You may have missed it, if you weren’t watching CSPAN, but yesterday was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. As such, it occurred to me that this would be a good time to get myself into trouble on abortion. I’ve always believed that there are only two question of any interest underlying the abortion debate. First, when does human life begin? And second, given that we cannot answer #1 with any certainty, should the law err on the side of preserving life or on the side of protecting the rights of women and families to make their own decisions?

Strongly Pro-Life people tend to answer “conception” (or something akin to it) on question #1 and “life” on question #2. Strongly Pro-Choice people tend to answer “birth” (or something akin to it) on question #1 and “rights” on question #2. Both of those are coherent, logical positions, and I respect them. Personally, I think the answer to question #1 is “somewhere in between”, and the answer to question #2 is “life, more or less”, but I really don’t hold strong opinions on the issue. Like most Americans, late third term abortions bother me, whereas Plan B contraception does not, and I have very mixed feelings on what the appropriate amount of government intervention should be. I wouldn’t call it a moderate position, merely a befuddled one, but in this respect I do seem to be in the majority.

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