[Victoribus Spolia]

I remember reading a book some year ago by the moral philosopher Peter Singer about nature of rights and how they ought to be legally imputed. He argued from what I would call a "Hard-Utilitarian" position that not only are pleasure and pain the primary basis for moral evaluation, but only those that can sense pleasure and pain are moral agents in any real sense of the term. Hence, for Singer, rights are imputed on the basis of sentience. Now, this would all be well and dandy, but Dr. Singer proceeds to argue the level of rights imputed ought to be delineated on the degree of sentience involved. Hence, without qualification, he argues that a first-term fetus is always less valuable and has fewer rights than a full-grown sow (female pig) because the fetus has less sentience when it comes to the expierence of pain and pleasure than the sow. Indeed, to say otherwise, he argued, would be to make the same sort of moral judgments as the Nazis in showing an irrational preference regarding rights to one race over another. He also argues this for both animal rights reasons and for veganism. Indeed, he asserts veganism causes the least amount of pain among sentinent beings on earth than any other diet; however, if one were starving and had to choose between a fish and a monkey, it would be more moral to eat the fish etc, because it has less sentience and therefore it has less rights, etc, etc.

This being said, the pro-lifers in the world hold to an opposite position that rights are not imputed on the basis of sentience, but on the basis of inherent worth. Thus, if humans are imputed with rights that are endowed to them by their Creator, merely for being conceived as human, this would mean that a fetus has rights by nature, but a Sow has none unless humans so determined to give them so by their own good pleasure. Thus, under no conditions, could a Pig be more valuable than a human fetus, or even a human zygote.

These are, or course, the opposite extremes, but the subject of this poll is to see where on the spectrum most PoFo users are in regards to the value (as far as the right to life in concerned) between a grown sow and a human fetus.

For the purpose of this poll, the fetus exists at some point in the first trimester of pregnancy.

[Rancid]

I had to read a lot of Peter Singer when I took some philosophy classes in college. I remember reading this.

I picked Other: I simply don't care, and the universe also doesn't care.

[Pants-of-dog]

I would eat a pig but not a human fetus, so regardless of rights, the pig goes in the oven.

[Suntzu]

Bacon!

[Victoribus Spolia]

I would eat a pig but not a human fetus, so regardless of rights, the pig goes in the oven.

Finally something we agree on!

Christmas Ham will be on the menu in just a couple more weeks......hallelujah.

[Suntzu]

Finally something we agree on!

Christmas Ham will be on the menu in just a couple more weeks......hallelujah.

Hmmm! I said that?

[mikema63]

Other: animal rights are something I grapple with still so I can't say.

[anasawad]

An animal does have the right to life. However the right of life, in a way, come in a hierarchy between species. So while they do have the right to life, its acceptable to kill them for food. However not acceptable to kill them for the sake of killing them.

A fetus on the other hand is not a living being, not before the final stage of pregnancy that is in which its not really a fetus but rather a baby since it can live outside the uterus. In so it does not have any type of rights even the right to life as its not a living creature to begin with at that stage.

[Crantag]

In terms of 'economic value', the prevailing societal norms opt that the sow is more valuable, because it is livestock; whereby babies aborted for reasons of largely economic consideration are drawn from the redundant population.

I've never heard of abortion being applied to animal husbandry, as typically production of viable livestock is the end in itself. But in the Animal Farm of society, it is seen abortion is in effect an alternative in some cases for poor assistance. When you think of it this way, it's not an exclusively evangelical imperative to consider the 'spiritualist' implications of potential lives aborted in the womb, both by technical means and on technical considerations.

There's a moral conundrum therefore in the Good Doctor's analysis, which arrives at like conclusions by a different route. But, his analysis is also interesting for its own sake.

[Victoribus Spolia]

Hmmm! I said that?

Yeah pretty sad when a society gets to the point that the only thing you have common with some people is that you both like pork and breathe oxygen.

[Suntzu]

Are great apes and dolphins self aware. Are they "human"? We know they have language, use tools, have emotions.

[Decky]

4. A Full Grown Sow Has No Right to Life, No Unborn Human Fetus Has The Right to Life.

Citizens have rights, food and clumps of cells do not. We treat livestock semi decently as it improves flavour and makes the food safer and is thus is a public good. It has nothing to do with giving food rights.

Clumps of cells obviously do not have rights and even if they did those right would certainly not trump the rights of a living breathing citizen. Even if you counted the clump as a person it would not have the right to be inside a citizen's body against her will (rape laws and laws against knocking someone out and stealing their organs create a precedent for this, people have a right to decide what goes on inside their own organs).

[SolarCross]

Voted Other.

The answers in the poll are a non-sequitur to the question in the title. The question asks which is more valuable but the answers are talking about rights but rights don't necessarily follow from value.

Looking at the question and not the answers: I must say that all value is subjective, always and forever, so which is more valuable depends on the interests and perceptions of the observer.

Looking at the answers and not the question: I must say that rights are legal fictions which are so highly variable as to be essentially arbitrary. They are partly formed out of ideological considerations and partly out of material expediency. Thus which ones have the right to life depends on the legal context and the ideological and material interests of the law makers.

- A Christian judge who likes to eat meat will have the ideological tendency to favour the fetus with rights to life whilst denying them to the tasty sow and be completely correct to do so.

- Perhaps a misanthropic vegan will come to the opposite conclusion and be just as correct to do so.

- If the sow herself had the power to judge I am pretty sure she would come to the conclusion that of course sows had rights to life while a human fetus should just be tasty slop and again that would be completely correct.

I believe it is objectively impossible to say that either is right or wrong in the conclusions they come to. Thus ultimately what rights are depends only on what those with the power to make it so want them to be.

[B0ycey]

If only nature was so kind. Nothing has a 'right' to live in terms of nature but both should have the opportunity to live if the conditions are right. The fetus relies on the mother and the pig on the farmer.

Ultimately we should try to do what is morally right. But morally right isn't always a right to live. The pig might need to die to feed your staving family and the fetus might need to be aborted to save a child from ultimate suffering and a death of an uprevented untreatable ailment.

[B0ycey]

Del.

[Victoribus Spolia]

The answers in the poll are a non-sequitur to the question in the title. The question asks which is more valuable but the answers are talking about rights but rights don't necessarily follow from value.

Not-necessarily-following and not-following are not the same thing.

Besides, if something has no right to exist, you would be hard-pressed to explain how such a life-form was valuable from an ethical perspective.

It's quite outside of your usual self to react in the manner that you did. I suppose you're a vegan who is torn of pro-life v pro-choice issues?

Just speculating.

[Rugoz]

...but on the basis of inherent worth.

[SolarCross]

Not-necessarily-following and not-following are not the same thing.

Besides, if something has no right to exist, you would be hard-pressed to explain how such a life-form was valuable from an ethical perspective.

It's quite outside of your usual self to react in the manner that you did. I suppose you're a vegan who is torn of pro-life v pro-choice issues?

Just speculating.

I'm just trying to objective. Although I am not a Christian I would tend to favour the Christian perspective rather than the hypothetical misanthropic vegan on this issue, meaning I personally would rather grant the right to life to a human fetus than a sow however smart she may be, but I don't pretend that is an objective natural right, it's just my subjective personal preference, my human tribal preference, my speciesism.

[Victoribus Spolia]

I'm just trying to objective. Although I am not a Christian I would tend to favour the Christian perspective rather than the hypothetical misanthropic vegan on this issue, meaning I personally would rather grant the right to life to a human fetus than a sow however smart she may be, but I don't pretend that is an objective natural right, it's just my subjective personal preference, my human tribal preference, my speciesism

Do you not subscribe to a school of moral thought that would provide some sort of justification for this "preference?"

[SolarCross]

Do you not subscribe to a school of moral thought that would provide some sort of justification for this "preference?"

Nope, not unless you can make a school of moral thought out of pragmatism and game theory.