If people are going to be vegetables and have a living will written up then I don't see a problem with their wishes being carried out. I wouldn't want to be the one to pull the plug but if someone wants to die then I think that should be respected in most cases.

That is incorrect. I gave you three possible cases in which a woman might retain a legal right to abortion.

The right to an abortion is a component, not the entirety, of a person's reproductive rights.

So why is viability an acceptable standard at the end of life to draw bright line rules but a nonsensical standard at the beginning of life in your view?

I think viability is actually quite straightforward. It's not the most readable , but I'll refer to this site for the text of the decision in Roe. This sentence states the definition as the court used it:

Note that this also addresses the objection here:

The standard of viability with respect to abortion rights is not literally absolute self-sufficiency, but only the possibility of life outside of the mother's womb. This standard is not arbitrary, it is related to the court's framing of the relevant legal issues in the case, those being women's constitutional right to privacy (really a right to fundamental self-determination and individual liberty, I'd say, if you look at the precedents cited) vs. the state's compelling interest in protecting the rights of the unborn. At the risk of stating the obvious, the relevance of the "right to privacy" is that criminalization of abortion involves an enormous constraint on women's liberty in requiring them to carry all pregnancies to term. It should be clear then why this concept of viability is relevant. Prior to viability the legal burden related to the criminalization of abortion can only fall on the mother -- there is no possibility of transferring responsibility. After viability there is such an option, so that the burden of the legal requirement is less. The court held that pre-viability the burden was so great as to unconstitutionally infringe on the individual right to privacy, but post-viability the burden is less, and so does not.

This should also illustrate why the question of when life begins is not directly relevant. The decision does discuss that question, but they note:

I think this argument is pretty reasonable. I don't think the distinction between "life" and "potential life" really makes much of a difference in relation to the problem of competing interests.

Well, I meant arbitrary in an absolute sense, not arbitrary as far as finding a solution that works reasonably well within the context of our social norms and legal tradition.

I imagine an equivalent judicial body in Iran or China would probably come to a different standard based on differing norms and legal traditions. In fact, to the best of my knowledge in Iran abortion is forbidden and in China there is no upper limit on gestational age, so I think evidence of those 2 extremes, neither of which is arbitrary in the context of their cultural norms, illustrate my point well enough.

It's the difference between murder and suicide. At the end of life someone is making a choice. At the beginning of life that choice is being made for them.

Ok. The entirety of human law, norms, values, and institutions are arbitrary by this standard. I don't disagree, but I think it's not the most useful way of thinking about anything because it collapses a lot of interesting and important gradations and distinctions. Lagtight would agree with your claim for religious reasons, e.g. because he thinks that ultimately the only possible ground of meaning and morality is in an absolute supreme being, and all else is nihilism. But I disagree with that perspective. In any case, in casual conversation I take arbitrary to imply a nearly complete lack of reason for something, rather than just reasons that are culturally relative. At minimum "arbitrariness" lies on a spectrum. My sock selection protocol is pretty arbitrary, but "viability" in Roe is not so much.

I also feel like I should needle you about your embrace of postmodernist social constructionism or whatever.

I'm not too interested really in what Roe states but more in why you would argue that viability is a logical standard. Because arguing that viability means the "capability for meaningful life outside of the womb" is just begging the question. It's more or less the literal definition or viability. So you're basically saying "viability makes sense because that's when viability is"--but that isn't saying anything.

I'm not sure I fully understand this or how the burden can be transferred post-viability or why that would be relevant. If after viability states can restrict abortion--it would seem that the burden is increased, not decreased.

There is no line. It's a classic mistake to think there is one.

I think infanticide laws were mistake. Being developed enough able to be born seems an ok line to me in practice and even that line moves a bit.

The right not to be killed is a component, not the entirety, of a person's human rights.

I guess you could try just reading the decision. But the answer to your question is already there, you're just not seeing it apparently.

It's not:

but rather:

It allows for the constitutionality of legal restrictions on abortion to hinge on whether or not those restrictions might be implemented without necessarily requiring such a large and long-lasting burden on the mother, specifically.

It's also probably true that in practical terms the workability of the compromise depends on viability being at a late enough time, given current laws. But the principle works regardless, e.g. you can imagine (though it may not be realistic) some sci-fi scenario where viability was earlier. Following Roe, you could argue that the state could restrict abortion earlier, but only if the state also provided women with the option of essentially giving up the child by inducing birth earlier and placing it under someone else's care, thus removing the unconstitutional burden. Viability marks the point where such a solution is minimally possible.

In the present, the practical consequences are more that viability is late enough that, if you haven't decided to abort by then (and I'm ignoring cases involving health risks here, and just talking about unwanted pregnancies), there's no real compelling reason to make that an option, because there's really no need for it. But the logic of the decision doesn't hinge on that, specifically. It hinges on the possibility of separating the state interest in preserving the life of the fetus from the necessity of the mother's involvement in keeping it alive.

Well, I think the problem is that people treat their beliefs as some sort of first principle realized truth about the universe, and it often leads them to make very bizarre sounding arguments. And in truth the religious based arguments are often less bizarre (to me at least) than the ones ostensibly relying on logic or science.

Like jjou's "you can't kill a fetus, because it was never a viable life" argument is truly bizarre and nonsensical IMO.

I will say that even our concept of viability at 24 weeks (or whatever the exact legal cutoff is) is problematic. It really only works as an argument at all because most people are blissfully ignorant.

I imagine if you saw some babies born at 24 weeks and followed their (mostly extremely short and painful) life histories, you might want to question the validity of that cutoff, at least as it pertains to the viability argument.

This is not the gotcha you hope it is, its just your justification behind the state having the power to control a woman's reproduction rights after conception?

It's not surprising that it's not really possible to say that one exact threshold actually represents viability in all cases with no exception. I don't think the decision even defines the specific moment when viability is said to have occurred as a matter of law, and it shouldn't. Legal thresholds always trade off simplicity (its easier to have a fixed timeline) for accurateness. For example if the age of maturity is supposed to represent some actual threshold of maturity it is clearly pretty rough. But it's workable.

So, there's a challenge from an implementation standpoint for jurisdictions that want to pass laws restricting abortion post-viability, but it's why I said I thought the compromise was workable, and not "logically air-tight", by which I really just meant that it's not completely unproblematic. I don't really think deductive logic even applies in the way the former phrase implies.

I think the most important thing to consider in Roe is that there are in fact competing legitimate interests that have to be resolved in some fashion. I don't think Roe represents the only possible way of resolving them, but I do think a meaningful conversation about the issue requires recognizing the existence of both interests. Even if you entirely reject the importance of one side or the other, as a political issue it's obvious that the competition between them is the crux of the matter, so that's where the arguments need to be made. Roe is instructive at least because it helps clarify that framework for thinking about the question, not because the solution it offers is perfect.

Is anyone really arguing for the state to control reproductive rights? That sounds like a dystopian nightmare fwiw.

The physical act of killing is clearly possible but that was not my point. The issue is how the law views it. Currently, 40 states recognize a wrongful death claim for an unborn child or fetus only if the fetus was "viable" at the time of death. The other 10 states do not recognize the fetus or unborn child as a "person" regardless of viability.

Is it your opinion that my "gotcha" was a false statement?

Ask lagtight if his world view allows for people to have premarital sex or non-reproduction sex. Or engage in sodomy. But don't put them all in one post because he can't answer then.

Any "right" that originates from the government can be taken away at any time. A HUMAN RIGHT is not defined by a State decree.

I believe the three things you listed should be legal.

I'm sorry you don't know how to read well. I recommend Hooked on Phonics.

Natural Rights Don't Exist (So it's good we invented them)

sort of a tangent but IMO :P

What the law should allow and what is ethical/moral can be two different things. I have no idea what lagtight thinks in that regard but some sort of heavy handed governmental approach to morality certainly I don't think is the answer.

No, it's your moral justification to give the state absolute power to deny and restrict a woman's reproductive rights post conception. It's why you don't believe in balancing the mothers rights and the states rights.