Wisely 's Bookmarks tagged rights → View Popular

You are here: Diigo Home > Wisely 's Bookmarks

Ads by Google

Expand All 1 - 3 of 3

The Natural Right of Self Defense 7/18/2008

The right of self defense is among the most basic of the natural rights and was sometimes described in the 19th century as a “fundamental” right.

The framers would have thought it strange to believe that people could have no right of self defense, even after they enter into civil society. Remember, the right to life was considered inalienable. Some 17th and 18th century commentators considered self defense to be, not only the permissible thing to do, but the morally required thing to do (for the same reason that suicide was considered immoral).

Tags: rights, self-defense on 2008-07-21 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.alliancealert.org

SSRN-The Coherence of Natural Inalienable Rights by Craig Stern, Gregory Jones

Ultimately, natural inalienable rights presuppose a transcendent legal order. They presuppose this order formally, because natural inalienable rights are rights against lawless takings of the objects of those rights. More fundamentally, they presuppose a transcendent legal order materially, because they spring from theories resting upon transcendent law. Natural inalienable rights are coherent only when such a legal order is presupposed.

Tags: natural-law, inalienable-rights, rights on 2008-05-12 -All Annotations (0) -About

more frompapers.ssrn.com

7Expand

the evangelical outpost: Part, Person, or Property:<br />The Connection Between Property Rights and Abortion

Tags: abortion, property, rights on 2008-01-23 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.evangelicaloutpost.com

At various times in our country's history, "property" has been defined in ways that included such "personal rights" as assembly, speech, the right to religious opinion, and the use of one's own talents and faculties.
The government, however, retains the power to define not only what will be protected under the concept of property but also which type of property rights* are more primary than others. Naturally, this has profound implications for the abortion debate. The government holds the power to define property and to determine that property rights are inviolable. Is it any surprise, then, that it took a Civil War to bring about abolition?

When Roe v. Wade appealed to the 14th amendment's Due Process clause, it decreed that the state cannot deprive a person of life, liberty, or property without due process. Since the fetus is a separate living entity from the mother (if it wasn't, then ending the life of the fetus would end the mother's as well) there is no deprivation of "life." In a similar manner the creation of the "right to privacy" cannot apply to the term liberty either, otherwise all laws against prostitution, drug use, suicide, etc. would have been struck down as well. The only are area that the clause can apply to is property.
The fetus is treated by Roe as a form of property in which the woman has certain specific and limited rights. The state can only interfere with these rights when they have a compelling interest and then only after the first trimester. Until that time the woman has the right to "dispose of her property" in any manner she chooses.
I believe there are only three ways in which abortion law will be changed in America -- by fiat, by recognition of the personhood of the fetus, or by the rejection of the fetus as property. Using the law, whether the courts or the legislatures, to strike down so-called abortion rights would ultimately be ineffective since it would changes the legal status of the procedure without changing the culture that promotes the activity.
In order to win the moral argument we must begin by co-opting the language of the abortion movement. An unborn child is either part, person, or property: an intrinsic part of a woman's body, a human person, or non-human property over which a woman has the right to dispose of as she chooses. Since the DNA of the fetus differs from the mother, it cannot be considered merely a part of her body. So it is either a person or property. If they deny it is a person, as they must since doing otherwise would concede their moral argument, then they must recognize the fetus as the property of the woman.
Abortion supporters will not want to accept this semantic shift. If pressed, though, they will have no logical alternative. Once is has been defined that the "right to choose" is a right to choose what can legally be done with one's property, the moral force of the pro-choice movement will dissipate. The real choice will be between choosing a side that venerates the dignity of human life or one that devalues humanity in the same way that slavery did.
Recognizing the link between abortion and property rights is crucial. The inviability of property rights allowed slavery to exist in our country for centuries. Unless we recognize that the pro-choice movement is hiding behind the same "rights", abortion is likely to be around just as long.

1 - 3 of 3

List 20 50 100

Notation: * = Private bookmark and comment|… = Clipping [?] | … = Public highlight [?]

Wisely 's Related Tags

Selected tags

rights

Related tags

See More Top Contributors

bestfreephone Alberto Adrián Schiano David Marsden Randal X onlinenomad Alex Schlotzer

Related Groups on Diigo

Free Things

Members (46)

bookmarks (466)
divorce law

Members (6)

bookmarks (70)
Equal Parenting Rights

Members (2)

bookmarks (54)