A right is a claim recognized by law. The reason that the law does not recognize children as having certain rights is because they are not recognized as being deserving of them (invariably, due to a diminished capacity for responsibility). It's not a matter of something being "worth less" than something else; it's a recognition that children and adults are qualitatively different due to children not yet having the mental capacity of an adult.
By the same token, a fetus and a child are also qualitatively different, and if the right to life applies only to those with the capacity for consciousness (hence, why it is legal to switch off a life support machine for those with no hope of recovery), then we can logically say that a fetus has no right to life, can we not?
Utter, complete rubbish. All totally false equivalences. Incredibly big brain false equivalences at that. Your entire argument is based on the absurd concept that children and by extension the unborn are denied rights because they don't deserve them, which is blatantly false and completely excises the role of empathy. You either don't have children of your own, had an awful childhood, or are just a terrifyingly detached narcissist if you sincerely hold these views.
Children are a
privileged class in society. They have
more rights than adults do. They receive numerous kinds of positive discrimination due to their fundamental innocence and lack of development. The only times they are not allowed to do certain things or have certain things is because they are not yet ready for them mentally. This
exact same argument could just as easily be used to argue for the removal of age of consent laws, as it attacks the same precepts that those twisted ideas do.
In fact, your argument contradicts itself. Since children are a privileged class whom adults go out of their way to protect and shield from harm, then the unborn should be
even more protected. Your comparison regarding the right to life of a coma patient is equally ludicrous on multiple counts.
First of all, every person has the right to choose in advance how they will be treated in that very situation. I carry around a card with me that states I am fine with my life support being terminated if there is no realistic chance of me regaining consciousness in the event of an accident. Others have a different stance based on their informed beliefs. These rights have been successfully defended in a court of law multiple times.
Quick Edit: Just to reinforce my point, said card is legally binding. Nobody in the whole nation can override my decision without a massive court battle they're almost certain to lose anyway, so long as it is clearly expressed and legally attested to beforehand.
Why do you think there is such an enormous backlash by both the public and
many medical doctors themselves against the idea of assisted suicide even in cases where the patient has literally no hope of recovery or has a degenerative neurological condition that effectively renders them non-sapient? It's because we recognize the fundamental preference for
life over
death. There is no valid reason this shouldn't apply to the unborn, since they are simply in a lesser state of development than children, which we have just established are a privileged and protected class in any halfway-decent society.
Of course, the other problem for the pro-life lobby, irrespective of whether or not a fetus has a right to life, is that they've yet to explain how legal precedent would support the conclusion that the right to life of a fetus should come before a woman's right to bodily integrity, but I've already gone into detail about that earlier in the thread. Suffice to say, the pro-life camp really doesn't have a leg to stand on.
A certain person on Youtube who I greatly respect has a saying; 'do not accept the premise of an asshole.' So instead of accepting your premise, I'll ask you defend yourself. Why
shouldn't the right of an innocent being come before the rights of a guilty person? We've already established in this thread that well over 90% of all abortions are elective, so why should a convenience supplant the fundamental rights of a person to have a chance at a healthy life? You can reasonably argue that abortion might be acceptable in rape cases, but again,
those are such a minuscule number that it barely even qualifies as a statistic. We already have birth control that is so effective it works 99.9% of the time, even before compounding methods together. Why should women be allowed to simply disregard the rights of the life they knowingly, deliberately created by intentionally failing to take advantage of the incredibly common, publicly accessible and readily available methods of contraception available in our society?
