Friday, July 1, 2022

The "Right to Life"

First of all, the self-described "Right to Life" is a bourgeois sham, most especially in the USA.  No one actually has a right to life...they have don't even have a right to be offered a job (wage slavery opportunity) or other support mechanism, without which they will quickly die of starvation or other resource inadequacy.  If the capital exploitation system doesn't have a need for you, you're toast.  There's no right to even a bare subsistence.

And likewise, in the USA at least, for medical care.  You might be able to get emergency care without "health insurance" or vast funds but not treatment, and even then you'll be obliged to pay it off through wage slavery, if you can find any, possibly facing crushing payments for the rest of your life, if there is any.

Not dissimilarly there is no right to be protected from the elements, including heat and cold.  There is no right to housing, and if you set up a tent on land you don't own you will probably be evicted.  There is no absolute right to be safe from accidents, including industrial accidents, or acts of war--especially when participating in military actions.

And that's if they're "Innocent Life."  If they're believed to have been involved in particular kinds of felonies, sometimes including murder, they may get executed by society.  I myself oppose the death penalty as it is ever likely to exist, but most people in the USA do not oppose it and it has a long history.  I might favor the death penalty applied to war criminals like former US presidents, which is not likely.

Nor does it appear that this often proclaimed "Right to Life" include any organisms who are not "Human."  We seize, exploit, and transform the world in ways unfavorable to most other species, already causing one of the largest extinction events in world history.  And with the effects of Global Heating only getting started, it can only get far far worse.  This is, by far, the greatest crime of humanity, or at least the part of humanity which contributes to Global Heating.  But Global Heating is only one of the latests in a long line of other species destruction going back over 10,000 years as well.  Since the dawn of civilization, Humans have been ecocidal.

When I bring up the continued existence of non-human species. gotcha  interlocutors immediately accuse me of defending "animal rights."  Let me be more clear, I think the so-called "right to life," is a faulty concept which should never be used in serious arguments or law, for either animals or humans.  But meanwhile, senseless destruction of the biosphere is the greatest collective crime of humanity.

It is precisely because the so-called rights of liberalism as expressed in the Declaration of Independence (not an active part of US law) and much less so in the US Constitution are negative rights, the the right to life is so meaningless.

Since there is no "right" to any kind of resources or protection, the negative "Right to Life" really only applies to human fetuses, for which the life support mechanism is presumed and thereby enslaved by the "Right to Life" granting authority.


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