yolland
Forum Moderator
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2004
- Messages
- 7,471
Well yes, your definition of murder (as well as of 'intentional,' 'innocent' and 'human being'). But presumably you wouldn't argue that if you drive drunk down a busy street weaving through red lights and wind up hitting and killing a pedestrian, you're therefore wholly innocent with regard to their death, even though you can honestly say you didn't intend to kill anyone. Again, I'm not trying to suggest a pregnant woman is analogous to a soldier or a drunk driver; I understand the different degrees of intentionality logic and the different circumstances logic. But at the very least, you're imposing your own preferred definition of the legal status of who or what is being killed on the equation, and that is what I was trying to get at. Who are you or I to say that the legal status "human being" is somehow altered by being in the wrong place at the wrong time (i.e., combat situation) such that it's OK for a soldier to go ahead and drop bombs on an area knowing that a few such persons will probably die, yet it's not OK for you to drive drunk knowing that someone innocent will probably die? No one really, but by general consensus as expressed in international law and US law respectively, it's "resolved" and thus treated as a given that those situations should indeed be legally evaluated in that way.80sU2isBest said:But remember, my definition of murder is the "intentional killing of an innocent human being". In the scenario you are discussing, there is no intentional killing of innocent human beings. The soldiers are not intending to kill the civilians.
You and I would probably agree that at least in most cases those evaluations are morally as well as legally sound, but a pacifist would likely disagree, and in my view they have as much moral right as we would to attempt to have that legal evaluation changed; I can't think of any unchangeable, universally-seen-as-authoritative source we could appeal to to make the case that our evaluation of "unintentionally" killing civilians by dropping bombs (Whoops! Sorry, we try to minimize that kind of thing, honest!) is more innately morally right than theirs. Similarly, someone who doesn't share your view that killing a [fetus, unborn child, whatever you want to call it] is the moral equivalent of murder, has the moral right to oppose the state's equating an aborted [fetus/unborn child] with a murder victim, and their [mother, incubator, whatever you want to call her] with a murderer for legal purposes. In a legal context, "human being" means something simultaneously much broader and much vaguer than the minimalist, empiricist way in which an embryologist might use that term, and it seems to me that you're dodging that reality by framing this as a "biological science issue" neatly bookended by your preferred legal definition of murder.