The moral principles of rights apply to human life as a rational being, not any kind of life for being life.

"tried to lay down some basic principles."
The issue of abortion is one where two individuals' rights are in conflict. It makes me think of thought experiments in which you can push someone in front of a train to save someone else. I think of it as wrong to take action to that kills someone, even if it's to save another. But I also think it's wrong to use force to make someone take action to sustain a life. Applied to abortion, I might think we should use force to stop someone from killing the fetus, but we should not use force to make the mother incubate the fetus. Their lives are tied together, though, so forcing her not to kill is the same as forcing her to support another. I don't see how outlaw hurting the fetus without saying once you're pregnant you lose all rights. Society decides if you can work a dangerous job, work around chemicals, ignore a doctor's orders to rest, take medical interventions that put the fetus at risk, and so on.

I agree with you that a constitution is an important framework but cannot resolve complicated questions where people's rights are in conflict.

"do people with the Objectivism philosophy need a constitution? The answer is "yes." "
I used to think a constitution needed to be structured just right to prevent mob rule. I'm beginning to think a constitution is just codifying the philosophy behind a democratic republic that holds rights above the will the of the majority. That means no constitution can be powerful enough to prevent mob rule. We need philosophy, maybe Objectivism or maybe a broader philosophy that hold individual rights as sacrosanct.

I really don't care much for Facebook itself. However, It is the only way I keep in contact with friends from the military and some from overseas. I check it every so often just to check up on them and scan some of the posts but I don't live on there like some do.

I agree, My wife is an RN of 40 + years was horrified at the former pediatrician now governor of Virginia & the New York advocating infanticide. When watching the local TV station reporting or Fox reporting on this she has to change the station. I, myself was prompted to write an email to my congressman (a Dimm) regarding this abortion issue. I received a prompt form letter back stating that "As a member of the U. S. House of Representative, I believe this is a matter that should be determined between a woman and her doctor- not Washington politicians." The rest of the email goes on to inform that the government doesn't fund abortions and so on.

Well, even at this point in your "life" you also would cease to exist without food and water to sustain you.

First.....I despise facebook...different strokes I suppose.
Next, I suspect that once you get outside the DC area of Virginia and eliminate the state legislature locale most of Virginia does NOT agree with Tran or the governor.

You can speculate that some people might have that motivation, but fundamentally it is not about that.

The original source for this fake news is a law that allows late-term abortions if a doctor certifies the pregnancy is putting the mother at risk. The opposite position is the government should use force to protect the fetus at the expense of the mother. That's a rabbit hole of debate I don't want to be part of. I hope that future technology will eliminate this issue.

The thing that stands out to me is how I and many others are morbidly drawn to looking at train wrecks and how the Internet can provide an endless supply of them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/op...

While breathing is a self-sustaining, self-generated action, anyone who has a baby knows that the amount of time required raising an infant does not go down at the time of birth. An infant certainly cannot self-generate enough self-sustaining actions. It is necessary, but FAR from sufficient.

BREATHING is a self sustaining action!!!!

But the key part of Rand's definition is "self-generated". The "help" that you refer to requires a sacrifice on the part of the person giving the help. Rand chose not to have children because of her unwillingness to make such a sacrifice, and I am OK with that.

When someone chooses to have sex with someone else, they know the possible consequences. Birth control measures are so common now that no one can reasonably claim that they cannot adequately protect themselves from such consequences.

I choose to be "politically illiterate" by your definition of limited government. I know what those involved in politics say and do. They choose to enforce their wills over people like me, and like America's Founding Fathers, I reject their right to enforce their wills on me.

While I find abortion repugnant, I am not going to stop people from having them for precisely the reasons that Ayn Rand quotes. However, where I disagree with her vehemently is the idea that she can say that just because a baby is outside the womb that he/she now has the right to life when minutes before he/she didn't. That distinction is completely inconsistent with her own definition of self-generating a sufficient number of self-sustaining actions. With Rand's definition, it becomes perfectly OK for Casey Anthony to dump her daughter Caylee into a swamp, where the then almost three-year-old has no hope of extracting herself from the swamp. If it is all about the mother's convenience as Rand claims, then Casey Anthony was well within her right to just absolve herself of any parental responsibility and dump her daughter in the swamp.

This is the example that properly defines the "This is what abortion has led to.", not the termination of a pregnancy.

What do I mean? Don't you even know what you are posting? Just go back up this thread and read a few of your own posts.

Opinion based on what? If the onset of brain activity is the beginning of human life, what is your moral objection to abortion prior to the existence of a brain?

Yes!

I still consider the pregnant mother's body and the body of the life forming inside her as separate human lives and, to me, it makes sense that they are both important and should be protected. Just my opinion.

https://youtu.be/_nggbndHrhQ

A full term baby doesn’t require the mother to feed it to live. If the mother doesn’t want it then give it up for adoption.

Bingo

After all these years...they finally reached the bottom of the rabbit hole.

Was that video sick or what?

Puts a whole new meaning to, “for the children.”

“Save a tree, kill a baby”
Vote Democrat 2020

Come join the Democrats! The party of infanticide!

We love to save the whales, bugs and anything other then Human babies......

https://mobile.twitter.com/Solmemes1/...