---

4. On Abortion

In accord with the nature of this subject, the following post will be more personal than usual. The draft of this has been sitting in my hard drive for over a year, and I not daring to complete it. I’m not sure I dare now, because I feel woefully unprepared to make a cogent point, but if I say nothing at this point, there will have been no purpose in speaking on the matter ever.

To make sure we’re on the same page, let me begin with a parable. Imagine you have appendicitis. Your appendix has ruptured, you’re in extreme pain, and you make it to a hospital in search of medical assistance. However, you’re informed by the doctors that they are unable to operate on you, because the state legislature has decided that an appendix is an entity deserving of personhood and should be protected from removal from its natural habitat. All they can do is give you medicine in the hope that you somehow recover, though this results in a far higher likelihood that both you and your appendix will perish.

There are obvious objections to be brought up against this analogy, but two are particularly salient and deserving of examination. First, that an appendix is not by any definition a human being. To this I would submit that an organ has enough human-like traits that it would be very possible to convince someone of its personhood, and the same is true of a fetus, which has some human characteristics but lacks the critical faculties of reason, empathy, and self-awareness that are critical to actual personhood. Second, a fetus can certainly become a human in the right circumstances, whereas an appendix never can. As a corollary to this point, every single one of the millions of sperm cells produced by a human every day can become a human in the right circumstances. If potentiality is a qualification, there are trillions of potential humans who need to be protected, and this is clearly unsustainable.

Let us move on to more grounded discussions. To preface, As someone with neither medical expertise nor a uterus, it has been my position in the past that it was not my place to speak on matters of abortion policy. However, recent years have laid clear the folly of this approach, as there are many who lack these qualifications yet still hold themselves as authorities in the matter, and my silence was creating an unnecessary burden on others. So as a starting point, I must assert that no legislator, executive officer, judge, or other elected official has any qualification by which to make appropriate abortion policy if they do not also possess either a uterus or a medical degree, and it is the responsibility of the public to enforce this, through both word and deed.

Words are among the greatest tools we have left, and using them to destigmatize abortion is essential. On that note, let me assert that I myself support abortion. I am not pro-choice or pro-life, as those are vagaries and part of the same ultimate concept. I support abortion, because it is a necessity in modern society and because safe access to abortion is necessary to preserve life and quality of life.

Now on to procedure. The 9th and 10th amendments of the US constitution assert that the people retain all rights not specifically denied by the government. Moreover, the declaration of independence, combined with the implicit language present throughout the constitution, indicates that it is necessary for the government to justify any action that would deny rights to the people.

In the case of abortion, any policy that would restrict such procedures must be based on the premise that an unborn fetus is at some stage a human being, who possesses rights in need of protection. There isn’t a complete medical consensus one when this occurs, but it seems to be somewhere around the third trimester. Prior to that, the fetus contains no features which are unique to human beings. And to reiterate, any argument about the personhood of a fetus can only be valid if it is made by a person with relative experience or expertise relative to the development of a human fetus. Legally speaking, the constitution implicitly bestows rights onto humans who have been born, indicating that the unborn are not protected.

It is a natural human instinct to want to protect the unborn, to provide them with the potential to achieve the most that their nascent life can provide. However, acting on that impulse creates complications and obligations. If a person or agent would try to obligate a person to, against their wishes or better judgment, give birth, the one enforcing the obligation in this case would thus be responsible for the wellbeing both of the bearer (the one giving birth) and the resulting child. They would also be required to ensure the highest possible medical care for both individuals during and after the birthing process. Additionally, they must be able to provide adequate childcare and education for the offspring in case the bearer is unwilling or unable to do so. To remove any person’s choice about their undertaking a birth is not only a violation of their natural rights, but also, if the above services are not provided, an act of cruelty and criminal neglect against the child.

3. On Business

A business or corporation, being a nonhuman entity, is not technically imbued with any fundamental rights. Such an entity can only have what rights are granted to it by its interacting society, and these must immediately give way if there is any conflict between these granted rights and the rights of any actual person.

In the U.S., there is no fundamental right to profit for either individuals or business entities. There is an indicated right to pursue happiness, but profit is a poor measure of this pursuit. A company is an organization designed to provide some public service (which may include transfer of goods) in exchange for payment. It should naturally be judged not on the profit it makes, but by its ability to contribute to its surrounding society through the service it provides, measured by the overall wealth it grants to the society, rather than the amount of wealth that it possesses for itself.

---

2. On Police Procedure

It shouldn’t be too much to ask that police who commit crimes are charged accordingly.

Police are individuals hired by a government organization, usually a municipality or city. They can be privately funded and operated, but in most cases they’re government agents, and thus public servants. Contrary to common assumption, they do not have special dispensation with regard to application of the law. Rather, they have more complete training than the average citizen with regard to how to properly apply the law. In theory, this allows them to enforce the law with a minimal legal risk to themselves. Unfortunately, it also tends to give them an incentive to misconstrue the law to their own benefit. For this reason, you should never take a member of the judicial system at their word.

On a fundamental, philosophical level, a police officer should accept some amount of personal risk while minimizing danger to others. If people around them are harmed, that shows a massive failing in police behavior. Anytime someone dies in the presence of police, it indicates that those police were inadequate in their procedures. When a police officer dies on duty, unless it is a freak accident, it indicates that either they or someone in their chain of command made a terrible mistake. In either case, when death occurs within police interactions, someone on the police side is deserving of reprimand if not greater punishment.

With regard to police behavior and relevant present issues, the following are mandated either by law or by common sense:

• If a person dies while in police custody, homicide has occurred; failure on the part of a District Attorney to seek charges is obstruction of justice.
• If a suspect, bystander, or other civilian dies during a police action, a manslaughter investigation should be opened as a matter of course.
• Pointing a gun at someone is an act of assault or attempted murder.
• An officer of the law, as with any person, who enters private property without a warrant or probable cause, is committing breaking and entering, or if they have a weapon, aggravated robbery, and the owner of the property has the right to use minimal necessary force in their self-defense, up to the degree of deadly force.
• All persons are entitled to trial when accused of a crime, and to representation and defense at such trial. These rights cannot be abridged by reason of citizenship, criminal history, age, or for any other reason.
• So long as they remain peaceful, people have the right to protest in any time or place of their choosing. There are no limitations to this. If one part of a protest group becomes violent, any part of it that remains peaceful retains its rights to protest.

One additional point: No part of a regular police officer’s duty requires the use of a deadly weapon. Carrying such a weapon can easily interfere with their duties. A police officer who depends on a weapon should not be trusted.

Addendum: Additional points:

• Police bringing weapons of any kind to a protest whose members are not armed is an unlawful breach of the peace.
• If a government administrator issues an illegal order, any agent that obeys it is also culpable.
• Graffiti on police equipment is not vandalism, as it is public property.
• If a police officer commits a crime, they are a criminal and their victim has the right to defend themselves by any means necessary. If a police officer covers up or ignores indications of criminal activity in their colleague, they are accessory to that crime and also a criminal. A police precinct or department that refuses or resists investigating claims of criminal activities in its members is a criminal organization.

1. Division is a Lie.

It’s natural for humans to create categories for everything, including ourselves. We want to put ourselves and everyone we know and like into one category, and everyone we don’t know or don’t like into another. This makes it easier, categorically, to dislike or at least ignore those people.

The concept of society is a tool we use to overcome the simplest and cruelest instincts of division. We create a broader category that can include many others, allowing us to overlook them and their petty differences. Those lesser stratifications become mere motes within a complex system.

Presently, we’re all being encouraged to cleave to these tiny, arbitrary categorizations, and worse, to refuse to see any similarity to those in other categories. This push has a simple motive behind it: the ancient strategy of divide and conquer. By breaking a society of people into small and separate groups, one can render it incapable of defending itself, both against outside attacks, and from systemic problems within.

We identify ourselves as “liberal” or “conservative”, while denouncing others as “socialist” or “fascist”, or apply any of numerous other randomly-chosen terms. We employ these ideas as mental weapons, ignoring the fact that our own ideologies necessarily contain pieces of them and cannot exist without them. These terms have long since been stripped of any technical meaning, instead being employed purely to indicate “people we don’t like”, and thus bereft of any use.

The truth is, the vast majority of us all want and need the same things. We value life, liberty, comfort, security, safety, access to tools by which we can improve our capabilities. We can have all of these things most of the time without depriving anyone else, and most of us would not seek to deprive another if we can make do. We are all fundamentally similar.

The difference is that now we are being carefully curated into groups, shown only the information that agrees with our preconceptions, and it pushes us to take “sides” which do not exist. Everyone is a part of this problem. Even those whose beliefs happen to be right do not hold them because of careful consideration, but because they were taught to have them. When we refuse to question our beliefs to insure their validity, we do them a disservice, and when we ignore the desire of our counterparts to also hold right beliefs, we do them harm.

The truth is, there are no sides. There is no us and them. There is only us. Denying a part of ourselves will not eliminate it. Trying to destroy these ideas or those who hold them will also be ineffective, for it is the nature of humans to create different ways of thinking over time. We must simply accept who and what we are, and make do, and try to gently, over generations, improve it.