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Comment by tdba | Hacker News Reader

What are human rights? To have an abortion? To own a gun? To have a say in what your children are taught? To get money from the government? It all depends on who you ask. Calling something a "human right" is a rhetorical device used to make disagreeing with your political position immoral and even heretical rather than just plain old wrong.

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Despite whatabouting away from the women example, some of those can be classified as human rights, and what we currently have on some of those topics you could call a "reasonable rational compromise", even if I personally disagree, but right now Republicans are planning some interesting totalitarian anti-women, anti-privacy type stuff to tackle abortion.

Sometimes your opponent actually is taking an actual anti-human rights position. It's pretty common.

The pro-choice side would say the by banning abortions you are infringing the right of a woman to choose when to have a child. The pro-life side would contend that by enabling abortions you are infringing the right to life of an unborn human. Both positions are framed in terms of human rights and plenty of "reasonable rational" people argue vigorously for each one while viewing those who disagree with them as basically evil.

Framing the debate in terms of individuals' rights is intended to remove the topic from the realm of political discussion and shut down dissent. It also completely drowns out discussion of the societal effects of allowing/banning abortion, which is just as important as the effect on individuals. The same unproductive dynamic plays out in the debate over e.g. the right to free speech.

I want to add that I believe the way forward in this debate (and others) is to acknowledge that both rights are valid but neither are unlimited. The best compromise is to be found by sounding out the limits of each right. That is a political debate, not a quasi-religious one, and one that should be rekindled from time to time to update the compromise to match contemporary circumstances. In this regard, for either side in the abortion debate to enshrine their preferred right in the constitution would be a disaster.

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