Obama Declares Gitmo Detainees ‘Fetuses’
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James Joyner | Friday, May 22, 2009 |
Scott Ott’s latest parody news story:
In an effort to shut down the U.S. Naval Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, thereby restoring America’s moral standing in the world, President Barack Obama today declared some 240 enemy combatants held at Gitmo to be ‘human fetuses’.
In an executive order, the president said, “Since I ordered Gitmo shut down, and people don’t want us to bring the inmates here, the only way to extract them from the facility is to change their legal status to one that offers us more choices.”
More at the Examiner; the rest is rather less funny given the nature of abortion. Personally, I support human rights for both fetuses and accused terrorists but Scott’s juxtaposition about the blithe acceptance of one and the frenzied reaction to the other is apt.
Photo by Flickr user AmnestyInternationalNorthernIreland under Creative Commons license.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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Apples and oranges.
If we're concerned with exposing pro-choice anti-torture types as hypocrites, great. If we're concerned with exposing philosophical weaknesses in the pro-choice, anti-torture position, there's more work to be done.
This is similar to an argument presented in our college daily years ago that mocked pro-life people for generally being pro-capital punishment. A letter to the editor a day or two later simply asked, "would you rather kill fetuses or convicted criminals?"
But I agree with Herb in general that these issues are so different that there's very few overlapping arguments to be used. While I'm somewhere in the middle on the abortion issue (if it's possible to be so), I'm convinced that torture is ineffective, immoral, and illegal, in addition to stoking anti-Americanism unnecessarily. Only one or two of those arguments could apply to abortion.
Being declared a "human fetus" by Obama would give a whole new and terrify aspect to the promise of universal healthcare.
Out of curiosity, James; at what point in fetal development would you (personally) say that human rights attach to the fetus?
Out of curiosity, James; at what point in fetal development would you (personally) say that human rights attach to the fetus?
No later than week 5, certainly. By that point, there's no real question that a human being exists.
Thanks for the reply.
"would you rather kill fetuses or convicted criminals?"
You can only kill a fetus by accident.
Why are people who go to college so dumb, oh ya cause they been taught by liberals.
