This says it all when it comes to pro-abortion logic:
The political left is obsessed with rights. But what are rights? What rights do we actually have, and what makes them rights in the first place? Many people blur the lines between what they believe ought to be rights and real inalienable rights. The ability for a citizenry to choose its own leaders (vote), that’s a right. For example, the ability to cast a vote and have election officials take your word for it that you are who you say you are for realzies, not so much.
What can you possibly say to someone who believes abortion is a right which needs to be secured and protected, but doesn’t believe being born is a right; birth being a necessary life event which must occur prior to the right to an abortion. If it isn’t true that life is a basic human right by virtue of being a member of the human family, on what basis can you claim any rights at all?
Doesn’t this ever strike the abortion defender as odd? If abortion is an inalienable right, as some believe, then every aborted girl has been denied the right to her own abortion: the very procedure they argue must not be infringed in any degree!
Sifting Reality 
“Many people blur the lines between what they believe ought to be rights and real inalienable rights.”
Well said, and a very important distinction that some people need to be reminded of.
Rights do not exist, so we don’t have any. We have a social contract that promotes the welfare of individuals and society.
Voting is not a right but simply the best method discovered so far for selecting political leaders. If a better method is found then voting should be abandoned.
Do you have a right to live? Regardless of government? For example if we were stuck on an island with no society should you have a right to not have me kill you?
No, no one has a right to life. If we were stuck on an island we might agree to cooperate to improve our chance of survival, or one might kill the other to enhance their chance of survival.
Then you agree there is no such thing as murder in the philosophical sense, and that it wouldnt be wrong for me to kill you.
Correct, murder exists only in the legal sense. We have agreed that murder is in general bad for society.
People confuse human rights (the right to life, freedom, free thought, speech, etc. I include property rights as a human right as well) which all people should have, simply because they are human beings and are uniquely valued as such, with civil or granted rights, such as the right to drive a car, formally recognised marriage in the eyes of law or religion, voting, etc., which are privileges and responsibilites which must be earned and qualified for. These days, people have added on entitlements and call them rights, such as the right to not be offended, or the right to other people’s money through government programs.
All rights, human or granted, can be forfeighted – if a mugger attacks someone, their crime makes them a danger to others and they forfeight their right to freedom when caught and convicted. Or, if their victims defends themselves and one ends up killing the attacker, it is the attacker that has forfeighted their own life by committing a violent crime.
All rights, human or granted, can potentially be taken away by the powers that be. Rights have to be fought for, defended and valued, and human rights especially so.
To the moral relativist, however, human rights are no different than granted rights. What this requires is the complete devaluation of humanity. If humans have to innate rights, they have no innate value. If all rights are granted rights, as decided by society, they have no value and neither to people.
The end result of moral relativity is that nothing has value. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Syria? Who cares? Survival of the fittest and the most powerful. Their lives are as meaningless as their “rights,” and we have no grounds to object.
Jeffrey Kraus,
You’re an idiot.
I knew Marshall and I would find common ground eventually. LOL. Good one.
Jeffrey proves what we say about the lack of goodness in atheism.
No creator, no rights, no consequences, no reason to be good, no reason to make or enforce law.
Isn’t it better to ACT as if we were created and endowed with certain inalienable rights, than to act as if none of us are any better than algae, even if you don’t believe it?
Thats why I keep him around. He exemplifies a consistent atheistic worldview.
John,
One of your earlier posts dealt with “what works”. Certainly, merely acting as if we believe that humans have rights simply because they’re human works better for humans than acting as if we don’t believe it.
Look at any atheist regime in the 20th century.