Moral Gray Areas

The following is a slightly modified definition of morality:  "Honoring the equal rights of all sentient adults to life, liberty, property and self-defense, to be free from violation through force or fraud".  And as has already been said here, all else is subjective and can be labeled as virtue--which is fair game for social pressure, but morality is the ONLY thing that should be legislated.  This in no way changes the fact that subjective morality for adults does not exist.

However, there are a gray transition areas which, while limited, can be shown to need carefully considered legislation as well, all having to do with when rights are acquired.    Specifically, I'm referring to cases such as the differing degrees of humane treatment given to animals, when does an embryo acquire the right to life, and when do children/adolescents or the mentally handicapped come to possess their rights to liberty, property and self defense. All of these gray areas deal with the degree of consciousness, intelligence, self-awareness or potential sentience possessed by a given subject; and they're gray because there is rarely a specific time, or stage of evolution between point A when they don't have a particular right, to point B when they do.  For example, children acquire the right to liberty gradually, yet we use a specific age when they're suddenly no longer considered a minor and have full legal rights as adults.  The point is to recognize that picking a specific, arbitrary point for legal purposes can obviously have negative consequences.  How can we allow for extenuating circumstances yet maintain equal protection under the law?   Should, say, an arbitrary first trimester limit on abortion be lengthened if, for instance, the fetus has developmental problems?  When does the right to life of a fetus override the right to liberty of the mother?  For animals, is humane treatment for a dog the sames as for a chicken, or a lizard or cockroach?  It isn't immoral to put (lock up) a child in playpen, restrict an adolescent from selling his TV, drinking alcohol, or making them do chores, and you don't give a child a gun to handle bullies, etc., but when do they acquire those liberties?

When we look at the extremes, 1 day old vs. 9 mo. old fetus, dog vs. cockroach, we have little trouble making judgements.  This isn't an argument against arbitrary limits, but the transition can be very problematic for deciding what's moral, and how we should deal with these issues legally.  Sometimes we just don't have the information we need to make an informed judgement, and the first step is to recognize that.  Some fundamentalists believe that the right to life begins at conception, but that's strictly a matter of arbitrary faith.  Should a 13 year-old girl who is one day pregnant as the result of being raped by her father be forced to carry the  baby to term?  Others believe we can abort a healthy baby even when it's in the process of being born, but that's just as much a matter of blind faith, and that example should actually be considered murder.

These gray areas are gray because we don't have definitive answers for them, and the point is we need to recognize them for what they are and deal with them calmly as much as we can in our laws.  All we know for sure is if a crime can have no victims, it isn't a crime. All certain immorality stems from an adult sentient establishing a moral double standard for himself or his family, group, race, religion or country.