Wow, heaps of exciting feedback since last I logged on. Thanks everyone.
Only_Humean: I have actually written an entire chapter on the topic of the moral status of children, the mentally impaired and non-human animals. Also I would like to reference some of the points you have made so if you would like to be referenced under your real name, please message me. Essentially my answer to your question is the vast majority of those with mental disabilities are persons just like anybody else, as the bar for personhood is not set at exactly the mental capacities of a healthy human adult. In the example of the schizophrenic, I would say they are a person suffering from a disease which may indeed be violating their freedom and they have proportionally diminished responsibility and we ought to help them recover from this disease much as we ought to help someone recover from any other disease that violates their freedom. However, yes I am required to bite the bullet and say that some humans with the most severe mental disabilities, such as anencephaly, are not persons. All of this is discussed in much more detail in my chapter on this topic. I can post it here if you’d like to have a read?
There is not a trade off between freedom, properly understood, and security, or at least there shouldn’t be. Rather, there is a trade off between freedom over some things and others. Freedom is violated not only by other people restricting your actions, but also by starving to death or getting blown up by a bomb. Certain types of pornography should be banned, if they require the violation of someone’s freedom to make; so anything involving murder, rape or child porn (which is obviously a kind of rape, but I thought it was worth mentioning anyway), but yes it is morally wrong to restrict the content people can watch or create because you think it is, for example, distasteful or profane.
I realize I have only answered some of your questions, but in my defense you used a lot of possible examples. Hopefully this reply gives the spirit of my reply to all of them, but if you want to ask any again to get the specifics of my reply, I shall answer them then.
Faust: I find it somewhat ironic that two common comments about my thesis are that I am just a Kantian and that I am just a utilitarian. I will be sure to reference you as one who has said the former when discussing why I am not a Kantian.
Iambigious: No I don’t think that question is beyond the reach of philosophers. We ought first try to determine the point at which the fetus becomes close enough to a person as to require protecting. Doing this in reality is difficult but, once we properly define personhood and what constitutes “close enough” to it, it is not impossible. Then we can say that before this point, abortion for any reason is permissible, and after this point abortion involves the killing of something morally relevant, and so should only be done in extreme cases, such as when not doing so will mean the death of the mother.
My concern is what actually is true, not necessarily with what can be demonstrated.
Yes, if God is omniscient, then he would presumably know moral truths and could tell us them. What I mean is that whether or not God exists has no bearing on whether those moral truths exist or not.
Also: There seems to be a large discussion of Kant here, which I won’t weigh in on.