. . . the interrelatedness could have important implications when it comes to practical/applied ethics, like abortion. . . .

About Kant's categorical imperative:

Is it only about perfect duty (i.e. not doing an action that would contradict itself like lying or stealing) or does it directly lead to the second formulation (humans as ends, not means)?

My reasoning is that if the categorical imperative treats every action as if it were to become universal law, and you obviously don't want to be treated simply as a means, then doesn't that necessarily imply that everyone should be treated as least partially as an end?

I know it might sound a bit odd, but hang on with me here.

However, if you take the first and second formulations separately, abortion could be viewed as possibly moral. This is because abortion in itself does not contradict perfect duty while the second formulation would postulate that only moral agents are capable of having rights. So thus if you don't "mesh" the two, you wouldn't really get any rights for the unborn.

j/w

My reasoning being that since you would not want to be aborted in the past now it goes back in time to give you the rights to be treated as an ends.

the interrelatedness could have important implications when it comes to practical/applied ethics ... However, if you take the first and second formulations separately

Abortion is a matter of the state and would not have anything to do with morals.

The question isn't whether or not abortion should be legal but whether or not it's moral.

Abortion is entirely a legal matter and an action, if you allow that the state is an agent, of the state and entirely beyond questions of morality. If a person performs an abortion without a license, that is illegal, which is to say, a crime against he state.

What about before there was a State? or what about my wife and I who live in the woods secluded from civilization? The State then has no say as to how I act.

Every personal choice boils down to a moral choice. The State can only try to direct us in one direction, and punish us if we don't adhere to their rules.

A deontologist would argue that laws should be derived from ethical first principles, and Kant's categorical imperative is sort of the flag-bearer of deontology. You're describing a utilitarian conception of law, in which the law need not have a moral foundation so long as it achieves a desired societal state.

As for Fairbanks, you're essentially advocating moral fascism: primacy of the state over all others. This view is essentially wrong because the state itself is bound to any moral rules imposed on humans, because "the state" as such is not a singular entity, simply an organization consisting of human beings who are bound to the rules of morals.

The natural behavior of the state is probably closer to utilitarian than utopic but the state would not be subject to ethics in the first place.

You're treating the state as if it were some abstract being, when it clearly isn't. The state is nothing more than a monopoly over certain things like protection, national defense, courts, law, etc. The state is made up of individuals who then dictate what these monopolies do.

1. Individuals make up the state.
   
2. Individuals are bound to moral laws.
   
3. Ergo, the state is bound to moral laws.
   

My entire point being that the state isn't a being. It's a collection of individual beings who are bound to moral law, so the state is as well.

I'm not saying that you're advocating fascism, but you are advocating moral fascism. Moral fascism is the view that the state is above all else and that only its laws can impose moral rules on humans. It's the ethical corner stone of all fascism.

But in this thread we're not talking about the natural behavior of the state, right? We're talking about morals as conceived in Kantian ethics, which are most certainly NOT a model for law. So yes, abortion has its legal vagaries, but that's besides the point -- which is how might one make a moral judgement about abortion under a Kantian ethical scheme?

My entire point being that the state isn't a being. It's a collection of individual beings who are bound to moral law.

What is moral law and what makes someone bound to it?

Kant was of the opinion that man is his own law (autonomy) - that is, he binds himself under the law which he himself gives himself. Actually, in a profounder sense, this is how lawlessness or experimentation are established. This is not being rigorously earnest any more than Sancho Panza's self-administered blows to his own bottom were vigorous. ... Now if a man is never even once willing in his lifetime to act so decisively that [a lawgiver] can get hold of him, well, then it happens, then the man is allowed to live on in self-complacent illusion and make-believe and experimentation, but this also means: utterly without grace.