nathan@orstcs.UUCP (02/26/84)
.
This article is intended to completely define the abortion issue
and make all further argument moot. :-) ?
1. Is the fetus human? Biologically, the sperm and egg (both of which
we wash down the toilet regularly), the embryo, fetus, baby, and
parents are all human. Biological arguments *do not apply* to this
issue.
2. Is the fetus human? Legally, it isn't. (for now) Some would change
that. Those who want abortions have found the birth process a
legally useful "delimiter" between the child's being a "growth" and
being a "person". This legal definition has no mystical basis.
3. Is the fetus human? Socially, this is a difficult question, but it
can be dealt with. A "person" exists as an individual to the extent
that s/he has had individual experiences. A newborn baby cannot be
considered a "person" by such a standard since it has no body of
experience. It is protected by the same laws that protect older
critters for expedient (and obvious) reasons. In other (equally
moral) cultures those protections do not apply, and some other
"threshold of personhood" is used; infanticide may be legal there.
The extent to which we apply adult law to infants has changed
radically over the past few centuries, and it is not at all
obvious that the simplest application is the best.
In any case, the social aspect of the problem is simply one of
expediency: Clearly we can't have people killing people left and
right, but people want abortions; therefore we specify a dividing
line, on one side of which is surgery, the other side murder (or
self-defense, or war, or profits, etc.)
4. Is the fetus human? Morally, the question is completely undecided.
Under some systems (including some but not all Christian sects)
there is no question or basis for argument. Under most systems,
there *is* some question, or a qualified answer. There is also a
completely different question: whatever the answer to the previous
question, is it permissible to kill him/her/it? The two questions
must be answered independently.
In a society which admits more than one system of values, a question
of "meta-morals" is more important than either of the two above:
Is it permissible for a minority to enforce decisions, based on its
system of morals, on the majority? (The converse is a much harder
question.) The answer is, "Which minority?" I suggest the answer
should be "no", but humanity has a long history of such enforcement.
Are the members of the minority uniquely qualified to make such
moral decisions for everyone else? By what standard? Does that
standard have any objective/observable reality?
Before enforcing one's moral opinions on others, such questions must
be resolved *before* the merit of the opinions themselves is discussed.
Whether a majority may force its morality on a minority is a
completely different facet which does not apply to the abortion case.
In Conclusion: You should see now that previous discussions were being
conducted "out of context" -- that is, without a common basis for
discussion. If any results are to be arrived at, the matter of item
(4) must be addressed; if, on the other hand, a smokescreen is the
desired effect, then we may continue arguing the other three points.
P.S. Much of this discussion belongs in net.politics, net.philosophy,
net.religion, net.med, or net.flame. Let's limit discussion of
abortion here to women's feelings about the experience. OK?
------------------------------------------------
from the vicious cycle of:
>>----->>-------------( Nathan C. Myers )-----------------\
/ |
| ...!decvax!tektronix!ogcvax!hp-pcd!orstcs!nathan |
| nathan.oregon-state@RAND-RELAY |
\___________________________________________________/decot@cwruecmp.UUCP (Dave Decot) (03/02/84)
I disagree with (at least) one portion of the list of definitive :) answers. The fetus DOES have individual experiences, albethey limited to hearing muffled sounds, floating and swaying, being bumped occasionally. Actually ANY object has experiences, some just record the information and are able to process it in more complicated ways. But fetuses are able to perform some such complicated processing as soon as their brains mature. Dave Decot "Children are people, too." decvax!cwruecmp!decot (Decot.Case@rand-relay)