cbostrum (02/05/83)
To date, there has been no serious arguments in favor of abortion. So I thought I would try to give one. My extreme title was to get people to not type 'n'. There are a number of reasons that abortion might be wrong. The most powerful is that a foetus has a right to life. Even if it didnt, abortion might still be wrong on some other grounds, but only a weak case can be made. If a foetus has a right to life, this right must be played off against the mothers rights, such as right to self-determination of her body. I feel that the mother would have to lose out in such a contest. So it comes down to whether the feotus has such a right. Briefly, let us say an entity possessing such a right is a **person**. Note right away that there is NO apriori reason to suppose the class of persons co-extensive with the class of humans. The question becomes, is the feotus a person? And to answer that, we must find relevant conditions for the ascription of personhood. The basic principle is that: only an entity who has some conception of its life as something it possesses and something that will continue for a long time into the future if not acted upon unfavorably by external agents can possibly have a right to life. Alternately, if it makes no difference to the entity itself what is done to it, it cant possible matter to the entity what you do to it. For it to make a difference, the entity has to have the relevant understanding. (Of course it may make a difference to someone else; if you trash a famous painting, altho it has no right to life, you might upset its owner.) I think it is clear from what we know that a feotus does not, and that it is not too risky to work on this hypothesis. It is probably far more risky to work on the hypothesis that, for example, apes, dolphins and even cows have no right to life. I also think it is fairly clear that a newborn baby has no right to life in the above sense. However, some of the other reasons (with which, I mentioned above, only a weak case can be made) can be used more effectively with new born babies that feotues. But not much more.
plw (02/06/83)
HORSE-FEATHERS!!! To say that an entity must be self-conscious of its own existance to have a right to life is absurd at best. How do you determine that any entity is aware of its existance - 'I think, therefore I am'? Prove to me that you are aware of your own existance. It should be interesting. The arguments for abortion that say that a handicapped child should be aborted (quality of life arguments) are the most selfish ones I've heard. They are obviously looking at that life from their own point of view. My youngest brother-in-law died at the age of 12 years after his parents were told he wouldn't live 6 months. He was a multiple-handicap - cerebral palsy, heart defects, and brain damaged. He never learned to crawl, talk, or do anything for himself. I doubt if he was ever aware of his own existance, and I doubt if he knew how pitiful that existance was from our point of view. But he was one of the happiest children I knew. He certainly was aware of other people's existance. As far as abortion for any reason goes, let's get one thing straight right from the start: Sex(ual intercourse) causes babies If this was drummed into people from early childhood, the abortion rate would go down. Recreational sex is a sign of the hedonistic, self-centered times we live in. The 'Me first', post-war generation making itself known. I can't say that the *only* purpose of sex is procreation, but I also can't say that just because it feels good, its primary purpose is enjoyment. I don't know of any mammal that has sex for fun other than the 'superior intelligent' homo sapiens. I've seen many requests for sex education, but none for birth-control education. There are many methods for birth control ranging from abstinance to sterilization with varying degrees of effectiveness and all of which have side effects of one form or another. (Maybe we shouldn't fool with Mother Nature!) Why is it people are always wondering how to close the barn door after the horse is gone? Burners on 'pilot', please Pete Wilson ...we13!plw
leichter (02/06/83)
Re: Requests for contraception education instead of just sex education. In fact, a major aspect of most sex education programs IS contraception educa- tion - and it is the portion most objected to by conservatives, since they view it as effectively "giving permission" for sex. If you think contraception education is important - would you support distri- bution of contraceptives to, say, high school kids who choose not to use "abstention" as their birth-control technique? That's the logical conclusion of your argument - and few conservatives - the people objecting to sex education - would go along with you. -- Jerry decvax!yale-comix!leichter
bcw (02/07/83)
From: Bruce C. Wright @ Duke University Re: Abortion topic I had promised myself that I wouldn't get involved with this, but some recent comments by Pete Wilson are too far out of line to go uncommented-upon. It's certainly true that an excess of selfishness is one of the main problems of our current society, and that one shouldn't decide an entity's right to exist solely because of its degree of awareness of its condition, but it is not right to try to decide what the *human* species should do based on one's (biased) perceptions of how some arbitrary other species does things (there is an amazing amount of diversity in the world and one could prove absolutely anything with this argument). For example, saying that mammals other than man do not have sex for fun is misleading on several grounds. First of all, it is an extremely teleo- logical view of animal behavior which I'm highly doubtful is justified since most animals do not appear to be as aware of the consequences of actions as are humans. Secondly, the implication is that animals (for what- ever reasons) do not or are incapable of "having fun." This is possible, but is somewhat like trying to tell if an alien species has intelligence. The evidence is that mammals have a certain amount of behavior (especially social behavior) which appears to give them what might as well be said to be analogous to "fun," whatever that is. Thirdly, certainly many mammals have some forms of sexual behavior which cannot be directly connected with procreation: for example, ape and monkey grooming behavior and play seems to have at least some sexual components. Also, many mammals will masturbate or engage in other sexual behavior under appropriate circumstances. Some higher animals (including both mammals and birds) even have behavior patterns similar to human homosexual behavior patterns - sexual behavior between two members of the same sex. All of this has relatively little bearing on how humans should behave. One can find "support" amoung other species for practically any view you can name - what should matter is what's right for *us*, not what's right for *them*. Grumble, grumble. Bruce C. Wright @ Duke University
soreff (02/07/83)
It is fortunate to see at least one abortion opponent who has something good
to say about birth control. I find the usual conservative opinion package
(anti-abortion, anti sex education, pro "squeal law", pro military, pro
draft) to be rather close to a program carefully tailored to maximize
production of cannon fodder. I don't know if most conservatives explicitly
want this, but they certainly act like they do. -Jeffrey Soreff
(hplabsb!soreff)eager (02/08/83)
For examples of "mammals which have[D[D[D[D[have] sex for fun" please see most discussions of chimpanzes, baboons, and other primates, porpoises, dolphin, other sea mammals. Baboons have also been noted to practice homosexual intercourse and other non- procreative sex acts. It seems to me that using any argument about what other animals do in the management of their sex lives, is total absurdity. Certainly most animals have little or no choice in whether to have intercourse, and most feel compelled to have sex when in rut. One of the many wonderful features of being a human, in my opinion, is that we are little controlled by instinct. We have the choice to have sex or not, to create babies or not. Let us not demean ourselves by stooping to arguments which compare human action to that of other mammals, reptiles or birds. People who do are likely more closely associated with turkeys than other people.
bernie (02/16/83)
Recreational sex *does* exist among other species; in fact, sex serves many social and political (I use the word "political" in a loose sense, of course) purposes in primates, for example. Even if it *were* unique to Homo Sapiens, so what? We've discovered a lot of other things that have eluded our fellow species on this planet, notably things like the wheel, tool-making and fire. The fact that no other species does something doesn't mean they're right and we're wrong. Glad to hear something *other* than the Great Abortion Debate, --Bernie Roehl ...decvax!utzoo!watmath!watarts!bernie
tim (02/18/83)
Who the **** could believe that animals don't have recreational sex? Who is responsible for posting this obvious idiocy? Why *else* would animals have sex? They don't know about the link between copulation and pregnancy, people. Perhaps whoever it was meant that they only have sex at certain times, but this is a matter of biology and nothing else. Where do these foolish ideas come from? Tim Maroney duke!unc!tim