sas@lanl.ARPA (08/08/85)
Marie suggests that Euthenasia is like Abortion and vice versa and asks if there is any correlation in attitudes about the two issues. I also support Euthenasia. My parents both have expressed a desire to be "let go" when they are beyond help and are held only by machines with little or no hope for recovery. If they did not feel this way, I would defend their lives with mine at that point but they have made their wishes known and I understand where they are coming from. I don't think that the two issues are the same however. If you can imagine the time-reversal involved, I do NOT want my parents to abort me unless the only alternative is the death of my mother. I imagine there are a few out there who may wish they had been aborted but most of them, if they are competent have succeeded by now in taking care of their parents oversight. This isn't a perfect world we live in and it never will be but even the worst of conditions would not prevent me from wanting to be born. As Bill Powers put it: Life is hope. When the nasty commies are drilling your teeth through to extract your secrets, you may wish you had never been born, but when they are through and have your secrets, you probably would be happy to go on living if they would let you. Life is a good thing, it is unfortunate that in its abundance, we don't always appreciate its value. If things were otherwise, as they are for many individuals, and children are rare and difficult to concieve the percieved value of life would go up. It isn't surprising that we want to apply the principles of supply and demand, just sad. Imagine a post-holocaust scene where viable life is rare, where almost every baby born is severely deformed in mind and body, where resources are so scarce that every life must be measured against the others if anyone is to survive. Infantcide becomes neccesary for the survival of the community. Does this perspective make abortion more acceptable? What about later, when genetic damage is rare and resources are more abundant and the gene pool is what is at stake, when everyone must reproduce to avoid the consequences of a restricted gene pool. Does this make abortion less acceptable? I say yes to both, but only in a relative sense. If you value the continuation of the species then you do what you have to, but you don't learn to like it, you just do it. Our society has reached a point where we rarely have to measure one life against another in our daily lives. Many of you are asking us to forget/ignore/dis-believe that abortion is almost always measuring life against quality of life. At best you could say that the life I am talking about is of little value while the quality of life is of more. One or two will continue to insist that the life I am talking about is not only of little value but doesn't even exist. I cannot cope with you. The supply of life is high right now, the demand for quality of life is high too. I don't accept the application of supply vs demand to life except where life is involved on both sides of the equation. Steve Smith