rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (06/25/85)
> In the first place, the topic for this newsgroup is abortion. > You are trying to divert attention from the issue at hand. These are the words of Gary Samuelson (525@bunkerb.UUCP). If anyone on this planet has been trying to divert attention from the REAL issues at hand, it is surely Gary Samuelson. To think that prior to this he had the gall to demand that someone provide substantiation for the claim that he was engaging in base manipulative techniques and consciously avoiding reasoned argument, when every new article he posts serves as evidence of that. For example: take this series of articles on (my god, isn't it awful?) what is done with human fetuses (according to Gary's sources). The viability of his sources notwithstanding (how can we take seriously those who think it argumentatively clever to say things like "The placenta we use is derived from umbilical cords [sic!]"). Gary is indeed, as a previous poster noted, determined to bludgeon us with his point of view. Forget about having to prove the notion that abortion is wrong, assume it is and appeal to emotion by "showing" how "awful" the consequences are. As I said in an earlier article, what if I wrote an article on the awful things people do with plastic. (It's thrown away in garbage cans and crushed; it's molded into unsafe toys used by children; ...) Only if you already assume (as Gary clearly does) that doing using plastic is "wrong" does worrying about its consequences make any sense from the standpoint of a reasoned argument. Gary might say (and he has) "But the fact that there is profit to be made from fetuses, the fact that the results of abortions might be used for purposes I don't like, makes it wrong." Talk about ad hominem arguments! The motives of some people involved may be profit-oriented (horrors!), thus the position such people hold on abortion is wrong. Is that it? Perhaps you don't like the fact that the fetuses aren't buried according to your religious persuasion. Well, my body isn't going to be buried that way either, so there. You might say: "But at least you have a choice, the fetus [I'M SURE YOU'D USE THE WORD 'BABY' FOR ITS EMOTIONAL IMPACT] doesn't." Damn right. So why your choice instead of mine being made for the fetus? At least with the things you find so horrible, the fetus' parts are put to good use, unlike taking up space in the ground on an already overcrowded earth. So what is your complaint, Gary? You don't like what happens to fetuses after abortions, thus you think we should agree with you that abortion is wrong. Actually, I would tend to doubt that these issues are at the root of your own position on the issue, i.e., that these are not the reasons you are personally against abortion. But you see them as MEANS of manipulatively convincing other people of the rightness of your position. As usual with your argumentative style, Gary, that doesn't cut it. Gary and I have been at odds a few times before. Some might use the standard line that "it's because you're an asshole, Rosen!" (Always the last resort of those with little to say.) Others who've seen what Samuelson's writing has always been like (for instance, those who actually pored through his entire reply to the blast from the past---god, I pity anyone who actually read all of Gary's verbose rambling and all of my unnecessary and redundant followups), know that Gary argues backwards from his assumed conclusions, as evidenced here. You can't show that abortion is "wrong" by attempting to show that what's done with fetuses is "repulsive" IF you assume the wrongness of abortion. Do you see the ridiculous circularity in that? Can we get on to more serious arguments? -- Like a bourbon? (HIC!) Drunk for the very first time... Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr