brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (12/08/84)
Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst system.... except for all the other systems." Boy was he right! Some of you seem to be assuming that the democratic principle should be absolute. I would rather think that whenever we can get away with NOT subjecting something to any principle of rule by others we should jump at the chance. Democracy should not mean "51% of the population may repress 49%." It should mean that they can do this only when no other decision making process will work. You need not be anarchist to be pro-choice as is claimed. You must simply believe that other people should not interfere in your life unless there is no alternative whatsoever. If 51% of the population in a town is Moonie, should the law make us all moonies? Abortion laws are enforced morality. They differ strongly from murder laws in that quite often the murderer will support the murder laws. Murder laws don't require this 51% repressing 49% - everybody seems to want them, and everybody knows why they want them - for personal protection and the keeping of the peace. If you can't see a difference you're too tied up in absolutes. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
stevev@tekchips.UUCP (Steve Vegdahl) (12/10/84)
> Abortion laws are enforced morality. They differ strongly from murder laws > in that quite often the murderer will support the murder laws. Murder laws > don't require this 51% repressing 49% - everybody seems to want them, > and everybody knows why they want them - for personal protection and the > keeping of the peace. Does this mean that if 51% of the population of Mississippi in 1860 favored slavery that it should have been allowed to continue? "Anti-slavery laws are enforced morality ..." >If you can't see a difference you're too tied up in absolutes. With some issues, there is no moral alternative but to take an absolute stand. Many people believe that abortion is (morally) on par with slavery, or worse. They feel a moral obligation to be Abraham Lincoln's with respect to the abortion issue. Steve Vegdahl Computer Research Lab. Tektronix, Inc.
johnston@spp1.UUCP (12/10/84)
> Abortion laws are enforced morality. They differ strongly from murder laws > in that quite often the murderer will support the murder laws. Murder laws > don't require this 51% repressing 49% - everybody seems to want them, > and everybody knows why they want them - for personal protection and the keeping > of the peace. If you can't see a difference you're too tied up in absolutes. > -- > Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473 I agree with one point. People do want murder laws for the reasons you stated -personal protection and the keeping of the peace. Of course a lot depends on your polling sample and whether you've asked the group most likely to lose. Mike Johnston
brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (12/12/84)
People who equate the morality of slavery with the morality of abortion are missing one important fact. With slavery, as with murder and other crimes, there is a victim who jumps up and says, "I don't want this done to me." A fetus isn't sentient and can no more jump up and complain than a cow can. If you want to argue about whether the fetus is sentient, that's fine, but there is a major difference here, in that nobody can deny the presence of the complaint with slavery, and nobody can even show evidence for the complaint with abortion. (And before you post an article claiming that the fetus feels pain, let me remind you that what we are talking about is sentient thought, not pain detection.) -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) (12/12/84)
>Brad Tempelton: >People who equate the morality of slavery with the morality of abortion >are missing one important fact. With slavery, as with murder and other >crimes, there is a victim who jumps up and says, "I don't want this done >to me." A fetus isn't sentient and can no more jump up and complain than >a cow can. A slave who resisted slavery in the South was usually killed. The fact that someone can complain doesn't mean that their rights are recognised. The slaves had to have advocates who were not slaves. >If you want to argue about whether the fetus is sentient, that's fine, >but there is a major difference here, in that nobody can deny the presence >of the complaint with slavery, and nobody can even show evidence for >the complaint with abortion. (And before you post an article claiming >that the fetus feels pain, let me remind you that what we are talking about >is sentient thought, not pain detection.) The ability to complain is not equivalent with sentient thought. Even if it were it is not a good criterion where the right to life is concerned. One-year-olds can't complain either, but that doesn't make it OK to kill them (I hope). -- Paul Dubuc cbscc!pmd
jho@ihuxn.UUCP (Yosi Hoshen) (12/12/84)
Steve Vegdahl =< >Does this mean that if 51% of the population of Mississippi in 1860 favored >slavery that it should have been allowed to continue? > "Anti-slavery laws are enforced morality ..." > >>If you can't see a difference you're too tied up in absolutes. > >With some issues, there is no moral alternative but to take an absolute >stand. Many people believe that abortion is (morally) on par with slavery, >or worse. They feel a moral obligation to be Abraham Lincoln's with >respect to the abortion issue. I consider the pro-lifer's demand that women carry their pregnancies against their will, as an attempt to enslave women. A slave has no right to control his/her body. But this is exactly the program that pro-lifers' want to impose on women. They want do deny women the right to control their bodies. Oh, but "pro-lifers" say: "We are concerned with the right of the unborn". If you are so concerned with the lifes of the fetuses, then why don't you work on an artificial techniques to preserve the life of the fetus outside the womens' womb. I think that such approach would be more productive than enslaving women. -- Yosi Hoshen, Bell Laboratories Naperville, Illinois, (312)-979-7321, Mail: ihnp4!ihuxn!jho
cdshaw@watmath.UUCP (Chris Shaw) (12/13/84)
> > Abortion laws are enforced morality. They differ strongly from murder laws > > in that quite often the murderer will support the murder laws. Murder laws > > don't require this 51% repressing 49% - everybody seems to want them, > > and everybody knows why they want them - for personal protection and the > > keeping of the peace. > > Does this mean that if 51% of the population of Mississippi in 1860 favored > slavery that it should have been allowed to continue? > "Anti-slavery laws are enforced morality ..." > > >If you can't see a difference you're too tied up in absolutes. > > With some issues, there is no moral alternative but to take an absolute > stand. Many people believe that abortion is (morally) on par with slavery, > or worse. They feel a moral obligation to be Abraham Lincoln's with > respect to the abortion issue. > > Steve Vegdahl Interesting, in fact, it made me think for quite a while before I saw a way out of this one!! (Of course, it may not work...) The prime difference I see between abortion & slavery as issues in which the majority-rule yardstick can be twisted into a pretzel is the issue which has a pro-choicer saying "but it's obvious that slavery is WRONG (necessarily), while abortion isn't". It's called coercion. Slavery is the coercion of a person to perform tasks against his/her will. A law that requires a woman to bear (against her will) a child that she is pregnant with is coercion, and is therefore wrong. As is traditional slavery, which allows people to require another person to do work for them for no compensation. I remain CD Shaw
stevev@tekchips.UUCP (12/18/84)
>>> Abortion laws are enforced morality ... >> Does this mean that if 51% of the population of Mississippi in 1860 favored >> slavery that it should have been allowed to continue? >> "Anti-slavery laws are enforced morality ..." > The prime difference I see between abortion & slavery ... I did not mean to start a flurry of messages about slavery in net.abortion, which I apparently did. Rather, I was attempting to raise a meta-issue. I picked slavery "out of the hat" as an example of something that we all agree (we do, don't we?) is "obviously immoral", but that at one time in parts of our country was an accepted practice. People vehemently argued for it to be continuted. Given that X (e.g., slavery, murder) is immoral, statements such as "anti-X laws are enforced morality" are not persuasive arguments against anti-X laws. To a person who believes that abortion is on par with slavery, murder, etc., "abortion laws are enforced morality" makes about as much sense as "anti-slavery (or anti-murder, or pick your favorite immoral activity...) laws are enforced morality". What I am suggesting to people with pro-choice leanings is that the next time you post an argument about abortion, try substituting something like "slavery" into your argument in place of "abortion". If the modified argument makes no sense, then consider not posting it. I am sure that an analagous filter can be proposed for "pro-life" postings. If such filters are applied, we can cut down on the high percentage of messages in this newsgroup that beg one question or another. Steve Vegdahl Computer Research Lab. Tektronix, Inc. Beaverton, Oregon
js2j@mhuxt.UUCP (sonntag) (12/20/84)
Steve Vegdahl writes: > What I am suggesting to people with pro-choice leanings is that the next > time you post an argument about abortion, try substituting something like > "slavery" into your argument in place of "abortion". If the modified > argument makes no sense, then consider not posting it. This is ridiculous. How can pro-choicers argue that abortion is NOT immoral if we can only use arguements which still make sense when we substitute something which we all agree is immoral (slavery) for abortion. Could you argue that whistling in public should be allowed if you had to use arguements which still made sense when they were about mass murder? The arguement that anti-abortion laws are enforced morality means that anti-abortionists are attempting to enforce THEIR view of what is moral on everyone else, NOT that the laws simply enforce some absolute moral standard. May I suggest, Steve, that you take the advice you give in the last line of the above quote. Jeff Sonntag ihnp4!mhuxt!js2j
norm@ariel.UUCP (N.ANDREWS) (12/20/84)
> >Rather, I was attempting to raise a meta-issue. >I picked slavery "out of the hat" as an example of something >that we all agree (we do, don't we?) is "obviously immoral", but that >at one time in parts of our country was an accepted practice. >People vehemently argued for it to be continued. > Steve Vegdahl > Computer Research Lab. > Tektronix, Inc. > Beaverton, Oregon The ethics of abortion and the ethics of slavery are NOT obvious to everyone. That's why there was once such strife over the slavery issue, and why this newsgroup exists today. However, I think the slavery issue is a good issue to analyze, since the analysis can shed some light on the abortion issue. Suppose that either: 1.) Octopus-like intelligent creatures, masters of interstellar travel visited earth, coming in peace, or 2.) A laboratory, investigating the ability of chimps to use language, came across an abnormally intelligent chimp, a chimp-genius that became fluent in American sign language, and Supose either one of these creatures was wantonly killed (or enslaved, tortured or otherwise abused.) In the case of such treatment, say a killing, should the perpetrator of the killing be tried for the murder of a "person"? If so, why? In the case of the creature's "enslavement", should the perpetrator of the enslavement be tried for the enslavement of a "person"? If so, why? If not, why not? And, more generally, is it ever really in anyone's long-range self-interest to attempt to achieve values through slavery or murder? If some behavior generally considered "moral" is not in one's long-range self- interest, why should anyone care, in that respect, to be "moral"? Is one's long-range self -interest ever immoral? Are "pro-lifers" able to answer these questions rationally? Are pro-choicers able to find a rational basis for individual rights and the rule of objective laws? I'll tune in next week to find out... Norm Andrews AT&T Information Systems HO1C325 Crawfords Corner Road Holmdel, New Jersey 07733 vax135!ariel!norm (201) 834-3685
brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (12/20/84)
The whole point here is that we in the pro-choice camp want a society with as little enforced morality as possible. In general the rule is, "The more subjective the morality, the less there should be a law." Abortion is very clearly a matter of much more subjective morality than slavery. And that's the difference, plain and simple. How do we define objective morality? It's tough, but I think we must start from a passive state - which is to say we allow things that don't infringe on the desires of others, and only disallow things when there is a very clear large (like >90%) majority that want it. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) (12/20/84)
>The whole point here is that we in the pro-choice camp want a society with >as little enforced morality as possible. In general the rule is, "The more >subjective the morality, the less there should be a law." >Abortion is very clearly a matter of much more subjective morality than >slavery. And that's the difference, plain and simple. >How do we define objective morality? It's tough, but I think we must >start from a passive state - which is to say we allow things that don't >infringe on the desires of others, and only disallow things when there >is a very clear large (like >90%) majority that want it. Then by your standards it WAS wrong to ban slavery in the U.S. I doubt that 90% were opposed to it then; there was probably only a small minority who really wanted it banned. To discuss the banning of slavery by today's moral standards is missing the whole point. Slavery wasn't banned by our standard of morality. Rather the banning of slavery seems to have contributed greatly to our present standard against it. I would venture to say that slavery was very much a matter of "subjective morality" in the antebellum South. Slaves were definitely viewed as non-persons then. -- Paul Dubuc cbscc!pmd
dsc@lzpfc.UUCP (12/20/84)
> > Abortion is very clearly a matter of much more subjective morality than > slavery. And that's the difference, plain and simple. > > How do we define objective morality? It's tough, but I think we must > start from a passive state - which is to say we allow things that don't > infringe on the desires of others, and only disallow things when there > is a very clear large (like >90%) majority that want it. > -- > Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473 Well Brad, what you seem to want is morality by democracy, so that if we all got together and decided *whatever* and we all agreed (90 %), it would be moral. In ancient societies (egyptian and polynesian) incest (marrying of sisters to brothers) and consequently killing deformed infants was the way of life. Other societies burnt their first-born-sons alive. Since all the members of those societies agreed to *whatever*, you're moral codes would say that those where moral acts. A differing view is that religion and/or experience shows us what is moral. Slavery was always immoral, it did not become immoral when society decided to admit it as immoral. Dave Chechik (houxq or pegasus)!lzpfc!dsc AT&T Information Systems Labs Lincroft, NJ
brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (12/21/84)
Slavery is a tough case, Paul writes, because back in the 19th century he thinks >90% of the population wanted it. Odd that my country saw fit to ban it at the time. But all that aside, you seem to be arguing the pro-choice viewpoint - that society should not infringe on the rights of the individual even when the majority thinks it should be done. You're the one who says we can make a law of physical force based on majority rule, not I. Indeed it's a tough case. You would advocate that those few people who are right and moral should dictate the ways of the vast majority. In the case of slavery, we see in hindsight that they were right. But are you prepared to advocate this type of rule in all cases just because it is right some of the time? Sorry to bring him into this, but old Adolf made the right decisions sometimes - he just really blew it in the balance. Your advocacy of rule by the 10% "because they are right" is sure to lead to disaster in the long run. So we can't apply it to abortion. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) (12/21/84)
> > This is ridiculous. How can pro-choicers argue that abortion is NOT immoral > if we can only use arguements which still make sense when we substitute > something which we all agree is immoral (slavery) for abortion. I don't agree that slavery is immoral. Even if I did, why should immorality or lack thereof influcence how I act about anything? I am a pro-choicer, why should I argue that abortion is not immoral? I do not believe that that those categories are useful ones. According to the Shi'ite Muslims, great Imem like Khomeni (of Iran, sp?), are divinely inspired and can make no moral error. Many people throughout history have claimed have recieved rules from "god" that supercede the rules that were popular at the time. God gave Moses the ten commandments. Joesph Smith heard from god indirectly through the Angel Moroni. Christ has a special relationship with god. Mohammad was very close to god and god spoke through him. The first Shaw of Iran, Isma'il said: "God and the Immaculate Imams are with me. ... if the people utter one word of protest I will draw the sword and leave not one of the alive." It is easy to make moral judgements, after all, "everyone knows what is right and what is wrong." Everyone knows something different. There are so many gods and so many systems of morality to choose from that anything can be justified or prohibited on the grounds of morality. For instance, according to much Christan theology, the decendents of Ham had black skin, a mark, because Ham did something wicked. This justified the degradation and slavery of black people in Christian society until recent times. It is historically a bit weird for a Christian to say that slavery is obviously immoral. -- scc!steiny Don Steiny - Personetics @ (408) 425-0382 109 Torrey Pine Terr. Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060 ihnp4!pesnta -\ fortune!idsvax -> scc!steiny ucbvax!twg -/
egs@epsilon.UUCP (Ed Sheppard) (12/21/84)
Brad: <- my bug killer Please forgive me, but I'm terribly confused. First, you say: > > >How do we define objective morality? It's tough, but I think we must > > >start from a passive state - which is to say we allow things that don't > > >infringe on the desires of others, and only disallow things when there > > >is a very clear large (like >90%) majority that want it. To which Paul Dubuc replied: > >Then by your standards it WAS wrong to ban slavery in the U.S. I doubt > >that 90% were opposed to it then; there was probably only a small minority > >who really wanted it banned. To which you then replied: >Slavery is a tough case, Paul writes, because back in the 19th century >he thinks >90% of the population wanted it. That's not what he said at all! I mean, even I can see this (he said self-deprecatingly :-). Did you even read his article? Ed Sheppard Bell Communications Research
stevev@tekchips.UUCP (01/01/85)
> > What I am suggesting to people with pro-choice leanings is that the next > > time you post an argument about abortion, try substituting something like > > "slavery" into your argument in place of "abortion". If the modified > > argument makes no sense, then consider not posting it. > > This is ridiculous. How can pro-choicers argue that abortion is NOT immoral > if we can only use arguements which still make sense when we substitute > something which we all agree is immoral (slavery) for abortion. Could you > argue that whistling in public should be allowed if you had to use > arguements which still made sense when they were about mass murder? I do not discourage the posting of arguments that abortion is (or is not) immoral. What I discourage is the posting of arguments that beg the question of whether a fetus is human, has rights, etc. Arguments about these issues (of which there have been many in this newsgroup, and appropriately so) are at a level for which the slavery analogy does not apply. Whether a slave is a human with rights does not depend on whether a fetus' heart is beating at 5 weeks, etc. As an example of an argument that DOES beg the question, consider: > The arguement that anti-abortion laws are enforced morality means that > anti-abortionists are attempting to enforce THEIR view of what is moral > on everyone else, NOT that the laws simply enforce some absolute moral > standard. I understand the argument; it makes perfect sense if you assume that the unborn have no right to live. But, imagine a slave-owner in the 1850's saying an analagous thing about slavery. His argument would be that it is an infringement on his rights to be not allowed to own slaves. He begs the question of whether a slave has rights. Similarly, the argument in the above paragraph begs the question of whether the unborn have rights. It makes little sense unless one assumes that the unborn do not have the right to live. I never meant to raise slavery as an issue here. What I want to raise is the issue of the large number of postings of late that implicitly start with the assumption that the unborn do (or do not) have the right to live, and then go on to discuss how inflexible and immoral people are who believe the other. Steve Vegdahl