harold@hp-pcd.UUCP (03/16/84)
From my (perhaps limited) perspective, there appears to be one question which MUST be answered BEFORE any of the others. (There ARE many, many questions involved in the abortion issue. All the rest are hetorical until our society answers THE QUESTION.) THE QUESTION is: What constitues a "human being" worthy of all the rights, priviledges, and protection "under the law" given to the members of our society?? Or, to state it in less verbose terms: What is the definition of "human"? Until this question is answered, questions involving the rights of the parents cannot be answered because the answers to such questions MUST take into consideration the rights of the unborn human IF (please note: *IF*) the fetus is human. The same is true of the questions concerning rights to "govern one's own body"; likewise for questions about rape, contraception, euthanasia, legalizing mass murder, and whether or not a certain individual may or may not express their opinions on a public network without fear of insult and public abuse. The definition of what is "human" must, positively MUST, be applied consistently across ALL aspects of our society- abortion, old age, accident victim, and war casualty included. If the definition is NOT applied with consistency, our legal system and, indeed, our society as a whole are in danger of total collapse. Permit two brief examples. First, the aged Mother who is totally senile. She cannot recognize anyone- even her own daughter. She cannot feed herself, bathe herself, dress herself, use the toilet, carry on a converstion, do any work. She simply sits there waiting to die. She is a burden on our society. Is she human? Second, an 18 year old girl who is, right now, lying in a Portland hospital. She is on a respirator and a dialysis machine. She has been comatose for 12 days. She has less than a 50% chance of survival. IF she survives, there is no hope of 100% recovery. Is she human? Do either of these two individuals have the "right" to place the tremendous burden of financial and emotional support they require on our society? Admittedly, the question of when a fetus "becomes" a "human" is more difficult to answer than the question of when a person ceases to be "human". But BOTH questions are *EXTREMELY* difficult to deal with. The fear I have is that our society will shun the responsibility of defining what is "human", choosing, instead, to deal with the subsets like abortion and euthanasia. These subsets (falsely?)abecause they (falsely?) appear to be easier to deal with than "playing God" and placing a legal definition of what constitutes "human"
harold@hp-pcd.UUCP (03/18/84)
Sorry about the ending of my article. I confused my editor.... I was talking about our society choosing to deal with the subset questions rather than THE question.... My fear is that our society will never address the issue of defining what is "human". Maybe we feel that it is too much like playing "GOD" and thus ignore that issue. I'm out of time. If there is interest, I'll continue later. Harold Noyes !hplabs!hp-pcd!harold
rcd@opus.UUCP (04/03/84)
<> Recently, some misplaced discussions have been coming across the net - such as discussions of the existence of God in net.flame and net.misc rather than net.religion. I think we've got a misplaced one here also - this belongs somewhere between net.flame and /dev/null: >...or if you subscribe to the rantings of the >Governor of Colorado (boy, did you Coloradoans vote for the wrong guy!) >and believe you should be allowed to kill people who you feel are non-productive (and then a suggestion that anyone who disagrees with this flat misstatement of Lamm's position should...) >...take a collective leap of the top of Pike's Peak! >People who share the myopic views of the Governor of Colorado are only >narrow-minded, self-centered, and self-serving parasites who feed on >the nourishment that humankind has to offer... Unfortunately, very little of what Lamm said actually got reported even locally. Of that, the national media reported even less and, naturally, got it out of context. Then people like our flaming poster here read some small part of what was printed and started flaming. Of course, the only signature is a cryptic "...peeved in New Jersey..."; the login name doesn't tell us anything (zb?) and his news posting software doesn't identify him/her. -- Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile. {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd
susan@varian.UUCP (04/04/84)
My understanding of the Gov. of Colorado's statements were that the incurably ill should die, rather than artificially prolong life. That's not the same as killing. And the 3 western religions named have all "interfered" with human life at one time or another by sanctioning wars. That is killing. Susan Finkelman
ajs@hpfcla.UUCP (04/16/84)
> However, if you still feel that you have the right to decide the fate of > an absolutely helpless fetus, or if you subscribe to the rantings of the > Governor of Colorado (boy, did you Coloradoans vote for the wrong guy!)... Women's rights take priority over fetuses's rights. The helplessness of a fetus is not an argument in its favor, but rather against it; vegetables are also helpless but no one argues that eating tomatoes is immoral. Meanwhile, Governor Lamm is one of the few politicians I've seen who brings credit to his profession. He's honest, intelligent, fair-minded, and not afraid to face important issues. Give him credit for that. > People who share the myopic views of the Governor of Colorado are only > narrow-minded, self-centered, and self-serving parasites who feed on > the nourishment that humankind has to offer. Speaking for Governor Lamm, you are obviously ignorant of the situation and have only believed what you heard from the press. Speaking for myself, I at least sympathize with most of the things he says, even if I don't get fired up in sharing his views, so I resent your broadcast insults. You are apparently not a very nice person, however you may see yourself. Alan Silverstein Fort Collins, Colorado