dolan@ihnp1.UUCP (Mike Dolan) (03/08/84)
For the record, I am serious in my question about the killing of human beings. What I was responding to is the notion that we might go ahead and admit that an unborn child is a human being, but hold to the position that we can use a different set of standards when deciding to kill him/her. I probably should have included the portions of the article that I was responding to, but I didn't have immediate access to it. My apologies. The point that I am very serious about is the notion that we might use different standards for allowing human beings to live. As soon as I or anyone else decides that we have the right to choose to allow a particular class of human beings to live or die, the door is opened to arbitrary choices about the right to live. We can decide that human beings over age 65 should be "terminated" (a favorite word of pro-abortionists). We can decide that anyone with cancer should be killed. We can decide that anyone with a physical malformation should be killed (then we get to decide what constitutes a sufficient malformation). This is the basic point of the pro-life segment: No one has the right to arbitrarily take another human life. If a life-threatening situation exists, the right of self-defense comes into play (such as in a tubal pregnancy). These are all standard laws of our society. This is why we pro-lifers make such a point about the unborn child being a human being with all the rights of any other human being. No one has ever shown that an unborn child is not a human being. There seems to be little argument that a newly born child is a human being with the right to live. No one has ever pointed to something during development within the womb and said that that is where the "blob" became a human being. So the pertinent points seem to be: a. All human beings have the right to live. b. An unborn child is a human being from the moment of conception with the right to her/his life. c. Human beings only forfeit their right to live when they place the physical life of another human being in danger. ------------ As an interesting additional point: Some pro-abortionists claim that they are saving the child from a life of being unloved. It is difficult to reconcile that opinion with the fact that the most miserable, crippled, orphaned child in the streets of Calcutta fights with everything he/she has in a daily struggle to cling to his/her life. ------------- An additional point: It is a well-known debating technique to impune the integrity/intellectual ability/sincerity of an opponent when one finds it difficult to oppose the other's arguments. For all of us: Please, let us concentrate on the points each of us is trying to make. Leave the name calling out of our debates. And if we make mistakes in interpreting what each other is saying, let us acknowledge and correct those mistakes cheerfully. Even though I have never met any of you personally and disagree with some ideas, I have high regard for you as individuals. Let's keep this friendly! Y'all have a good day, Mike Dolan AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL ihnp4!ihnp1!dolan
neal@denelcor.UUCP (Neal Weidenhofer) (03/23/84)
************************************************************************** >So the pertinent points seem to be: > a. All human beings have the right to live. > b. An unborn child is a human being from the moment of > conception with the right to her/his life. > c. Human beings only forfeit their right to live when they > place the physical life of another human being in danger. Granting a. and c., I maintain that b. is begging the question. As you define "human being" b. is (I presume) true, as I define "human being" it isn't. Would you also outlaw birth control pills? Most pills in use nowadays DO NOT PREVENT CONCEPTION. They work by preventing the already fertilized egg from implanting in the wall of the uterus. (It is possible to do this with much less estrogen than it takes to acutally prevent conception.) Regards, Neal Weidenhofer Denelcor, Inc. <hao|csu-cs|brl-bmd>!denelcor!neal
ix192@sdccs6.UUCP (03/25/84)
[]
>From ...denelcor!neal
] >So the pertinent points seem to be:
] > a. All human beings have the right to live.
] > b. An unborn child is a human being from the moment of
] > conception with the right to her/his life.
] > c. Human beings only forfeit their right to live when they
] > place the physical life of another human being in danger.
]
] Granting a. and c., I maintain that b. is begging the question. As you
] define "human being" b. is (I presume) true, as I define "human being" it
] isn't.
] Neal Weidenhofer
This comes down to the point - "what is a human being defined as?" I won't
listen to some idiot quoting the Webster's dictionary! I like to go by things
as they are, as they can be seen - not by what they would be, what they could
be, or what they will be. A fetus is a fetus - be it a human fetus or a rat
fetus or a athlete's fetus, it's still a fetus - not a human being, living,
breathing, moving, doing. It has a CAPABILITY of becoming one, but so does
every single sperm and every egg. Wouldn't these count if you took the "would-
be" into account? Or do they get off on some technicality.
The fetus is just lying in someone's womb with a potential of destroying the
mother's life, possibly the fathers, possibly it's own. Destroying by throwing
the family (of whoever joins into it) into a situation they may not be ready
for, mentaly, emotionally, or finantially, or into a situation they may not
be happy with. (Most people getting abortions WOULD have already decided they
didn't want the baby!) I happen to value the life of a already-living being
(as in # of years > zero) over the life of a fetus (which hasen't lived at all),
so if one life is to be destroyed, I'd pick the fetus's.
I see abortion as a chance to save the potential mother's life. Saving her
from having to care for an unwanted child, possibly marrying the wrong man,
possibly giving up her future. All because someone decided that two living a
life of suffering was better than one to go living and the other not at all.
Suppose you had two children, one fourteen, one about a month old. Suppose
some big, dark, evil bureaucrat was coming to claim one, take one away, and
you had to make a choice. You have the baby under one arm, the fourteen-er
under the other, the decision-awaiting bureaucrat in front of you. The pro-
lifers would save the baby. The pro-choicers would save the fourteen-year-old.
Which would you choose?
Kenn the Kenf
...!sdcsvax!kenn
...!sdcsvax!sdccs6!ix192
...!sdcsvax!sdccsu3!kennlaura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (03/26/84)
This business about the "take the baby or take the 14 year old" is precisely what I find frightening about abortion. The idea is that the 14 year old is more valuable than the baby precisely because it has lived longer. (Generally though, grandmothers are less valuable than the 14 year olds because they have lived longer, though, so the issue isn't as cut and dried.) The difficulty is that it presumes that it is possible to measure the value of a human being, and really compare one against the other. If you examine the boundary conditions (say a 14 year old and a 13 year old for instance) you will see that most people do not think that age is sufficient criteria of value. I do not think that an objective standard can be found. For instance, I might decide that if the abortion was being considered for the purpose of birth control then the pregnant adult has just demonstated that she is horribly irresponsible. The fetus, at any rate, has not demonstated such irresponsibility. Given that I value responsibility more than age, the logical thing seems to be to execute the failed mother and keep the fetus... Hmm. there is clearly something wrong here. Any position which leaves you thinking that it is logical to execute people wholesale is flawed. Let us see where the flaw is. Hmm. The pregnant woman, though irresponsible, has the potential to not behave in such a bad manner. And, whatever her irresponsibility, it is not justified to kill her for it. Now go back to the fetus. If it is not a human being, then there is no problem with abortion. If it is a human being, then for exactly the same reasons you should not kill it. (Existence does not justify killing, and despite all the talk of unwanted children turning into criminals, there have always existed unwanted children who have turned out rather well.) But, if you start saying presenting platforms where it is presumed necessary to sacrifice a baby for the sake of a 14 year old, a lot of questions emerge out from the wordwork. If you do not protect life because it is intrinsically valuable then how is one to make a decision between the baby and the 14 year old? If I decided that I had done a rather bad job of being a parent with the 14 year old (my first child) should I dispose of him on the grounds that I believe that I will do a better job with the baby? Should I keep the 14 year old because I know him better and have invested more in his upbringing? What if I feel that I love the baby more? This is the classic utilitarian problem. For all the talk of ``objectively measuring the greatest good for the greatest number'' I am left wondering how on earth they do it! It seems a much more difficult problem of measuring than (say) measuring the results of various strategies in chess. And most people play lousy chess. Great chess players seem to work on intuition, and aren't involved in brute-force computational searches. Suppose utilitarians work the same way. If this is the case then this is tantemount to saying that the utilitarians are acting on *whim* or *desires* which are hardly rational. Your desires will have a great effect on the outcome. If this is the case, then it boils down to ``the woman wants an abortion so let her have one''. All of this talk about *why* a person might want an abortion may be specious, since the very desire to have one will be what is most reflected in the decision, given this premise on how utilitarians make decisions. but ``it is right because I want it'' only is reasonable in the majority of cases, and killing another human being is one of the exceptions. So we are back to ``is the fetus a human being''? This can get stretched to ``is a baby a human being'' if you like. Most people think that babies are human beings. If they are wrong, it must be because there is an objective definition of human being which is not satisfied by a baby. I sure don't know what it is. Suppose, for the purpose of argument, we decide to define a human being as a conscious entity with DNA structured in such-and-such a fashion, and organised in such and such a way. A lot of people would be pleased with this definition. (Some would want to say ``such-and-such a level of consciousness'' as well, let us give them that.) By this definition, birth control pills are okay (since it is pretty well agreed that there has to be a brain before there is consciousness) and killing babies isn't. However, there are a whole collection of problems with the whole thing. It may be obvious that there is no brain in the first week after conception, and obvious that there *is* one the last week before birth, but where does one draw the line? Abortion is fine in the first month and not-fine after the 6th month and nobody knows about months 2-4? You have only pared teh question down a little. What do we do about the people who want to have an abortion who are in months 2-4? This is when the bulk of people who want to have abortions finally discover that they are pregnant, so this decision is the one that will effect them. What about fetuses with congenital problems. Often, their DNA is structured in a way different from others. Does this mean that they are not human by our definition? There are going to be a lot of opposition to that premise if that is the case. The end answer is that at some time a fetus becomes a human being. You run into Zeno's paradox if you try to pin it down much further than that. Paradoxes are tricky things. It is usually best to avoid them whenever possible. But then you have all heard me say this bit before... -- Laura Creighton utzoo!laura "Capitalism is a lot of fun. If you aren't having fun, then you're not doing it right." -- toad terrific
srradia@watmath.UUCP (sanjay Radia) (03/26/84)
>Suppose you had two children, one fourteen, one about a month old. Suppose >some big, dark, evil bureaucrat was coming to claim one, take one away, and >you had to make a choice. You have the baby under one arm, the fourteen-er >under the other, the decision-awaiting bureaucrat in front of you. The pro- >lifers would save the baby. The pro-choicers would save the fourteen-year-old. > Kenn the Kenf Kenn, how did you reach to the above consclusion? I would probably shoot the bureaucrat. And how would you you classify me? Pro-what? sanjay
ix192@sdccs6.UUCP (03/28/84)
From: ...!watmath!srradia [This is from an article I earlier wrote, which sanjay included:] >> >Suppose you had two children, one fourteen, one about a month old. Suppose >> >some big, dark, evil bureaucrat was coming to claim one, take one away, and >> >you had to make a choice. You have the baby under one arm, the fourteen-er >> >under the other, the decision-awaiting bureaucrat in front of you. The pro- >> >lifers would save the baby. The pro-choicers would save the fourteen-year- >> >old. >> > Kenn the Kenf >>Kenn, how did you reach to the above consclusion? I would probably shoot the >>bureaucrat. And how would you you classify me? Pro-what? >> sanjay Sanjay, what I was trying to illustrate a point -- whom is more important of the parents or the fetus, using only their age differences. The fourteen-year- old is supposed to represent the mother and father, the baby is the fetus. The bureaucrat is all the evils and unhappiness that an unwanted child COULD bring (varying from case to case, of course!). You have to make the decision, kiddo, that's why you're suscribed to this newsgroup in the first place! Would you let the family get the abortion and rid of the baby, or keep it and possibly sacrifice the happiness and careers of the mother and father? As for Pro-what, I'd think you'd be pro-misunderstood. But if you can figure out if you're pro-choice or pro-life or pro-notpro, lemme know! Kenn the Kenf ...!sdcsvax!kenn ...!sdcsvax!sdccs6!ix192 ...!sdcsvax!sdccsu3!kenn
moiram@tektronix.UUCP (Moira Mallison ) (03/30/84)
Given the definition of human life beginning at the moment of conception, and the subsequent outlawing of abortions at any point during the pregnancy (the intent of several pieces of legislation in recent sessions of Congress) also raises the spectre of a woman who has suffered a miscarriage being investigated for murder. I admit to never having been through an abortion, either spontaneous or planned. However, I cannot think of anything crueler than harassment of a woman who has lost a wanted child; or possibly indicting her based on an unwitting action on her part. A second point: Banning abortions will not stop abortions. Women who can afford it will travel to a place where abortions are SAFE AND LEGAL. Women who cannot afford it will be the prey of "back-street butchers"...of course, these women deserve to die. :-) "Braided Lives", by Marge Piercy, is an excellent novel that weaves this theme into the plot. It gives a hint of the horrors of self-induced abortions, and an ideas of how COMMON they were among the middle class.