tan@iwu1d.UUCP (William Tanenbaum) (03/14/84)
I am discussing the legal issue. I wish that those who feel that fetuses should have the legal status of full human beings would follow their own arguments to their logical conclusion. (Note: The following is not an argument for legalized abortion, merely an argument that abortion should not be considered murder). Consider a woman who becomes pregnant due to forcible rape. She decides after some deliberation to have an abortion, and indeed, she has the abortion. The abortion is clearly a premeditated act. If you believe that the life of the fetus should have the same legal standing as any human life, you must believe that the woman is guilty of premeditated (i.e. first degree) murder. Therefore, you must believe that she should suffer the penalty for first degree murder. (I will concede that, if you do not believe in capital punishment, you would be content to have her imprisoned for life, rather than have her executed). I just cannot believe that anyone out there would even consider the possibility of doing such a thing to a rape victim. To anyone who would countenance sending the woman to jail for a long period, all I can say is that your value system is very different from mine, and I'm glad that you're not making our laws (at least not yet). For the rest of you, you must believe one of the following: a)The woman should not be punished. b)The woman should be punished for a lesser crime than first degree murder. In either case, you have conceded that the fetus cannot have the same legal right to life as (other) human beings. For if the woman had murdered any (other) innocent human being, all of us would concur in sending her up for a long stretch. I should point out that in the U. S., before the Supreme Court Decision, abortion was, as far as I know, not considered to be legally murder in any state. Abortion was a separate and distinct crime with distinct punishments, in most cases much lighter than that for murder.