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From: saquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: Who has the right over our bodies?
Message-ID: <7375@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 25-Mar-84 23:41:56 EST
Article-I.D.: watmath.7375
Posted: Sun Mar 25 23:41:56 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 26-Mar-84 20:40:08 EST
References: <581@ihuxn.UUCP>, <2050@cbscc.UUCP>, <7330@watmath.UUCP>, <3673@utzoo.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 31

I find the distiction between action and non-action not as obvious as you make
it out to be.  If a parent does not provide food to a new-born child and lets
the child die of starvation,  that is a non-action but it is also murder, so
why is not the refusal to give bone-marrow, just like the refusal to give food
not murder? because it involves the giving of part of somebody else's body and
somehow somewhere society holds the belief that withholding part of one's body
when it could save somebody else is not murder while withholding something else
that could save a person is murder.

Abortions could be devised in such a way that the embryo could be simply removed
from the uterus without killing it.  This would be the refusal to provide
further support for it.  However most embryos would die without that support, so
they are often killed in the process instead of letting them slowly die
afterwards.  Right now it doesn' make any difference since there is no way that
those embryos could survive outside of the womb, so it is much more simple to
just kill them and them take them out, or take them out killing them rather
than go through all the pains of taking them alive and then letting them die.
It si conceivable though that sometime in the future it might be possible to
have them growing outside the uterus.  In this case, abortions will probably
have to be reevaluated so that both the right of the mother not to be pregnant
and the right of the embryo to live can be respected.  Right now we have to make
a choice though.

This probably does not answer your question, but then again my bone-marrow
argument was not meant to be THE abortion argument, but merely one of the
arguments to be considered.

				Sophie Quigley
			...!{decvax,allegra}!watmath!saquigley