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Path: utzoo!watmath!saquigley
From: saquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: holism, reductionism, and dualism -- abortion and how one makes decisions
Message-ID: <7453@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Apr-84 12:43:58 EST
Article-I.D.: watmath.7453
Posted: Tue Apr  3 12:43:58 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Apr-84 03:34:45 EST
References: <3682@utcsrgv.UUCP>, <3718@utzoo.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 37


I think you were not very fair in your presentation of
the wholistic point of view of life.  Any philosophy
can be taken to an extreme which ends up crippling
the addherents to this particular philosophy rather
than helping them deal with life or whatever.

Given the choices that you proposed, I guess I would put
myself more in the holistic camp than any other even
though I do not know the "official" definition of
holism.  My personnal interpretation of the idea that
the sum is more important than the parts is more a
reaction to the prevalent idea that the parts are
more important than the sum and that it is easy to
determine exactly what the parts are.  This said and
done, I view abortion as a holistic issue in that it
is an issue in which there are so many parts involved
that it is very hard to get a clear-cut view of it.
It is also an issue which is entirely personnal in that
the parts involved are completely different from one
abortion to another, so I don't believe that there can
be one objective rulling on the "rightness" or "wrongness"
of abortions exept to say that yes it iprobably not right
to kill a fetus, but I am incapable of deciding for other
people whether it is more right not to kill a fetus than
it would be to kill it.

Looking at obortion from a more general point of view as
one of the issues in our society, I also feel that it is
an issue which cannot be dealt with unless you take a
completele look at the problem and everything related to
it.  It is an issue which involves much more than murder
does this is why I feel it cannot be treated on the same
level as murder.

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