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From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: The value of life (and other sundry stuff)
Message-ID: <3728@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 7-Apr-84 12:40:56 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.3728
Posted: Sat Apr  7 12:40:56 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Apr-84 12:40:56 EST
References: <6696@watrose.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 55

Unfortunately, I have to say that you cannot say "the value of
something is proportional to the amount of sorrow that would 
be generated if it were removed" simply because you cannot
measure the amount of sorrow involved, and therefore you cannot
really ever set up any rules whatsoever. It is impossible to know whether
a fetus values its life more than a woman values getting an abortion,
just as it is impossible to know whether I value strawberries and
whipped cream more than you value your life. If I believe that I
value strawberries more than you value your life, I should be
perfectly justified in killing you if you would not give me the
strawberries that you were eating to feed me.

The problem with this view is that it is not in the slightest way objective,
and so can be immediately collapsed into "i value x more than y;
therefore everybody who isn't foolish should value x more than y;
therefore I want x and he wants y -- I will get x and this will be
right." Thus your particular hierarchy of values becomes THE heirarchy
of values. For instance, you claim that you would rather be dead than
handicapped -- yet if you meet handicapped people you find that they
(for the most part) would rather be alive than dead. So you are in
conflict with these people over your value structure and there is
no way to determine who is right because "sorrow" is a subjective
state.

Whoever has the biggest club rules. There is no room for reason,
because it is your subjective desires which for the basis of your
proposed ethical structure, and you are not trying to make any of
these rules  explicit. If I say that I am happier being alive
despite being handicapped, you have no way to reason with me that I should
be happier being dead, because all you are actually presenting is
your own personal views on how you think that you might feel if you
were handicapped, or worse, how you think that handicapped people
*ought* to feel -- to suit you -- regardless of how they actually feel.

It is arguable that a person should have the right to end his own
life, because if his values are so structured that he could not
maintain his integrity (and what is valuable to him) while
remaining alive but could further his values by his death, he
would choose death. (This is the argument of the man who 
sacrifices himself for his friend. In actuality, under these
conditions, it would not be a sacrifice -- if the friend were so
valuable that the loss of his life outweighed the loss of one's
own life it would be a selfish decision -- it would be to allow
one's friend to die, despite that being a higher value to you than
your own life which would be the sacrifice.) But the fetus does not
volunteer to be aborted; it has its death thrust upon it, so this
argument does not apply.
-- 
Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura

	"Not to perpetrate cowardice against one's own acts!
	 Not to leave them in the lurch afterward! The bite
	 of conscience is indecent"	-- Nietzsche
					The Twilight of the Idols (maxim 10)