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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdccsu3!kenn
From: kenn@sdccsu3.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: alternatives...
Message-ID: <1757@sdccsu3.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 22-Apr-84 22:15:02 EST
Article-I.D.: sdccsu3.1757
Posted: Sun Apr 22 22:15:02 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Apr-84 00:44:34 EST
References: <830@psuvm.UUCP>, <6349@gatech.UUCP>
Organization: Organization?  I'm supposed to be organized??
Lines: 67

I don't know where in HECK the logic for those basenotes was from!!  There's
gotta be a better method of indicating multiply replies than putting a new 
brocket on the left hand side!  Really confusing after the third or so ">"!

Anyway, on to the subject matter:

Gerald Owens states in a query on what to do with the unwanted babies:
> How about trying to love them???  How about developing the compassion
> to take care of them???

For one, I can see neo-Nazis saying the same thing to the mid-life Jews in 
reference to the neat little tattoo numbers on their arms.  Just people can
learn to live with something is no justification to making them get the 
something in the first place.

More comments here:
> One does have the right to kill someone if
> that person is actively threatening your physical life, but if the
> person is killed apart from the active threat, then it potentially [is]
> murder since the preconditions did not exist to make the act
> justifiable.

Debatable.  One very basic, very low-level, unfeeling, ulitarian (sp?) (right 
word?) reason that we have laws against murder is that people would miss the
person killed.  The burglar has a family to support, even the killer we pardon
off to jail.  Basically, the fetus doesn't mean a thing to the world.  I'm sure
the religious type and potential-human-being people could debate it for hours,
but EVERYTHING potentially could potentially do ANYTHING.

And even more here, and more even, so I'll stop these dumb introductions...
> What IS the difference between a fetus and an infant, that
> makes infanticide so abhorrent that abortion is preferable, when the
> only difference apparent is that the first is younger than the second,
> and the first is unseen while the second is visible?  

Just the reason that it's easier to kill off someone you can't see, or to 
callously break up with someone over the phone (or through mail) -- we tend 
to get our emotions in the way a lot more if we can see and experience
the victims of our decisions.  The less immediate contact, the easier it is
to build up that solid wall of cold callousness to make a deeply emotional
decision, like an abortion.  So, philosophy majors - are we being true and
fair to ourselves to use the anomonity of a fetus to our advantage?
 
> Also, what in
> the argument presented prevents someone from advocating that those
> 40 million abandoned children be killed (er terminated), because
> society cannot support them??  How about the aged?  The defective?
> One has opened a veritable can of worms when one says that "it is
> expedient that one man (or group or class) should die that the
> nation not perish."  Survival on those terms may not be worth living.

Easy.  I don't have to directly support those 40 million abandoned children, or
the aged, the crippled (defective is really cruel!).  I'll pay money in taxes
and such so that they'll have their lives perhaps a little happier, but they
certainly don't need as much care and sacrificing (from me) as does a baby!

Animals tend to kill or allow to die their aged and crippled.  Survival of the
fittest is the name of the game in a lot of markets and jobs today.  Should
it be in living as well?  Tune in next week, same abort time, same aborted
channel!

(Or send some mail and I'll be happy to discuss almost everything under the sun)

				   Kenn the Kenf
				...!sdcsvax!kenn
				...!sdcsvax!sdccs6!ix192
				...!sdcsvax!sdccsu3!kenn