Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site cbscc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ihnp4!cbosgd!cbscc!pmd From: pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) Newsgroups: net.abortion Subject: Re: Abortions and Aristotle Message-ID: <3120@cbscc.UUCP> Date: Fri, 22-Jun-84 11:18:25 EDT Article-I.D.: cbscc.3120 Posted: Fri Jun 22 11:18:25 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 27-Jun-84 01:33:08 EDT References: <351@ames-lm.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories , Columbus Lines: 67 }> An abortion is either murder or it isn't. Something can't be murder }> from only one person's point of view. If abortion is murder then it }> shouldn't be allowed whether or not the child will be wanted. You can't }> legally murder someone just because no one likes him. On the other }> hand, if abortion isn't murder, then the father should have no say in }> the matter (legally). It's not his body. } } Maybe I'm being picky, but I don't think this kind of Aristotelian }logic (is or isn't, no middle ground) is valid. To use your example, }for instance, 'murder': this word is a legal term, and its meaning varies }according to whose laws you're subject to. An abortion which was perfectly }legal in this country might well have been murder if carried out in a }country where abortions are illegal. Are you saying that murder is only murder if we choose to call it such? I guess killing all those Jews in Nazi Germany wasn't murder. } } But this is a trivial example. More serious confusion has occurred }from applying this sort of either/or logic to the question of whether }a fetus is a human being. A fetus, like everything else, is what it is; }to ask whether it's 'human' is not to ask a factual question, but to }ask how best to classify it. And the purpose of the classification is }to figure out how it should be treated. The either/or logic still applies. When you make a new classification for the fetus to exist in by itself you are saying that a fetus is a fetus, but it is not human. So then it is either a fetus or a human, right? If the fetus is supposed to be only part human, what is the other part? I never did understand the logic of systhesis. } } It seems clear to me that a fetus is different from an adult }human being in a number of significant ways, which have been covered }by the free-choicers here on the net. It is equally clear to me that }a fetus is not the same as a dog or cat, or as a malignant tumor. The }differences have been adequately covered by the right-to-lifers. A two-year-old is also different from an adult in significant ways. It is not a question of significant differences, but whether or not these differences constitute a differnce *in kind* between the adult and the child or fetus. } ...The }conclusion I draw from this, is that the best way to classify a human }fetus is to give it its own category, somewhere between human and non- }human, and then to decide which human rights are appropriate to this }pre-human. Obviously, this approach in no way guarantees that we will }all reach the same conclusions about how fetuses are to be treated; but }perhaps it would cut down on the amount of tail-chasing and repetition }that occurs in this debate. More synthesis. What is between human and non-human? What is between monkey and non-monkey? Nothing, except what you put there. The problem here is that "non-human" doesn't say what it *is*, just what it isn't. How can you define something as being between one thing and what that thing isn't? So what is the fetus really between? A monkey and a human? A dog and a human? Putting the fetus between human and non-human doesn't say anything about what it is. I'll stick with Aristotle. -- Paul Dubuc {cbosgd, ihnp4} !cbscc!pmd "The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world..." (John 1:9)