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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!hou3c!hocda!houxm!hogpc!houti!ariel!hou5f!hou4b!mat
From: mat@hou4b.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: The dox
Message-ID: <1129@hou4b.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 1-Sep-84 01:56:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: hou4b.1129
Posted: Sat Sep  1 01:56:52 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 3-Sep-84 08:19:43 EDT
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 32


	We have something that's going to turn into a human being.  The
human being will be too troublesome to have around.  Quick!  Kill it before
anyone realizes what's happening!

	Yes, the human embryo has a habit of becoming something that any
one of us would recognize as a human being.  It doesn't become human by
being sprinkled with fairy dust or by any intervention by any outside agency.
It has all that human-being-ness stored inside.  But then how can you say it
is less than human?

	``When next you hear some attack called an idle paradox, ask
	after the dox.  Ask how long the dox has been in the world; how
	many have believed in the dox; how often the dox has proved itself
	right in practice; how often thoughtful men have returned to the
	dox on theory.  Pursue the dox; persecute the dox.  In short,
	ask the dox whether it is orthodox.''
						-Gilbert Keith Chesterton

	I suppose that if you believe that human life is infinitely precious
and sacred IN, FOR, AND OF ITSELF then destruction of a human being that is
being formed is a horrible act.  On the other hand, if a sentient human life
is something to be protected only because you and your friends are sentient
human beings, then the utilitarian notion that full sentience is a necessary
condition of humanity is a natural consequence.

	I weep.
-- 

	from Mole End			Mark Terribile
		(scrape .. dig )	hou5d!mat
    ,..      .,,       ,,,   ..,***_*.  (soon hou4b!mat)