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From: sophie@mnetor.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: Overpopulation, Babies and Rationalization
Message-ID: <1007@mnetor.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Jun-85 16:17:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: mnetor.1007
Posted: Thu Jun 13 16:17:10 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Jun-85 17:25:09 EDT
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> > Starting at the end of his posting, he completely ignored the
> > overpopulation issue. The United States is not overpopulated,
> > but most of the rest of the world (the Third and Fourth World
> > in particular) is. 
> 
Let the rest of the world decide for themselves whether they are
overpopulated or not.  When children are the only security against
old age their parents have, they become a necessity.  Overpopulation
is a consequence of poverty, not a cause.

> in the abortion controversy?  When do you feel a person's rights
> come into existence?  If you wanted the child you or your spouse
> were bearing, would the child's rights - something society gives
> us because of our personhood - come into being at 1) conception,
> 2) at the conclusion of a pregnancy test, 3) the first kick, 4)
> the first brainwave, 5) the first time the child is wanted, 6)
> birth, 7) the instant the parents have enough money to sustain
> the child in a suitable standard of living ...?

I think 5) or 6) are very reasonnable cutoff points.
5) probably makes sense due to the hypothetical nature of the exact
consciousness of embryos.  Parents who want a child often assume
that it is a person when it is already an embryo, and parents who
don't want one often assume the contrary.  

I think this whole issue is not a question of WHEN a person's right
come into existence, but of balancing one person's right against
another.  If for some reason a full grown person managed to crawl into
another person's body, and the only way to get him/her out was to kill
him/her, I certainly would ibe of the opinion that the rights of the
person whose body was invaded would override the rights of the other
person to live and would certainly not find it immoral if the
containing person decided to kill the contained person.

The only differences between this case and abortion are that 
1/ fetuses are more cute than full-grown people, and (more seriously)
their state of development is not as advanced, so discussion can focus
on their development rather than on balancing rights as would be more
appropriate.
2/ fetuses have no choice on whether or not they can crawl into other
people's bodies.
3/ women have some amount of control over whether fetuses can appear in
their bodies, but even though this control is not absolute, this fact
can serve as fuel to pro-life forces which will assume that it is 
absolute and will instead focus on the mother's "responsibility".
-- 
Sophie Quigley
{allegra|decvax|ihnp4|linus|watmath}!utzoo!mnetor!sophie