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From: chrisa@azure.UUCP (Chris Andersen)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Whose life anyway?
Message-ID: <284@azure.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 20-Jun-85 00:33:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: azure.284
Posted: Thu Jun 20 00:33:49 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Jun-85 01:45:43 EDT
References: <545@bgsuvax.UUCP> <239@azure.UUCP> <867@bunker.UUCP> <259@azure.UUCP> <524@bunkerb.UUCP>
Reply-To: chrisa@azure.UUCP (Chris Andersen)
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 65
Summary: 

In article <524@bunkerb.UUCP> garys@bunkerb.UUCP (Gary M. Samuelson) writes:
>(me)
>> > But in any case, the same argument would justify murder -- e.g., I
>> > haven't been murdered, and if I had been murdered, I wouldn't be
>> > around to wonder whether I should have been murdered.  Now, aren't
>> > you glad you haven't been murdered?
>
>(Chris Anderson)
>> Oh but you are forgetting that before I am murdered, I do have the ability
>> to set up defenses (ie laws) to prevent myself from being murdered.  I know
>> that I can be murdered, so I can do something to prevent it.
>> However, a fetus does not know that it can be aborted so it can't sit around
>> pondering the possibility of it happening.
>
>So the fact that the fetus can't defend itself justifies killing it?

*SIGH*  I wish people would pay attention to the topic being discussed instead
of taking a single posting as is.  If you had bothered to pay attention you
would have seen that we were discussing the relevancy of the question,
"What if you had been aborted?".  I was trying to point out that the question
was pointless for the very reasons I have so far given.  They in no way relate
to whether it is right to "kill" the fetus but they do refer to what one
must consider when deciding on ones position concerning the "killing" of
the fetus (ie does the possibility of you being aborted have any relvency
to the question at hand or does it just cloud the issue).

>Or, to look at the other side of the same coin, if you were *not*
>able to pass laws to prevent your own murder (e.g., you live in a
>totalitarian state where certain classes of individuals may be legally
>killed), then it would not be wrong to kill you?

Again, there is a difference.  Before I am born not only do I not have the
power to hinder or encourage such a law but I would have no way of conceiving
of hindering/encouraging this law since the very concept of law is totally
foreign to my thought processes (limited though they be (when I'm a fetus,
not now :-))).  Given that a fetus has a very limited range of sensory 
inputs (which it might not even notice since it has never been in a
situation in which those inputs didn't exist (you never notice something
until it's gone)) and assuming that it even has the ability to process
that data, the questions of law, morality, etc., are totaly unimportant to
it.

>
>Does your logic apply to my 2 1/2 year old daughter?  I don't think
>she has ever considered the possibility that someone would try to
>kill her, and I am sure that she would not be able to defend herself.
>Does that make it morally acceptable, according to your reasoning,
>to kill her?
>

Here we do get into a sticky point.  A very young child (1-3 years say) might
have as limited a conception of law, morality, death, etc., as the fetus,
so by my reasoning it might seem that the life of a child is no different
then the "life" of a fetus.  And you would probably be right in drawing that
conclusion.

However, any moral/philosophical principle I follow is never graven in stone.
I approach things basically on a case by case basis, using the above mentioned
moral principles as guidelines in which to work.  I *DO NOT* consider them
to be absolute (I have my doubts about whether there is anything that is
absolute).

>Gary Samuelson

Chris Andersen