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From: matt@brl-tgr.ARPA (Matthew Rosenblatt )
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: \"Words mean what I pay them to mean . . .\"
Message-ID: <164@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 25-Jul-85 10:14:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.164
Posted: Thu Jul 25 10:14:07 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Jul-85 01:08:36 EDT
References: <393@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA> <1283@pyuxd.UUCP>
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab
Lines: 46

> The point is that it's a woman's right to remove
> things from her body that she doesn't want inside of it. 

> 			-- Rich Rosen    ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr

Once we concede this "right" as an absolute right, the ball game is over.
We might as well close down net.abortion and stop arguing.

The current state of the law is 

1)  It's not an absolute right.  The states can ban abortions entirely
    (with the usual emergency exceptions) after the sixth month of
    pregnancy, in order to protect

2)  The fetus's right to life, which springs into existence magically
    at that point in the pregnancy, while

3)  The father's right to procreate (a Constitutional right -- I can
    cite cases) is subordinate to the woman's right to remove the
    fetus from her body.

Anti-abortion people are looking to reorder the precedence of these 
conflicting rights, with the precedence becoming

1)  The woman's right to continue living

2)  The woman's right to remove things from her body, EXCEPT A FETUS,
    that she doesn't want inside of it

3)  The fetus's right to continue living inside its mother until term

4)  The father's right to procreate

5)  The woman's right to remove a fetus from her body 
    that she doesn't want inside of it.

If Rich Rosen wants to stop this from happening, it's not enough for his
arguments to be good enough to convince the feminists (both pro-life and
pro-choice) in netnewsland.  They've got to be good enough to convince
the anti-feminist and neutral State legislatures out there, who wouldn't
even pass the Equal Rights Amendment.  And "ipse dixit" postulating of
"woman's right to do this" and "woman's right to do that" has not proved
good enough in the past, and is not likely to prove good enough in the
future.

			-- Matt Rosenblatt