Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxd!rlr From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) Newsgroups: net.abortion Subject: Re: Human beings Message-ID: <1310@pyuxd.UUCP> Date: Thu, 25-Jul-85 09:56:17 EDT Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1310 Posted: Thu Jul 25 09:56:17 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 27-Jul-85 02:38:26 EDT References: <392@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA> <1259@pyuxd.UUCP> <113@brl-tgr.ARPA> Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week Lines: 88 > Just a minute! Just a minute! Who is SHE to determine how her body is to > be used? In all recorded history (pace Bachofen & his "Mutterrecht"), > women have had precisely those rights which men have allowed them to have. > Women in the USA have the right of legal abortion because they were able > to convince six men on the Supreme Court that they deserve it, and because > the cops and judges (mostly men) listen to those six men rather than to the > fifty State legislatures (also mostly men) who did, and would again, have > the cops bust the abortion clinics. [MATTHEW ROSENBLATT] One way to look at rights is to claim that they are "granted" to you by people in power. Another way to look at them is to say that there are certain obvious things available to an autonomous life form, and that to form a society you place restrictions on people that limit universal rights. Such as allowing people to do what they will within the limits of not harming other people. If one accepts the power of some people to "grant" and "revoke" your rights, you have essentially become a sheep, a lackey to those people in power. Why isn't the question asked "What RIGHT do those people have to restrain MY rights?" That is what social progress in the twentieth century (or so) has been all about. A realization that no one has the right to restrain ANYBODY'S rights beyond the realm of non-interference, beyond restriction from interfering in other's rights. The reality of the situation may be as described above, but the question to be asked is what basis do they have for restraining my rights? > That is reality: the men with the guns enforce what > other men establish. If and when men make abortion illegal again, there > will be what there was 15 years ago, when > > "About 1,000,000 abortions [were] probably performed every year > in the U.S., although some sa[id] as many as 2,000,000 and others > sa[id] as few as 200,000." > > -- "Sisterhood is Powerful" (New York, Vintage, 1970), p.258 > > One million abortions a year is pretty awful, but it's still better than the > 1.5 million abortions now being performed legally under the 1973 all-male > Supreme Court's grant of a woman's right to abort her fetus. "Pretty awful"? Perhaps you and Newton and Wheeler should get together and form the "We've proved abortion is wrong by assuming it's wrong" League. > Rich Rosen cannot possibly believe that women's right to control their own > bodies is one of those "unalienable rights" that the Declaration of Indepen- > dence claims "they are endowed by their Creator with," because he cannot > prove the existence of any such "Creator." Nor do I care either way about its existence or non-existence relative to such rights. > Does he believe that they have > this right because they seized it from men by force? Then he has to set > forth the history of that seizure. I do? Sez who? The question again is not "do they have this right", but does anyone have the right to take control over themselves away from them? > Does he believe that they have that > right because of some "natural law"? Then he has to show why his version > of such a natural law is correct, rather than versions that would have the > woman's right to control her body running a poor third behind the fetus's > right to live off that body for nine months, and the father's right to have > the children he begot born. Oh, yes, in your world where men give women rights, this would seem logical. Rights aren't things that are "given" to you by anyone. Rights are those things that others would take away from you. The question of rights boils down to "Who's to stop you?" The fight for rights is a fight to squelch those who would. Rights to one's own body go hand in hand with rights to do whatever one wishes that doesn't harm other people, and the fight to prevent others from sitting on those rights begins with dealing with people like you who would proclaim that we need to justify them or base them on something for YOUR edification. The other "versions of natural law" you describe involve others' usupring of personal rights, and thus it is YOU my friend who would have to justify such "other versions". > The statement "A woman has the right to control her own body" is a fact > only so long as the men with the power allow it to be. When they cease > to allow it, then the statement reverts to what it was before 1973, > merely an opinion. So the idea behind fighting for rights is to eliminate the power of any people who would squelch your rights in order to prevent them from doing so. I don't understand what the problem is, except in your own mind. Given your assumption that abortions are horrible as part of your proof that it is, I'd say you don't have much of an idea what rights are about. Nor do you seem to care. -- "Wait a minute. '*WE*' decided??? *MY* best interests????" Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr