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From: matt@brl-tgr.ARPA (Matthew Rosenblatt )
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: Human beings and their Rights
Message-ID: <269@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 29-Jul-85 17:47:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.269
Posted: Mon Jul 29 17:47:31 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 31-Jul-85 22:20:21 EDT
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In article 1494, RICH ROSEN writes:

> One way to look at rights is to claim that they are "granted" to you by
> people in power.

That's what legal rights are, as opposed to moral rights.

>                  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.

So far, so good -- although who, if not society, decides what is "obvious"?

>          Such as allowing people to do what they will within the limits
> of not harming other people.

Here's the heart of our disagreement.  I recognize that this is your 
main principle, but I don't agree that is an absolute guide for society
in framing legal rights.  I think it is perfectly moral for society to
ban heroin use, or prostitution, and I think it would be moral for society
to ban abortion-on-demand EVEN IF "killing the fetus" were NOT "harming
other people."  I think it would be moral for society to ban the killing
and eating of animals, although I would not agree with such a ban.

But even those who accept your main principle do not have to come to your
conclusion about abortion.  Who decides what "harming" means?  Can it
include merely offending others, as flashers or posters of sexist pinups
or racist symbols do?  Can it include mere economic harm, like refusing
to buy from someone whose politics (or race) you don't like?  Whatever it
means, "harming" surely includes "killing."

And who decides what "people" means?  I'm not going to rehash all the
arguments in net.abortion over whether the fetus is a "person."  My point
is that these arguments exist, on both sides, and even a society that
agrees that a citizen can do anything he wants to as long as he does not
harm other people can reasonably conclude that killing a fetus is harming
a person and therefore not a right to be recognized.

>> 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. (ROSENBLATT)
> 
> "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.
> . . .					   	  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.
> (RICH ROSEN)

When I write that one million abortions a year is pretty awful, that is not
part of any "proof" -- it's my opinion.  Nor am I trying to "prove" that
abortions are horrible.  What I am trying to show is that a pro-choice
argument based on

	"who are you to tell her how her body is to be used?"

and

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

assumes things that so directly imply pro-choice that it proves nothing
to one who is not already pro-choice.  

>> Does he believe that they [women] 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.  (MATT ROSENBLATT)
>
> 						The question of rights boils
> down to "Who's to stop you?"  (RICH ROSEN)

I agree.  Once something is made illegal, you have no *legal* right to do it,
and someone (i.e., the police with their guns) will stop you.

>			The fight for rights is a fight to squelch those
> who would. (RICH ROSEN)

I agree with that, too.  The right-to-lifers, who have nothing at all to gain
personally from saving fetuses from abortion, are fighting to squelch those
who have made it legal to interfere with the fetus's right to life.

>		The other "versions of natural law" you describe involve
> others' usurping of personal rights, and thus it is YOU my friend who would
> have to justify such "other versions".

Yes, I *would* have to justify my ordering of the relative rights of the 
pregnant woman, the fetus, and the father.  Anyone with a moral system
who is trying to convince others of its validity would have to justify it
to an outsider.  My point is that that includes Rich Rosen, too.  His moral
system, which includes

>							rights to do
> whatever one wishes that doesn't harm other people,

and *postulates* "personal rights" that the banning of abortion "usurp[s],"
also has to be justified.  If it were self-evident, it would be self-evident
even to me and the other pro-lifers, including those in State legislatures
who will soon be deciding what limits to put on abortion.  At the risk of
boring our readers, let me repeat what I wrote on July 25:  If Rich Rosen
wants to keep society from banning abortions again, 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.  In fact, it's kind of good that
Mr. Rosen feels he doesn't have to justify his moral system, because if
he could, he might convince some legislators to allow the abortions to
continue.

				-- Matt Rosenblatt