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From: nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (Doug Alan)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: Human beings
Message-ID: <4838@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Aug-85 02:47:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.4838
Posted: Thu Aug  1 02:47:13 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Aug-85 10:21:00 EDT
References: <392@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA> <1259@pyuxd.UUCP> <281@tove.UUCP> <1035@noscvax.UUCP>
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 45

[]
William, your posting to net.abortion (included in it's Reader's Digest
version below), is the first reasonable thing I've seen posted to this
newsgroup since I decided to dissociate myself from it a year ago.

				-Doug Alan
				 nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (or ARPA)

P.S.  Oh, now I can't help it -- I have to add my own micro-flame:

(1) The parasite / Anemic Violinist argument (invented by J.J. Thompson
-- whom I actually took a class by) is blatantly wrong because sex is
VOLUNTARY.  If you purposely CREATE a person and make them dependant on
you, and then say "I'm gonna kill you cuz you're a parasite", then that
sure seems like murder to me.  You shouldn't have created the person and
made them dependant on you unless you were willing to take
responsibility for them.

(2) Fetuses do NOT have the same right to life that people do, for the
same reason that cows (and Ken Arndt) don't and technological aliens
(from Tau Ceti?) would have.  Fetuses and cows aren't intelligent and
technological Tau Cetians (if they exist) and people are.

> From: powers@noscvax.UUCP (William J. Powers)

> And, what's possibly more interesting, a fetus may be even less
> important than a carrot.  Because we are alive, we must kill....  So,
> if we are all killers, that does that mean that we have no respect for
> life and the living?  The answer is clearly no....  I won't eat meat,
> because of what it says to me about my relationship with the living
> and because of its adverse effects on our global society.... Most
> Americans consume huge amounts of meat unconsciously.  They treat with
> indifference (mostly due to isolation and ignorance) the killing of
> countless numbers of living animals.  If you want to convince me that
> abortion should be illegal, you have to convince me that every fetus
> should be saved.  And if every fetus should be saved, why not every
> gamete?  Why should we not simply try to create as much human life as
> we are capable of?....  Why is the killing of a fetus different from
> the conveyor belt slaughter of beef (born to die).  The list is
> endless.  You have to convince me that the killing of this fetus is
> different from the myriad of killing which, everyday, countless,
> unconscious times we perform.  Our houses are dripping with blood, and
> yet, we point our fingers accusingly at our neighbors, and, what is
> worse, those we do not know and do not understand.  Somebodies eyes
> are full of logs.