Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!matt From: matt@brl-tgr.ARPA (Matthew Rosenblatt ) Newsgroups: net.abortion Subject: Re: The Status of the Fetus and Its Rights Message-ID: <998@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Mon, 26-Aug-85 11:15:33 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.998 Posted: Mon Aug 26 11:15:33 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 28-Aug-85 02:59:41 EDT References: <429@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA> <1546@pyuxd.UUCP> Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 131 Subject: Re: The Status of the Fetus and Its Rights Newsgroups: net.abortion References: <429@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA> <1546@pyuxd.UUCP> > > Given these two statements, why shouldn't we go by "It is up to those who > > would restrict the definition to provide hard proof that it should be > > restricted, and to precisely what point it should be restricted."? > > [THOMAS NEWTON] > Because it's a stupid thing to go by. The demarcation point of life is at > birth. It is you who wants to stretch it. [RICH ROSEN] Ipse dixit. It's at birth. It IS. IT IS!!! > > Go ahead and kill all the tapeworms, bacteria, and viruses that you want. But > > don't kill other human beings. [T. NEWTON] > I'm not proposing that we do. I'm proposing that similar organisms in the > body (like fetuses) be dealt with in the same way if the person wants to. > > All > the adults you refer to were once fetuses [R. ROSEN] That's right. All of us started out as fetuses. And that's the distinction between fetuses on the one hand, and tapeworms, bacteria, viruses and other parasites on the other. Even if the fetus fits the definition of a parasite ("often harmful"? How harmful? Who decides what harm is?), I refuse to treat a class of beings that once included myself as we treat germs or bugs or worms. > You mean some people are DEMANDING that women remove the fetuses within them? > Care to substantiate that? [R. ROSEN] See Steven Mosher's article in the latest Human Life Review. Mr. Mosher is the man who visited China as a Stanford anthropology student, wrote about forced abortions and government infanticide that the Communists use to enforce their one-child-per-family rule, and had his Ph.D. revoked by frightened academics who feared that the Chinese would no longer let in American anthropologists. Fetuses have been removed by rounding up pregnant women, throwing them bound hand and foot into cages, loading the cages onto trucks, tying them to operating tables, and performing abortions -- right up to the due date. A woman has twins -- one of the babies is taken from her and put to death. We convicted Nazis of war crimes for doing things like that. South Africa doesn't even do things like that to control their slave population. Yet the Marxist "wave of the future," in the country we are trying so hard to be friends with and trade with, DEMANDS that women remove the fetuses within them. >>Some seven month old fetuses can survive outside of their mother's bodies. >>Admittedly, they require incubators, but even normally born infants require >>a degree of care not necessary for older members of our species. Are seven >>month fetuses human, then? If not, why not? [private mail to R. Rosen -- >>name withheld] > Yes, there is surely a point at which a fetus is close enough to being a > living human being that it *could*, with medical assistance, be sustained > through the end of the fetal period to the point where it could be > disconnected from supporting equipment, and thus be a living human being. > [R. ROSEN] OK, take a seven-month fetus. It's inside the womb. Then there is a premature birth, and it's outside the womb. Six weeks later, it can breathe room air without additional oxygen, and leaves the incubator. A week after that, it leaves the Intensive Care Nursery and comes home. When does it become a human being? When it's no longer directly dependent on it's mother's body? Before sterilization and formula were invented less than 200 years ago, the ONLY way to feed a newborn infant was by nursing -- the infant was completely dependent on the mother's or some wet-nurse's body. Does that mean it wasn't human until it was weaned -- a baby with a cry, with a smile, with a name? Or does our seven-month premature baby become a human being when it no longer needs others to supply it with oxygen? I can see it now: just as the President of Harvard confers the Bachelor of Arts degree and "welcomes you into the fellowship of educated men and women," the neo- natologist disconnects the oxygen hose from the incubator and "welcomes you into the fellowship of human beings." Of course, it'll be a few years before the kid no longer needs others to supply it with food, clothing and shelter, before it can forage for itself like the orphans roaming the rubble during and after a war. And we will force someone to provide those things, make no mistake about it: If the parents can do it, we'll force them to. If not, we'll take money by force from taxpayers, thereby forcing THEM to provide the child with the external support it needs to survive. The anti-abortionists seek to extend this force farther back in time, requiring the pregnant woman to keep the fetus inside her for nine months so that it will not die. Our mothers did as much for us, all of us. The extension of society's force backward in time is not a difference in kind, only a difference in degree. Forcing parents to support their children is something society agrees to because society considers it the "natural" thing to do. The parents are not being forced to do something against their nature. The human infant, unlike that of some animals, requires a long period of dependence. We know we were provided for, so we don't resent having to provide for our young -- at least, we don't resent it enough to repeal the parental responsibility laws. Forcing pregnant women to carry their fetuses to term is something society agreed to because society considered it the "natural" thing to do -- the woman is not being forced to do something against her nature. The Supreme Court overruled these societal agreements in all 50 U. S. States. But even the Supreme Court granted enough humanity to my seven-month fetus to allow the State to prohibit its abortion. I don't believe that the seven-month fetus -- my 5-year-old son Eddie -- became human suddenly when he entered the third trimester (Roe v. Wade), or when he was born, or when the doctor checked him out and found he had no defects, or when he could breathe room air at six weeks, or when he could engage in meaningful intellectual activity (e.g., con- versation). I don't believe his humanity depended on whether he was "wanted" -- what if a kid is so bratty that he becomes unwanted: does that make him "unhuman" again? Biological humanity is a continuum, as premature births -- some NOT requiring any life-support equipment -- demonstrate. I say the law should follow biology, and all the pro-choice arguments that set the definition of "human" so as to allow abortion on demand have not convinced me of any discontinuity. > The > limits to abortion do not reach into the time of pregnancy at which > doctors have even attempted to save a fetus from such a circumstance as > I describe, certainly before the point at which a fetus can be saved and > expect to live a life as a human being. [RICH ROSEN (probably -- too > many '>'s for me to be sure)] Factual error which can be corrected by a counterexample: Two of my fellow-workers had two babies in succession, each born before the end of the second trimester, and therefore eligible for legal abortion. Both boys lived about 11 days, during which time doctors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital tried every method they could to save them, including jerry-rigging new methods that had not been tried before. -- Matt Rosenblatt