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From: bmt@we53.UUCP ( B. M. Thomas )
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: Can we make progress?
Message-ID: <338@we53.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 9-Sep-85 22:32:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: we53.338
Posted: Mon Sep  9 22:32:13 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Sep-85 05:31:03 EDT
References: <30381@lanl.ARPA> <265@bcsaic.UUCP> <11440@rochester.UUCP> <426@mhuxr.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Technologies - St. Louis Missouri
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>This is revealing. "Sexuality is the reason for abortion and VD", so
>repress sexuality and the world will be OK, right? Are you saying there
>were no abortions and no VD before the tearing down of the sex taboos?
>Study history, Mr. Frank: a VD epidemic wiped out 15% of the population of
>Rome in the 14th century, a "few" years before the beginning of the
>sexual revolution.

Study it yourself.  It was NOT "before the beginning of the sexual revolution",
it was the RESULT of THEIR sexual revolution.

   Forgive me if I seem to have come from another planet, but I could have
sworn that there was a time when  it wasn't considered inevitable that 
teenagers would get into bed with each other.  The continued rejection by 
our society of any form of self-control, particularly where it concerns 
those "irresistable" passions, is plain by the fact that nobody I've yet 
read in this newsgroup has even mentioned the possibility that a young 
man or woman could go through those years without risking pregnancy.  I'm 
sure that I know quite a few, in fact, and though it may amaze you, they're
not terminally ugly or malajusted or even that badly frustrated!  The 
fact is, folks, that it IS possible to abstain from sex outside of 
marriage without becoming warped!  In fact, it's easier to avoid being 
warped that way!  I abstained for seven years after my "experiment", and 
I can tell you that it was MUCH easier BEFORE!!   More than that, my sex 
life as a married man is NOT enhanced by the temptations of pornography, 
hard, soft, or sunny-side-up.  My sex life, and anyone else's, is 
enhanced only by the love and consideration that one is required to show to 
one's spouse as a life partner.  Merely because it doesn't always work 
out for everyone is not a reason to chuck it.

   Let me say this.  Sex is good.  It's wholesome, healthy, and beautiful, and
FUN! There is nothing wrong with it, or with the powerful desires that 
puberty brings on.  There is a LOT wrong with misusing those desires for 
selfish gratification, or letting those desires rule you, as someone 
always gets hurt, pregnancy or no.  You won't hear any of that from the 
folks at Planned Barrenhood, or from the ACLU, or from anyone else who 
thinks it his raison d'etre to protect us from progeny .  

   So much for that.  The thing that really grieves me about abortion is that
there is such a thing as an unwanted pregnancy.  Not that they happen, 
but that they're not wanted.  Granted, procreation is not the sole 
purpose of sex, but the idea that children are to be avoided is a problem.
Teenage pregnancy is not the result of underinformed teenagers, it's the 
result of teenagers who have not been trained to control themselves or
taught that there is good to be had by keeping themselves virgin until 
marriage.  I'm not so hot on birth control, as you can see here.  True, 
if you don't think that you can really support a lot of children, I can 
well understand it, but I decided(forgive me, Elizabeth, let me say, WE 
decided) from the beginning that we would rather suffer poverty if need 
be than to harbor the hardness of heart that would deny all that we can 
give, or give in to the fear of not being able to provide for little ones 
that God gives to us.  That includes her decision not to work outside our 
home.  I want to add that I don't consider anything that we may have 
sacrificed to be a loss, and that we have been in every way blessed more 
than we could have hoped for. 

   My point here is not to argue the legal or even the moral issues of
abortion.  The real poverty of spirit that leads to the very idea of 
considering abortion is what I want to address.  In partial answer to an 
earlier posting, the system of values that would lead to a reduction of 
the abortion rate is not hard to find; all you have to do is go back a 
few years to when it was lower.  I'm not in any way eulogizing any period 
in our past, just saying that when something was better, you really ought 
to consider why.  There were fewer teenage pregnancies then: why?  There 
was a lower teen suicide rate then: why? Couldn't have had anything to do 
with the fact that do-your-own-thing or if-it-feels-good-do-it weren't 
recognized as modern wisdom, could it?  Yes, the seeds of that attitude 
were sown in the permissive forties and the materialistic fifties, but 
before they bore the fruit that we see now, there was a lot less of all 
the things that we decry today.

  To sum up, I am not trying to force anyone to do anything.  I believe
that an unborn child has the right not to be killed, but more than 
anything I am addressing the ideas that have led up to today when people 
are arguing for the right to do something that only a few decades ago was 
unthinkable, even in the minds of the morally degenerate.  Please change 
your hearts, and change your minds.  There is NO other way.

brian