Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site gitpyr.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!gatech!gitpyr!myke From: myke@gitpyr.UUCP (Myke Reynolds) Newsgroups: net.abortion Subject: ancients predict usenet Message-ID: <811@gitpyr.UUCP> Date: Sat, 21-Sep-85 00:50:30 EDT Article-I.D.: gitpyr.811 Posted: Sat Sep 21 00:50:30 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 21-Sep-85 12:03:10 EDT Reply-To: myke@gitpyr.UUCP (Myke Reynolds) Distribution: net Organization: School of ICS, Georgia Tech Lines: 173 Brian Wells writes: > Sure you could argue a line of demarcation at birth >but I don't think it is a firm and immovable as a line at conception. [go on down a little] > My daughter was born six weeks >early and she certainly looks human. According to all the classes and books >I have had, she has looked human for a few months now even though she has >been in the womb. If you had something else in mind, please explain. Do you have me and Rich Rosen mixed up? I never said abortions should be legal anytime close to birth. They aren't now, and I certain never said they should be! I watched some of the PBS special on abortion. Even through all the distortions of _Silent_Scream_, there was something about it, and the pro-choice film that followed it, that deeply disturbed me.. All those gruesome pictures of aborted children.. They didn't look like fetuses, they looked like half developed babies?! The followup film did a good job of countering every point the anti-abortion film made *except* that. A rather large except in my mind... Were those medical complications? How late are unexceptional pregnancies allowed to abort?? Paul Dubuc writes: >A fetus may not be a thinking human being (according to your definition) >at a particular point in her life. But neither is the person who is >unaware *at that particular point in her life*. I don't follow you here.. For a person to become a non-thinking being (at least by the way I was considering this) would require s/he to die. I know thats not what you meant, you can't kill a dead person, much less without his knowing it.. What do you mean by thinking being? I gather from the parenthetical that your definition of thinking being might include a fetus?? As the PBS documentary pointed out, the last 3 months of development of a fetus are almost completely devoted to growth of the brain. It increases in size incredibly till it makes up 1/6 of a child's body weight at birth. Most abortions (according to the film) occur before the twelfth week after conception. This seems reasonable to me, as long as it is before the period of cerebral growth. This is the upper bound on where I would put a limit on abortions if my say so meant anything.. (If anything, it would be earlier.) >To you the future state or potential makes no difference with regard to the >fetus. Why does it make a difference with regard to the person who is unaware >at a certain point in time? Why can't the fetus simply be considered "unaware" >for the time being? The fetus is less then just unaware, there is nothing to be aware. The potential life of the already existing woman is also at stake. Time is precious and children require a great deal of it. I think it is quite callous to call child baring a mere inconvenience.. I have great hope for the future, a child would set me back 5 to 10 years.. To an unwed mother who does not have the career options I do, having a child when she isn't ready could set her back a life time. And for what? A mindless mass of cells? My definition of sin goes like this; anything you do that hurts someone unnecessarily is a sin. As such I do not consider abortion a sin, there is no one to hurt. On the other hand I consider forcing someone to have a child a sin. >What difference does my social status or the fact that I won't be hurt >personally make as to whether I'm right or wrong? Would I be right to >say that you shouldn't be pro-choice because your life will never end >in an abortion? You don't know anything about what I can or can't afford >and it makes no difference one way or the other. You need to discuss the >argument on its own merit. Is is wrong to be against racial discrimination >if you're not in a minority? Do you think that everyone in the lower >"social classes" agrees with you on abortion? Arguing with things that >have nothing to do with whether or not the person's opinion is right or >wrong is what is meant by and ad hominem argument. I did not say your social status made your view invalid, what I did say is that ones views can be very tied to their environment. Yes indeed, I get the impression there are a lot of women who are stuck in the lower brackets of life now because they were barefoot and pregnant early in life who favour abortions for their daughters. The "I want you to live the life I never had" point of view. Whether or not it is due to your environment, I don't think you have much empathy for this, the other side of the coin. To you the potential of an amorphous blob of cells is so much more important that women should be subjected by law. If you saw the last film in the PBS documentary this was brought out by situation and by the pro-life activist (was he really a Dr.?) who was trying to persuade a woman not to listen to her mother and to come live with him and his wife, and the other expectant mothers he gave shelter to. He considered the mother misguided.. >No, I'm willing to help her with alternatives. My wife and I have personally >done so. How about you? Sir, at 17 there are many things I haven't done. >If this teenager doesn't want an abortion do you >tell her that it's too bad, she'll have to tough it on her own? Do you support >both choices, or just abortion? Thats absurd. Its is you who is arguing against choice, not me. I applaud the nobility of your spirit, and apologize for accusing you of moral hypocrisy, but your tunnel vision saddens me.. You remind me a great deal of the "doctor" in the last film I mention above.. At first he was shown standing with a bunch of pro-lifers who were yelling things like "Don't burn your baby".. (not only tacky, but to me, sin) But then he was shown at home in a much more tender setting with his wife and the expectant mothers he cared very well for. It saddened me that here was such a passionate man with such a misguided cause.. Not the cause of helping pregnant women who could not other wise afford to keep a child, but the cause brought on by thinking this sort of help should be forced on all women with unwanted pregnancies. >No, I wan't to know what your answer *is*. Why aren't you telling me? >You don't accept conception (that's what you're tearing down) so what's >your line? What difference does it make if I set a line? Myke Reynolds' line of demarcation, oh boy. It is easy to have an opinion about something you know little about. >How do these scenarios affect the question of whether or not the fetus >is a rightful human being? The scenario wasn't addressing the subject of whether a fetus is a "rightful human" or not. It was addressing the situation that you want to see there be no out for. All for the sake of a rightful human fetus, a mindless blob of cells. >A girl may carry the child for term and >get help in raising it and finishing school or she may opt for adoption. That doesn't even come close.. I can hardly spare the time to sleep at times, raising a child PROPERLY requires more time then I could ever spare now and hope to ever make anything of my life. As to adoption, I think I'll reply to that in another message with some excerpts from a college life magazine that floats around Ga. Tech at times.. >>A fetus is not cognizant. >Neither is someone who is sleeping. If the fact that they will be >at other times matters for them, why does it not matter for the fetus? That is not what I meant.. A sleeping person has a mind and a unique personality. Sleeping does not preclude this.. A fetus has no mind. >Draw your line between killing a human being and abortion for me. At >what point does the former become the latter? When it has a mind!!!!!! arg... >Yes, this is beginning to look like a merry-go-round. If your not going to >make a reasonable attempt at defining the line and telling me where >it occurs, then I'll be glad to get off. You are very exasperating.. I've said all along, "when it has a mind", what I will not blunder an attempt at is a point at which there is beyond a shadow of a doubt nothing of the mind which makes us us. But it is certain well after conception. >The presence of a nervous system is not conclusive proof that a human being >is a "thinking one". I'm not sure what you mean by that, but *NOT* having a nervous system is quite conclusive proof that something isn't a thinking being. >Anyway, what I am trying to get at is how you define >the line between the protected and unprotected, and why you feel that line >makes a difference. My point is that I don't think potential is irrelevant >in considering whether or not the fetus is a rightful person. >A body cell is not a fetus or a zygote, is it? That is where the qualifier >makes the difference. The point I did a very poor job of trying to make here was stated much more elegantly by Michael McNeil with his _Brave_New_World_ analogy.. You speak of the importants of potential, degrees of potential make a difference to you however.. You wish to subordinate a woman to this potential. Not to life, but to potential of life. My opinion is that this is not justification enough. Your opinion is that it is. Maybe we will never reach an agreement? -- Myke Reynolds Office of Telecommunications and Networking Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 ...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!myke "Too bad all the people that know how to run this country are busy cutting hair and driving taxi cabs." -George Burns Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com