Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site mtx5a.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!vax135!mtunh!mtung!mtx5c!mtx5d!mtx5a!mat From: mat@mtx5a.UUCP (Mark Terribile) Newsgroups: net.suicide,net.religion Subject: Re: A modest proposal Message-ID: <1117@mtx5a.UUCP> Date: Wed, 13-Nov-85 19:06:37 EST Article-I.D.: mtx5a.1117 Posted: Wed Nov 13 19:06:37 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 15-Nov-85 04:47:02 EST References: <925@utcs.uucp> Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ Lines: 92 Xref: watmath net.suicide:777 net.religion:8212 I'm cross-posting this because I think it will generate a useful flame or two. >>Forgive me for injecting reality, but the Right-To-Life people would >>never allow it. I mean, if they fight for the potential life contained >>in a fetus, you'd expect that they'd fight for the lives of condemned >>criminals and suicidal teenagers. > >Untrue... for example many Right-To-Life people are pro-war. > >What makes most people against abortion is religious arguments and the fact >that they can't think clearly about it because it is connected with sex. > >"Right-To-Life" people are often the LAST people to be genuinely concerned >with life. > >Alan J Rosenthal decvax!utzoo!utcs!flaps WHOA! This thinking is more typical of the seven-o'clock news than it is of educated people ... at least those who should be educated. Let's take this an item at a time. Taking it all at once is answering a gross distortion with noise. As far a a fetus being a ``potential life'', it is exactly the point of most of the anti-abortion movement that it IS a life. The modifier ``potential'' is irrelevant. Get THAT discussion to net.abortion. As far as condemned criminals, many pro-life folks DO fight against capital punishment. And many don't. The belief that a person, by choosing to be a danger to others, may force the community to decide between his life and those of his victims is not the same as the belief that an innocent child ahould not be murdered in its mother's womb. Flames on the wording to net.abortion, please. We're talking what people BELIEVE. As far as the prevention of suicide ... is THAT why the Catholic Church, which seems to end up spearheading the anti-abortion movement, operates at least a half-a-dozen Covenant House centers for runaway or abandoned kids in various cities? Is that why other religious bodies place so strong an emphasis on community? A person who really DOES feel in touch with the people around her will not destroy herself. As far as being pro-war ... there are always ideologues in every crowd who feel that someone or another would do better with a different government. Many times they are right. A few of those ideologues get to thinking that they could not possibly make things worse, and try to go to war. This DOES NOT MEAN THAT DEFENDING YOURSELF, YOUR FAMILY, OR YOUR FRIEND comes under the heading of ``murder of innocents''. Some people feel it does. Others feel it does not. > >What makes most people against abortion is religious arguments and the fact >that they can't think clearly about it because it is connected with sex. > >"Right-To-Life" people are often the LAST people to be genuinely concerned >with life. May I remind you that how we live our lives is a valid concern of religion? It seems that over the last few hundred ``enlightened'' years, we are denying the right of people to live their lives according to their beliefs. And over the years, sex has been a valid concern of religion. ****If this enlightened age seeks to reduce religion to a dusty bookshelf of decaying volumes, then it should not have the right to attack religion on the basis that religion is what enlightenment has made it.**** Conversely, if religion is to be a living force, a way of life worth retaining, it must be free to challenge ideas whether those ideas are considered enlightenment or not. Most of rhetoric I have heard from the anti-``pro-life'' folk concerns how it is unfair to subject people to responsibility of carrying a child. It seems unsurprising that these same folk don't want religion reminding them that they may have other responsibilities as well. As to being the last people to be genuinely concerned with life: well, I think that people who spout enlightenment are often the last people to demonstrate it. And people whe scream that they must not have their freedoms impinged upon are among the most enslaved ... they cannot live with things happenning in their lives that are not of their own choosing. This last group scares me. We (for I am a great example) are among the least resilient and least resourceful people ever to have lived, and our civilization may not last if we don't get our individual and collective acts together. -- from Mole End Mark Terribile (scrape .. dig ) mtx5b!mat ,.. .,, ,,, ..,***_*.