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From: john@cisden.UUCP (John Woolley)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: a task for those opposed to abortion
Message-ID: <464@cisden.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 28-Jan-86 11:25:22 EST
Article-I.D.: cisden.464
Posted: Tue Jan 28 11:25:22 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Feb-86 23:54:33 EST
References: <1100@oddjob.UUCP> <1730@druxu.UUCP> <30@valid.UUCP> <412@cisden.UUCP> <892@cybvax0.UUCP>
Reply-To: john@cisden.UUCP (John Woolley)
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Mike Huybensz directs an important question to me in article <892@cybvax0.UUCP>:
>Why don't you simply tell us why you think murder is wrong?

Okay, I'll give it a shot.  I oppose murder and abortion for three reasons
primarily (although these overlap a lot).  First, I'm a humanist; second, a
civilised man; third (in order but not importance) a Christian.

As to the first.  I claim to be a humanist, by which I mean that I believe,
without needing to inquire really deeply into the reasons for the belief and
without any formal proof asked or given, that human things are good.  I
believe that people are valuable and, yes, inherently dignified; and that
this value and dignity do not depend on my or anyone else's perception, but
are a real aspect of what people *are*.  Further, that nothing ever can
remove this human dignity from someone, and that any treatment of people
that devalues them or treats them as less than human, as not valuable, is
wrong; not wrong in some relative or utilitarian sense, but wrong absolutely.

Second, I am civilised, a part of Western civilisation, the tradition of
Moses, Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Dante, Shakespeare,
Pascal, Mozart, Dickens.  (To name only a very few.)  It seems to me that
one of the greatest "themes", if you will, of that civilisation is our
gradually coming to realize that individuals are to be protected and
nurtured by society, and that individual weakness is not an excuse for
exploitation, but the exact opposite, a just claim for protection.  And
that life, liberty, and property are to be guaranteed by society as far as
possible.

Third, I am Christian, and believe therefore that all our race has been
created after the image of the eternal God, that in our very nature we
have the stamp and likeness of eternity.  And further, that the Word has
become flesh, has taken our nature into His own, and therefore that all
flesh is holy, human-ness taken up into God and filled with His perfect
love and joy.  And therefore, that to kill or injure a person is not only
inhuman, not only unjust, not only imprudent and uncivilised, but an act
of blasphemy, a declaration of enmity with love Himself, an attempted
violence against Reality.

That's why I think murder is wrong.  The third reason will appeal mostly
to Christians (and in part to Jews); but the first and second seem to me
to be pretty universal among what used to be called "people of good will".
-- 
				Peace and Good!,
				      Fr. John Woolley
"Compared to what I have seen, all that I have written is straw." -- St. Thomas