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From: barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: Best for Others?
Message-ID: <1695@ames.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 10-Oct-86 13:32:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames.1695
Posted: Fri Oct 10 13:32:48 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Oct-86 06:18:54 EDT
References: <2710@burdvax.UUCP> <5833@ut-sally.UUCP>
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 41

From: mberkley@watdcsu.UUCP (J.M.Berkley - Computing Services):
>In article (Alan M. Steinberg) writes:
>>What is moral is what a person or group accepts as being moral.
>>If it is the custom of a society to eat their first-born (to use
>>an extreme case), then this is morally okay to them, and we cannot
>>say they are wrong.  We abhor the practice, and to everyone in our
>>society (I hope), it is morally wrong.  But if we were
>>in their society, we would be morally violating the custom if we did not do the
>>same.
>
>I don't recall any societies where murder is condoned for the
>sake of convenience.  Sure there are/were societies where babies
>were murdered for religious ceremonies or entire villages were
>slaughtered for reasons of war but I do not know of any society
>where it was acceptable for a child to be killed for reasons of
>convenience.

	The killing of infants for reasons of convenience has been practiced
by many societies. The ancient Greeks did it, I'm pretty sure the Egyptians
did it, the Chinese did it... probably more ancient societies did it
than not. The typical practice was death by exposure - the infant was
taken out into the wilderness and left there. This practice is probably
the reason that many myths and fairy tales have the hero being found
in the woods by some poor-but-honest couple who raise him as their own.
Maybe this was even how Moses ended up in the rushes; I forget the story.
	Why'd they do it? The parents didn't want the child. Maybe they
couldn't afford to raise it; maybe it had birth defects; maybe it was
a girl, and a son was wanted; maybe the child would have been an
embarrassment to Mom when hubby came home after a few years off to war.
And since abortion was a *very* unsafe procedure back then, exposure
was often the more popular method of getting rid of unwanted children.
	Of course, this was not necessarily seen as murder by these
societies. In some the practice was sanctioned, and not considered murder.
The status of "person" wasn't gained at birth, but when the child was
accepted into its family/community shortly thereafter.

-  From the Crow's Nest  -                      Kenn Barry
                                                NASA-Ames Research Center
                                                Moffett Field, CA
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