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From: marty1@houem.UUCP (M.BRILLIANT)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: Best for Others?
Message-ID: <659@houem.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 11-Oct-86 11:16:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: houem.659
Posted: Sat Oct 11 11:16:22 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Oct-86 07:06:03 EDT
References: <2710@burdvax.UUCP> <5833@ut-sally.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 49

There is no monolithic pro-choice view.

In <1976@curly.ucla-cs.ARPA>, cc@locus.ucla.edu (Oleg "Kill the
bastards" Kiselev) wrote:
>In article <2621@watdcsu.UUCP> mberkley@watdcsu.UUCP (J.M.Berkley) writes:
...
>>The view of pro-choice is that an unborn baby is not a person,
>
>You are VERY WRONG. PRO-CHOICE has very little to say about whether that
>"unborn baby" is a "person" or even if it is alive. The view of PRO-CHOICE
>is that women have inalienable rights to their bodies and ...
> ... that a woman's
>rights to privacy and her body over-rule any possible rights to life of
>a miniscule blob of cells that feeds of her body and does weird things
>to her chemistry.

J.M.Berkley is not VERY WRONG.  I am pro-choice and I think it's
important to say that a fetus is not a person.  When you call the fetus
a "minuscule blob of cells" you imply that it is not entitled to be
treated as a person.  For further reasoning see below.

>>the view of pro-life is that the unborn baby is a person.
>
>The view of so-called "pro-life" is that ...  a life of a fetus
>is more important than needs and wants of a woman who is sentenced to 
>nurture it within her body and then for 18-20 years as a dependent.
>The view of "pro-life" is that the State ...  has a right to force women
>to endanger their lives against their will. The view of "pro-life" is that
>to preserve disputable rights of a possible human being they can violate
>the rights of an adult, fully formed and often productive human being.

Oleg, if you allow a fetus to be called a person then its rights are
indisputable, not "disputable."  Its right to life might then override
its mother's needs and wants.

In spite of what Paul Dubuc may say, I do not hold a mother's right to
the use of her body to be absolute.  Nor do I hold a fetus to be
absolutely worthless.  All is relative.  But after all the analysis of
gradations of value, if you have to draw a line somewhere, it makes
sense to draw the line at birth and say an unborn fetus is not a
person.  Anything else leads to a logical and legal morass in which
pro-lifers delight in trapping us.

I may be wrong (I hope not VERY WRONG).  Maybe somebody can suggest a
better logical ground for pro-choice than I have chosen.

M. B. Brilliant					Marty
AT&T-BL HO 3D-520	(201)-949-1858
Holmdel, NJ 07733	ihnp4!houem!marty1