Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!lll-crg!nike!oliveb!hplabs!hp-pcd!ogcvax!pase From: pase@ogcvax.UUCP (Douglas M. Pase) Newsgroups: talk.abortion Subject: Re: What makes XXXX so Valuable? Message-ID: <1093@ogcvax.UUCP> Date: Tue, 16-Sep-86 13:09:32 EDT Article-I.D.: ogcvax.1093 Posted: Tue Sep 16 13:09:32 1986 Date-Received: Mon, 29-Sep-86 00:19:38 EDT References: <963@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> Reply-To: pase@ogcvax.UUCP (Douglas M. Pase) Organization: Oregon Graduate Center, Beaverton, OR Lines: 26 In article marty1@houem.UUCP (M.BRILLIANT) writes: > [...] >Specifically, I suggest that a society that holds human life "sacred" >survives because it thus establishes "not killing" as a policy, and >this leads to success because the people we don't kill are useful to >us. But a fetus is not useful, and sacrificing tangible values to >preserve a fetus is not conducive to success. Hmmm... Interesting thought. How about if we refine that a little. How about if we make it our policy to "not kill only those who are useful to us". Therefore if a majority (after all this is a democracy) agrees that the citizens of a certain unfriendly nation are not useful to us but their real estate is, we have a certain moral right - nay, obligation - to exterminate them and purloin their property. I suppose that this could be extended even to citizens of this country. Now that would be an effective method of controlling unemployment, poverty and the spiraling costs of Medicare and Social Security, not to mention crime and the nation's drug problem. Capital punnishment for being useless! As for fetuses being useless? Well, all the greatest people in this world (at least that I know of) were all fetuses at one time or another. That seems to me to suggest that perhaps a fetus is not quite as useless as was previously suggested. -- Doug Pase -- ...ucbvax!tektronix!ogcvax!pase or pase@Oregon-Grad