From: utzoo!decvax!yale-com!brunix!gh
Newsgroups: net.women
Title: Re: pro-choice groups
Article-I.D.: brunix.1836
Posted: Tue Mar  8 20:07:25 1983
Received: Wed Mar  9 05:52:16 1983
References: trsvax.225,tekmdp.1800

Okay, let's agree with trsvax!ljw that:

     ... Anti-abortionists (who are not "anti-choice", just "anti-abortionist")
     believe that the human fetus is a human being, and thus subject to the
     laws of the constitution (including the right not to be murdered), whereas
     pro-abortionists believe that the human fetus is not a human being, and
     thus the woman is free to deal with this "thing" attached to her as she
     sees fit.

and also that:

     On abortion, surveys find that 73 percent want it limited to certain cases
     or banned.

The question then is:

     What can we say about these people who want abortion "limited to certain
     cases"

These people clearly believe the fetus is not human, or they could not justify
abortion in cases of rape, mother's life in danger (versus certain death for
the fetus), etc.  When Cindy McMeekin says that 80% of Americans are
pro-choice, what she really means is that 80% favor some cases of abortion,
and therfore must not believe the fetus to be human.  (This agrees with
other statistics I've seen: 20% believe abortion to be murder.)

On the other hand, these people are not pro-choice either (thus Cindy is
technically wrong), as they seem to want to deny abortion in many cases even
though they don't consider it murder.

>From the above figures, it seems that about 53% of Americans deny the premises
of both sides.	So what DO they believe?  One possibily, touched on before in
this debate, is that they believe that pregnancy should be a punishment for
those immoral enough to have sex for recreation only, and abortion allows
them to escape the punishment (as if having an abortion were a picnic!);
so it's okay in cases of rape, etc.  I find it hard to believe that this could
be a majority opinion!	Any other ideas?

	Graeme Hirst
	!decvax!brunix!gh	gh.brown@udel-relay