From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhtsa!alice!rabbit!ss Newsgroups: net.women Title: Re: Rational Argument Against Abortion (ihnp1.163) Article-I.D.: rabbit.1081 Posted: Fri Jan 28 15:59:51 1983 Received: Sat Jan 29 04:39:42 1983 *********** There are many social issues which arise when we accept the humanity of the unborn child. We must, as a nation, rise to meet those challenges. As a people, we are all trying to achieve the "rights" that we feel are ours. It seems that we have forgotten the meaning of the word "responsibility". Mike Dolan ********* You hit it on the head in the last sentence in your argument. You talk about rights and responsibilities. My view: We are taken to talking about too many "rights," and very few "responsibilities." Leaving moral questions aside, I have NO right to tell anyone whether they can have an abortion. I DO have the "responsibility" of informing them of the consequences of their choice. The person wanting an abortion does NOT have the "right" to kill the fetus. She (no sexism intended, you can read the parents) does have the "responsibility" of making sure that the future child will be taken care of, will have a reasonable chance to become a useful member of society. If she does not want the child, indeed feels repulsion towards it (as in the case of rape victims), then it becomes her "responsibility" to have an abortion. THE ONLY WAY I CAN RIGHTFULLY PREVENT HER IS IF I TAKE THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CHILD. In my experience very few of us are willing to take this responsibility and try to hide from OUR responsibility by talking about the RIGHT if the fetus, instead of the RESPONSIBILITY of the mother. By the way, the decision to have an abortion is not easily made by a mother. She goes through a lot of "soul searching" before deciding. If abortion is illegal, then she is quite likely to have it illegaly, if the answer to her soul searching is "yes". Again, the ONLY way I can talk about the RIGHT of the fetus, the unborn human child if you will, over the RESPONSIBILITY of the mother is if I am willing to take that RESPONSIBILITY from her. I feel that it may be our duty or responsibility to inform the would be mother of the moral, physical or religious issues in having an abortion, but if we want HER to take care of the child, then the decision about the abortion has to be HERS. Sharad Singhal.