From: utzoo!decvax!duke!bcw Newsgroups: net.women Title: Re: There is nothing wrong with Abortion Article-I.D.: duke.2977 Posted: Sun Feb 6 18:06:05 1983 Received: Mon Feb 7 05:47:31 1983 References: we13.393,watmath.4470 From: Bruce C. Wright @ Duke University Re: Abortion topic I had promised myself that I wouldn't get involved with this, but some recent comments by Pete Wilson are too far out of line to go uncommented-upon. It's certainly true that an excess of selfishness is one of the main problems of our current society, and that one shouldn't decide an entity's right to exist solely because of its degree of awareness of its condition, but it is not right to try to decide what the *human* species should do based on one's (biased) perceptions of how some arbitrary other species does things (there is an amazing amount of diversity in the world and one could prove absolutely anything with this argument). For example, saying that mammals other than man do not have sex for fun is misleading on several grounds. First of all, it is an extremely teleo- logical view of animal behavior which I'm highly doubtful is justified since most animals do not appear to be as aware of the consequences of actions as are humans. Secondly, the implication is that animals (for what- ever reasons) do not or are incapable of "having fun." This is possible, but is somewhat like trying to tell if an alien species has intelligence. The evidence is that mammals have a certain amount of behavior (especially social behavior) which appears to give them what might as well be said to be analogous to "fun," whatever that is. Thirdly, certainly many mammals have some forms of sexual behavior which cannot be directly connected with procreation: for example, ape and monkey grooming behavior and play seems to have at least some sexual components. Also, many mammals will masturbate or engage in other sexual behavior under appropriate circumstances. Some higher animals (including both mammals and birds) even have behavior patterns similar to human homosexual behavior patterns - sexual behavior between two members of the same sex. All of this has relatively little bearing on how humans should behave. One can find "support" amoung other species for practically any view you can name - what should matter is what's right for *us*, not what's right for *them*. Grumble, grumble. Bruce C. Wright @ Duke University