From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!npois!houxm!houxa!houxi!houxz!ihnp4!stolaf!knight Newsgroups: net.women Title: Re: Rational Argument Against Abortion Article-I.D.: stolaf.781 Posted: Fri Jan 28 15:41:04 1983 Received: Tue Feb 1 08:24:12 1983 References: ihnp1.163 The crux of Mike Dolan's argument: There is no magical moment when a child suddenly "becomes" human. It always was. Sorry to fan flames, but this is a logical fallacy often known as "slippery slope." If you agree that a fetus is always a human being *for this reason* (I'm not judging any other reasons), you also need to agree that white is black--after all, I can take, say, white paint, and add black in small amounts. To paraphrase, since there is no moment when the paint suddenly "becomes" black, it always was. It's this kind of slope between two distinctive end points that created the term "grey area." The point of this article is that by isolating the blur in the middle, a slippery slope argument tries to obscure the fact that there is definitely *some* difference between the two ends. The abortion question has to decide whether or not these differences between a born human and an unborn fetus make any legal/moral difference--something which I don't feel fit to make any proclamations on. Steve Knight ihnp4!stolaf!knight harpo!stolaf!knight