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