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From: ucbesvax.turner@ucbcad.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response - (nf)
Message-ID: <140@ucbcad.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 2-Aug-83 07:07:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.140
Posted: Tue Aug  2 07:07:43 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 2-Aug-83 16:23:00 EDT
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#R:umcp-cs:-111400:ucbesvax:11400005:37777777600:4104
ucbesvax!turner    Aug  2 00:22:00 1983

I say "If, on the other hand (long-parenthetical-comment) *before*" being
taken from the womb.  But you say: "Stop right there."  Well, I say read
to the period.  Maybe even to the end of the paragraph.  In any case, I am
clearly using "killed" in the very broadest sense: one can be killed equally
by accident or by a malicious person or a person defending herself.  And
with no particular blame on the part of the person killed.

In any case, you misread my purpose.  Liz has not responded to me personally,
nor to net.philosophy.  You believe that she is capable of defending herself.
Yet she has not tried to defend herself against what I have said, because
I was not attacking her beliefs.  I say, OK: it's killing babies.  But I
don't say "poor, harmless babies."  I say POC.  Now, liz has three choices:

	1. SHE can say "POC" in her responses;

	2. she can go on tugging heartstrings (in her admittedly intelligent
	   and reasonable-sounding way), and even attack me for being cold
	   and cruel;

	3. she can shut up (as she finally did in net.women).

I sympathize with your desire to have the abortion controversy settled on
its merits.  However, at one point I saw that this person, Liz, had almost
single-handedly set 4 or 5 newsgroups aflame.  I have read much of what she
has to say.  I settled, finally, on one weakness: she has worked in centers
that counsel pregnant women with a decided emphasis on the supposed inhumanity
of abortion.  I concluded that she had worked with women who had had abort-
ions, and even some who had gone ahead with them against her counsel.  It is
clear that Liz is not a fire-and-brimstone "pro-lifer".  She forgives this sin.

So I asked her (essentially) whether she would tolerate a judicial system
that was less forgiving than she is.  And she shut up.  This is no more or
less than what I set out to do.  My contribution is certainly no example
to be held up as a way to argue about abortion.  But I think it's successful
on its own terms, which happen not to be your terms.

Some of your twistings of my words astound me.  You ask me "Are you
SERIOUSLY suggesting that the state should protect only decision-making
humans and itself."  I look at what I wrote, and fail to see where you
find the "should".  The State is amoral.  It protects decision-making
humans that might turn against it if it didn't, and in this sense protects
ONLY itself.  If abortion were massively unpopular (it so happens that it
is not), then for the state to protect abortion rights would lead it to
endanger itself.

Would the State would consider a babykiller's "ignorance" of the humanity
of their victims?  I find this hard to believe.  Would repeat offenders
then be subject to the penalties for murder, since their ignorance was
clearly dispelled by their first conviction?  (Legally, it is only the
State's definition of "murder" that matters.)  I suppose there is some-
thing to this: the Jim Crow South was rather tolerant of lynching parties
for not recognizing the humanity of black people.  I suppose that mobs that
lynched abortionists might also enjoy some clemency by virtue of *their*
ignorance of the abortionist's ignorance of fetal rights.  You are nowhere
examinating the political complexities of this issue.

(BTW, the only conscientious objector I know spent 2 years in Lompoc.  He
was admittedly one of only 60 or so in the country to do time in a federal
prison for his crime--he was used as a deterring example, unsuccessfully. 
And I suspect that most of the character-based community-service sentences
were, in reality, also examples: expressions of protest on the part of the
judiciary to defend the legitimacy of *their* share of state-power against
an increasingly outraged citizenry.  The social dynamics of unpopular wars
are such that the State has to contradict itself, and partially resolve
those contradictions, in order to survive.)

In your ostensible position of referee, I see a moralistic tilt.  Please
correct me if I am wrong.  It might be unconsciously inferred from your
login name.

	Michael Turner
	ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner