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From: liz@umcp-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Pro-life doctors before the Senate Judiciary committee
Message-ID: <1020@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 21-Jul-83 17:47:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1020
Posted: Thu Jul 21 17:47:03 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jul-83 05:41:22 EDT
References: <1704@tekecs.UUCP>
Organization: Univ. of Maryland, Computer Science Dept.
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My source indicated that there had been an oportunity for pro-choice
doctors to appear and testify that life began at some other time
but that none were found to do so.  There was at least on pro-choice
senator on the committee, but the only witness he found to testify
that life did not start at conception was not a doctor and would
only testify that it was a theological or meta-physical question.
It turns out that later, one of the medical associations (The
American Medical Assn?) did pass a resolution stating that the
question of life beginning was a theological or meta-physical
question.  If I have time, I'll check my source, etc, a little more
carefully.  It is true that the resolution failed to pass in the full
Senate -- I don't know why.

I didn't mean to imply that the pro-choice doctors were too busy
in the abortion clinics to testify -- I just thought that it meant
that they could not honestly give another point in time for human
life to begin.  Viablity, for instance, depends greatly on what
medical support is given and premature infants are able to survive
earlier and earlier as medical science advances.  And, if they said
that human life did begin then, that would imply that abortions
should not be done after a certain point in the pregnancy.  (Actually,
in my area here, it is almost impossible to get an abortion after
about the 18th to 20th week of pregnancy because the doctors want
to avoid "accidental" live births.  But I think that this area is
unusual.)

In any case, the long standing and traditional view to the beginning
of life has always been that life begins at conception.  This is
evidenced by both the doctor (whom I quoted) who stated that all
his text books taught this and by the California Medicine editorial
(that I also quoted) which stated that the fact was deliberately
being ignored by proponents of the new ethic and which was not
pro-life...

-- 
				-Liz Allen
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