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From: harold@hp-pcd.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: *THE* Question
Message-ID: <76700001@hp-pcd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-Mar-84 20:08:00 EST
Article-I.D.: hp-pcd.76700001
Posted: Thu Mar 15 20:08:00 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Mar-84 06:59:27 EST
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Portable Computer Division - Corvallis, OR
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Nf-ID: #N:hp-pcd:76700001:000:2664
Nf-From: hp-pcd!harold    Mar 15 17:08:00 1984

From my (perhaps limited) perspective, there appears to be one question
which MUST be answered BEFORE any of the others.  (There ARE many, many
questions involved in the abortion issue.  All the rest are hetorical 
until our society answers THE QUESTION.)  THE QUESTION is:

	What constitues a "human being" worthy of all the rights,
	priviledges, and protection "under the law" given to the
	members of our society??

Or, to state it in less verbose terms:

	What is the definition of "human"?

Until this question is answered, questions involving the rights of the
parents cannot be answered because the answers to such questions MUST 
take into consideration the rights of the unborn human IF (please note:
*IF*) the fetus is human.  The same is true of the questions concerning
rights to "govern one's own body"; likewise for questions about rape, 
contraception, euthanasia, legalizing mass murder, and whether or not 
a certain individual may or may not express their opinions on a public
network without fear of insult and public abuse.

The definition of what is "human" must, positively MUST, be applied
consistently across ALL aspects of our society- abortion, old age, 
accident victim, and war casualty included.  If the definition is NOT
applied with consistency, our legal system and, indeed, our society as
a whole are in danger of total collapse.

Permit two brief examples.

First, the aged Mother who is totally senile.  She cannot recognize
anyone- even her own daughter.  She cannot feed herself, bathe herself,
dress herself, use the toilet, carry on a converstion, do any work.  
She simply sits there waiting to die.  She is a burden on our society.
Is she human?

Second, an 18 year old girl who is, right now, lying in a Portland
hospital.  She is on a respirator and a dialysis machine.  She has been
comatose for 12 days.  She has less than a 50% chance of survival.  IF
she survives, there is no hope of 100% recovery.  Is she human?

Do either of these two individuals have the "right" to place the 
tremendous burden of financial and emotional support they require on 
our society?

Admittedly, the question of when a fetus "becomes" a "human" is more 
difficult to answer than the question of when a person ceases to be
"human".  But BOTH questions are *EXTREMELY* difficult to deal with.
The fear I have is that our society will shun the responsibility of
defining what is "human", choosing, instead, to deal with the subsets
like abortion and euthanasia.  These subsets (falsely?)abecause they (falsely?) appear to be 
easier to deal with than "playing God" and placing a legal definition
of what constitutes "human"