Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: notesfiles - hp internal release 1.2; site hp-pcd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!hp-pcd!harold 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 Lines: 53 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"