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From: rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: The myth of humanity (moral article)
Message-ID: <492@pyuxn.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 5-Mar-84 16:11:14 EST
Article-I.D.: pyuxn.492
Posted: Mon Mar  5 16:11:14 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 7-Mar-84 08:33:04 EST
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Organization: Central Services Org., Piscataway N.J.
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I have yet to hear this point of view or this proposal, so hear goes:

If a fertilized egg or fetus or embryo (non-born potential human) can
live its own life without external support, it is thus a living thing,
and destroying it would be murder.  I'm not talking about respirators,
I'm talking about real virtual womb type environments when I refer to
external support.  If it is at a stage where it would fail this test,
it would be deemed a parasite in the woman's body, albeit one with the
potential of becoming human.  Destroying it would thus not be murder,
unless you consider the killing of a tapeworm murder.

Now, I'm not sure if such a distinction can be clearly made pointing to
a precise point in the pregnancy timeline, but remember this is a
thought experiment.  If a fetus is removed from a woman's body such that
it is no longer living off of the woman in what some would call a parisitic
fashion, if it dies, it dies.  It wouldn't have lived on its own anyway.
It needed the resources of the woman's body to survive.  Now look up the
definition of the word 'parasite', and if you're so inclined, try to describe
what benefits it would provide to the "host" to exempt it from that
definition.  On the other hand, if it lives, it lives.  Now, I'm not sure
what sort of "living" that would be for an only partially evolved and
developed human.

Another possibility would be that if such a fetus/embryo is removed from
a woman's body, it would not HAVE to be left to die.  Artificial womb
environments, or perhaps even surrogate mothers (if biotechnology gets us
to that point) could offer their wombs for the duration of the fetus'
development.

I guess the points are these:

If you believe that a person's body is his/her own, then the person should
have the right to remove unwanted objects from within it.  If such an
object can be removed, and can still potentially grow to a point where it
is a living thing that can live on its own and not qualify as a parasite, an
effort can be made to do so, but the person from whom it was removed is not
necessarily obliged to assist in that effort.  If it "dies" (i.e., fails
to continue growing to the point where it is a living thing), it was clearly
not a living thing, since it could not sustain its own life.  If it lives,
so much the better, provided you are not "keeping alive"  a deformed
organism who has not progressed beyond the status of a 5-month old embryo
who could never hope to survive in society.
-- 
Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway oh, god, I'm so depressed...
	Rich Rosen    pyuxn!rlr