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From: barry@ames-lm.UUCP (Kenn Barry)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Abortions and Aristotle
Message-ID: <351@ames-lm.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 21-Jun-84 15:12:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames-lm.351
Posted: Thu Jun 21 15:12:24 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jun-84 11:10:21 EDT
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 40

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> An abortion is either murder or it isn't.  Something can't be murder
> from only one person's point of view.  If abortion is murder then it
> shouldn't be allowed whether or not the child will be wanted.  You can't
> legally murder someone just because no one likes him.  On the other
> hand, if abortion isn't murder, then the father should have no say in
> the matter (legally).  It's not his body.

	Maybe I'm being picky, but I don't think this kind of Aristotelian
logic (is or isn't, no middle ground) is valid. To use your example,
for instance, 'murder': this word is a legal term, and its meaning varies
according to whose laws you're subject to. An abortion which was perfectly
legal in this country might well have been murder if carried out in a
country where abortions are illegal.

	But this is a trivial example. More serious confusion has occurred
from applying this sort of either/or logic to the question of whether
a fetus is a human being. A fetus, like everything else, is what it is;
to ask whether it's 'human' is not to ask a factual question, but to
ask how best to classify it. And the purpose of the classification is
to figure out how it should be treated.

	It seems clear to me that a fetus is different from an adult
human being in a number of significant ways, which have been covered
by the free-choicers here on the net. It is equally clear to me that
a fetus is not the same as a dog or cat, or as a malignant tumor. The
differences have been adequately covered by the right-to-lifers. The
conclusion I draw from this, is that the best way to classify a human
fetus is to give it its own category, somewhere between human and non-
human, and then to decide which human rights are appropriate to this
pre-human. Obviously, this approach in no way guarantees that we will
all reach the same conclusions about how fetuses are to be treated; but
perhaps it would cut down on the amount of tail-chasing and repetition
that occurs in this debate.

                                                Kenn Barry
                                                NASA-Ames Research Center
                                                Moffett Field, CA
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