Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site cbscc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbsck!cbscc!pmd From: pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) Newsgroups: net.abortion Subject: Re: Re: Morality and Democracy Message-ID: <4424@cbscc.UUCP> Date: Thu, 20-Dec-84 08:20:08 EST Article-I.D.: cbscc.4424 Posted: Thu Dec 20 08:20:08 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 21-Dec-84 02:24:29 EST References: <156@tekchips.UUCP>, <233@looking.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus Lines: 27 >The whole point here is that we in the pro-choice camp want a society with >as little enforced morality as possible. In general the rule is, "The more >subjective the morality, the less there should be a law." >Abortion is very clearly a matter of much more subjective morality than >slavery. And that's the difference, plain and simple. >How do we define objective morality? It's tough, but I think we must >start from a passive state - which is to say we allow things that don't >infringe on the desires of others, and only disallow things when there >is a very clear large (like >90%) majority that want it. Then by your standards it WAS wrong to ban slavery in the U.S. I doubt that 90% were opposed to it then; there was probably only a small minority who really wanted it banned. To discuss the banning of slavery by today's moral standards is missing the whole point. Slavery wasn't banned by our standard of morality. Rather the banning of slavery seems to have contributed greatly to our present standard against it. I would venture to say that slavery was very much a matter of "subjective morality" in the antebellum South. Slaves were definitely viewed as non-persons then. -- Paul Dubuc cbscc!pmd