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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