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From: kjm@ut-ngp.UUCP (Ken Montgomery)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: an abortion story
Message-ID: <1126@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Dec-84 13:18:04 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.1126
Posted: Thu Dec 13 13:18:04 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Dec-84 06:05:26 EST
References: <46@tove.UUCP> <1097@ut-ngp.UUCP> <393@gitpyr.UUCP>
Organization: U.Texas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
Lines: 102

[]
This reply (and several others) are coming later than they should,
but higher-priority things have kept me from responding.

> [Gerald Owens]
>> [ken montgomery] 
>> >[Liz Allen]
>> >Its right to remain in the mother's body against the mother's will is
>> >dependant on whether or not its life is valued more than mother's
>> >inconvenience to carry the baby to term.

I didn't notice the fundamental flaw in this argument initially.
Liz argues that "right ... is dependant".  Nonsense.  Rights are
axiomatic.  A person's claim to rights, however, is valid if and
only if that person has not violated the rights of another.  It does
not matter whether the fetus was invited into the woman's body; it
has no right to remain after her consent to its presence ends.  Thus
the fetus, not its mother, is the violator of the rights of another
in the case of an unwanted pregnancy.

>> Valued by whom?  Anyway, why does the alleged "value" of a fetus
>> override the woman's right to control her property (her body)?
>> 
>        We normally restrict the criminal's right to control his
>body to prevent him from harming others, for a fixed period of time, and
>nobody objects.

So a pregnant woman is, in principle, the same as a criminal, since
her rights are to be restricted to prevent her from "harming others"?
The criminal is being restricted from doing harm.  The mother is being
required to render aid to a parasite within her body, which she would
prefer to have removed.  The two situations are not equivalent.

> It's nine months of the woman's inconvenience vs. the
>LIFE of another human being.  Life is more valuable than property.
>(ken used the term 'property', not I!)

The fetus has no contractual claim on the woman's body, thus no
right to her resources.  If you can require people to meet
obligations which they did not undertake by entering into contracts,
then you can require anything of anyone -- you have demolished the
standard of proper requirement (*voluntary* consent).

> ... it apparently disproves abortionist propaganda that what is
>being aborted (killed, murdered, whatever) is not anything really
>human.  Besides, it didn't get where it is by itself!

Nor did the fetus get there *entirely* by the woman's volition.
(I won't re-hash contraceptive failures, etc.)

> Again, actions
>by individuals in our society can lead to restrictions of their "rights"
>in order to protect others.

This is reasonable only if the rights of these "others" are actually
being violated.

> No, the woman is not a criminal,

Really?  Sure sounds like you want to treat her like one!

> but
>TWO lives are involved now.  Again, it is a matter of nine months of
>inconvenience VS a human life.

Who are you to set up standards of permissible inconvenience for others?

> If one is permitted to kill another, in
>order to make the next nine months a little nicer for themselves....

If the one is permitted to enslave another, in order that the one
may live....

>> "Value humanity"?  What does this phrase mean?  Are you saying
>> that there is some way in which random people are valuable to
>> me?  Can I trade this value for a microcomputer? :-)
>
>        Lets see:  Vietnam, the boat people, Palestinians, Hungarians,
>Czechs, Afghans, Jews, Blacks, Women.  Just a few victims of people
>who questioned the value of valuing humanity.

Answer my question, please.  You have only continued to use the term
"valuing humanity" without defining it.  What does it mean?  On what
scale does one measure the "value of humanity"?

> By attempts to deny the
>humanity of the not-as-yet-born, one can keep it off the above list.
>If it's humanity is evident to all but the self-blind, then denying
>the value of humanity, as ken has done, is the next logical step in order
>to keep the "right" of oppression.

Forced pregnancy is a form of oppression.  Abortion is a form of
refusing aid.  To oppress and to refuse aid are not the same.
Oppression is wrong.  Refusing aid is not.  The humanity of the
fetus is irrelevant to this distinction.

>Gerald Owens
--
"Shredder-of-hapless-smurfs"
Ken Montgomery
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