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From: anderson@ittvax.UUCP (Scott Anderson)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: Response to Gary's  (a pro-choicer's mind is changed (slightly))
Message-ID: <1606@ittvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Jan-85 12:17:16 EST
Article-I.D.: ittvax.1606
Posted: Fri Jan 18 12:17:16 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Jan-85 03:03:59 EST
References: <3300@alice.UUCP> <530@mhuxt.UUCP>
Organization: ITT-ATC, Stratford Ct.
Lines: 57

> > > And do you mean that you would support a law forbidding third
> > > trimester abortions?  (Definitely not a rhetorical question).
> > 
> > My answer to that is "maybe."  Such a law would have to be based
> > on medical evidence that a third-trimester fetus is (probably)
> > capable of thought, and that there are no other overriding philosophical
> > aguments.
> 
	*	* 	*

>     I don't really know enough about the stages of human developement here.
> Perhaps someone could post some (undistorted) information relating time since
> conception with fetal development.  
>     Well, how about it?  Are there any anti-abortionists who would be satisfied
> with a 6 or 5 or 4 month limit?  Are there any pro-choicers who would be
> satisfied with such a compromise?
> 
> -- 
> Jeff Sonntag
> ihnp4!mhuxt!js2j

According to Newsweek Jan 14, 1985, p. 22: 

    ...the scientific assumptions on which @i(Roe v. Wade) was based, namely
    that viability begins only in the third trimester of pregnancy.  From this
    it followed abortions were permissible in the other two trimesters--on
    demand and without restriction in the first, held the court.

In other words, I think that what Jeff is proposing is what the law already
is:  Abortion on demand, previous to the last trimester.  But I also want to
respond to Jeff's questions about compromise.  Again quoting Newsweek, p. 21:

    Predictably, then, abortion present the American political system with
    an  almost unique difficulty.  A system built on interest-group bargaining
    is well-suited to producing compromise, but abortion is one of the rare
    issues that inherently does not admit compromise.  Just as a woman cannot
    be a little bit pregnant, neither can her fetus be a little bit aborted.
    And if one side adopts the relativist view that human life is achieved by
    degrees over nine months of gestation, while the other takes the absolutist
    position that life begins at conception, it is nearly impossible to imagine
    the meeting point that would satisfy both.

I agree, without reservation.  Anyone who's been reading this newsgroup as long
as I have must have realized by now that no one is flexible or compromising in
their beliefs.  Abortion is simply not a resolvable issue.  Eventually, I believe,
one side will be much more powerful than the other, and will simply force their
beliefs on the other.  Again quoting Newsweek, quoting Mario Cuomo:  "a law not
for the believers who don't need it but for the disbelievers who reject it."

I hope this was interesting.

    
-- 
Scott D. Anderson
decvax!ittvax!anderson
203-385-7451 or 203-375-0200 for operator