Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/17/84; site ittvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!ittvax!anderson 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