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From: tdn@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA (Thomas Newton)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: freedom/responsibility
Message-ID: <385@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 5-Jul-85 18:04:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: cmu-cs-s.385
Posted: Fri Jul  5 18:04:24 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Jul-85 06:34:52 EDT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 49

> It's only "wrong" (i.e. murder) if the object of the abortion is a living
> independent human being, and we know that the objects of abortion, the
> fetuses, cannot sustain themselves outside of the environment of the womb,
> thus they cannot be "murdered"

Are you also suggesting that it is not wrong to kill newly-born babies, since
they are not capable of feeding themselves?  For that matter, if a human must
be "independent" in order to have the right to live, why is it wrong to kill
anyone on this planet?  The only living things on this planet which can claim
to be able to survive without aid from other living things in the environment
are plants and a few bacteria which obtain energy from anaerobic chemical
reactions.  Take away all the plants and the animals (including us) will drop
dead very quickly.

> The real center of the abortion controversy is "Are the fetuses living
> things, the termination of which would be 'murder'?"  Having lost that
> central issue, . . .

A fetus is a living thing.  It's need to be provided with warmth, nutrients,
oxygen, etc. does not make it any less so.  Do you think that you are 'dead'
merely because you depend upon oxygen that is produced by plant life?

A human fetus has human chromosomes that are different from the ones which
belong to its parents.  It is not a 'tissue outgrowth' or an 'organ' of the
woman's body, but a separate individual.

Furthermore, doctors are more and more coming to regard the fetus as a
treatable patient in the womb.  There was an article in one of the news
magazines a while back discussing how this was a potential threat to the
pro-choice movement.

It seems to me that the pro-choice side has lost this central issue, and
the loss is becoming more and more obvious with every medical gain.  This
is probably why so many pro-choice arguments fall into one of these classes:

    (a) If I don't want the baby, it must be "trespassing", and
        therefore it's OK to kill it (analogue to property rights)
    (b) It may be a living human being (human = Homo sapiens), but
        it isn't HUMAN (HUMAN = Homo sapiens + certain features that
        vary with the person posting the argument), and thus it isn't
        entitled to HUMAN rights, and thus it's OK to kill it.

I don't think that either argument is convincing; other people think the
opposite.  But most of the posts from both sides do implicitly acknowledge
the fact that the fetus is a living organism which is different from (even
if dependent upon) its parents.

                                        -- Thomas Newton
                                           Thomas.Newton@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA