Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site tove.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!umcp-cs!tove!liz From: liz@tove.UUCP (Liz Allen) Newsgroups: net.abortion Subject: Re: Torek's SECOND ANNUAL CONCLUSIVE ARGUMENT :-> Message-ID: <271@tove.UUCP> Date: Thu, 11-Jul-85 13:50:02 EDT Article-I.D.: tove.271 Posted: Thu Jul 11 13:50:02 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 17-Jul-85 03:33:37 EDT References: <789@umcp-cs.UUCP> Reply-To: liz@tove.UUCP (Liz Allen) Organization: U of Maryland, Laboratory for Parallel Computation, C.P., MD Lines: 58 In article <789@umcp-cs.UUCP> flink@umcp-cs.UUCP (Paul V. Torek) writes: >As far as depriving it of life, an individual H. sapiens >merits comparable concern and protection to that given adults, AS SOON >AS IT BECOMES SENTIENT (i.e. capable of an experience of any sort (sight, >touch, pain, etc.)) if it can be expected to live to be a normal adult. >("Normal" in any sense that is considered ethically relevant to the >concern and protection for adults -- an issue I would like to beg by >simply assuming that I can here apply whatever the right view is there.) It is quite difficult to determine when a fetus becomes sentient by your definition because of the limits of technology. According to _The Zero People_[1], a 48 day old fetus will twist and turn away when his upper lip is stroked by a fine hair. How long has he been able to do this? The better our technology, the better we can test and the better we can detect such things. Interestingly enough, it was scientific research (not the Catholic Church!) that was behind making abortion illegal. A quote from _Abortion America_[2] tells the story: "... the original nineteeenth-century laws in New York and elsewhere had been placed on the books mostly by doctors when there were few Catholics around." _To Rescue the Future_[3] gives a little more information: "Most state abortion laws stricken by the Roe v. Wade decision date from the latter half of the nineteenth century. Their implemenation was the result of what has been called the Physicians' Crusade, the determination of the leadership of the American Medical Association to protect the life of the unborn from abortion except in those instances where an abortion was needed to preserve the life of the mother. There is no evidence that great controversy surrounded the passage of these laws. At the time there was a general consensus against taking of innocent life, and the laws were sought by a portion of the country's professional elite." I have read elsewhere, though I can't find it here, that the doctors were motivated by the fact that people called the time when the mother could first feel movement, "the age of quickening" under the assumption that the baby could not move until then and, thus, was not yet alive. The doctors were discovering otherwise. [1] Hensley, Jeff Lane (editor), _The Zero People_. Sevant Books, Ann Arbor, 1983, center pages. [2] Nathenson, Bernard, _Aborting America_. Life Cycle Books, Toronto, Canada, 1979, p 52. [3] Andrusko, Dave, (editor), _To Rescue the Future_. Life Cycle Books, Toronto, Canada, 1983, p 69. -- Liz Allen U of Maryland ...!seismo!umcp-cs!liz liz@tove.ARPA "This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all" -- 1 John 1:5