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From: powers@noscvax.UUCP (William J. Powers)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: Who's Life Anyway?
Message-ID: <999@noscvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 5-Jul-85 17:59:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: noscvax.999
Posted: Fri Jul  5 17:59:40 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 9-Jul-85 05:50:15 EDT
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Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
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> I guess it all comes down to a definition of when life begins.  We
> all (I 'spose I shouldn't make such sweeping claims, but what the
> heck) agree that a 1 month old child has a right to live and that 
> its parents or legal guardians have a responsibility to raise it.
> They don't have the right to kill it off if it becomes inconvienient 
> (even burdensome).	
> 
> It seems to me that since the fetus of 1 minute and the child of one
> month differ only in the amount of time since conception.  They
> share the same genetic information, and are thus the same person. 
> If we arbitrarily claim that life magically starts at 3 months, what
> prevents us from claiming that life 'ends' at 150 years? Clearly
> there has never been anyone who has lived to 150 years, just as
> those who support abortion will point out that there has never been
> a a pre-3 month fetus that could survive outside its mother's womb.
> 
> But what if we make strides in medicine and are able to keep people
> alive past 150 years?  Do these people have rights?  After all
> there's a law that says life ends at 150 years.  How can you have
> rights if you're not alive?  Similarly, what if the medical sciences
> advance to the point (and I'm sure it won't be long) where a pre-3month
> fetus can be kept alive and brought to term?  Do we still have the
> right to kill it, just because a law says we do?  (ah, you say, but
> if that's the case then the mother wouldn't have to bring it to
> term, she could off load to the artificial womb.  I ask you, how
> different is this from adoption? )
> 
> The point is, it's dangerous to define such things as the beginning
> and end of life on the state of medical technology.  Technology
> changes, but should ethics have to change with it?
> 

I agree entirely with this point. Morality can never be based upon the
conditions under which an action is taken; however, actions must be
based on these considerations.  Morality forms the basis for an
attitude, or system of attitudes, not a system of actions.  Laws form
the basis for a codified system of actions.  Laws are mutable,
morality is not.

What then forms the basis of morality, and how can we tell a moral
person from an immoral one?  All moral codes are based upon a
consideration of the living, social fabric within which we reside.
Notice that I did not use the word human anywhere.
Morality is based upon a reverence for life and the living.
It is a deep acknowledgement of our interrelation and interaction
with the world.
It is the striving for this reverence, in action and in thought,
that constitutes a moral act.

Perhaps you may think that I am being too abstract and nonspecific.
I would argue that a universal morality can be discussed in no other
way.

Now I come to the point of this discussion: abortion is neither moral
or immoral; it is amoral.
Thou shalt not kill, yet human society has institutionalized the mass
killing of all forms of the living.  It does this with the
justification that it must survive.  I do not argue by this that human
society is immoral.  To conclude this one would have to believe that
living is immoral.  There are those who have concluded this; I am not
one of them.
There are two important and universal actions of the living:
killing and dying.
Perhaps I am being too moribund, too excessive.  There is, afterall, the
joyousness of creation.  Perhaps I emphasize these aspects of living
only because they are too easily forgotten.

How does one make from such a world a moral universe?
First, one must be able to see our interrelationship with the rest of
the world.  Today, the world is very large and our effect far
reaching.  People cry about the starving of African children and are
ready with donations, yet they cannot see that we deprive them of food
every day by the overabundance of American life.
After seeing, our thoughts are forever altered.  If that is all one
does, the outcome is only guilt.  A guilt, if not debilitating, is, at
the very least, the manifestation of a constant effort to forget.
The catharsis can only come about through action.  It is through this
act of catharsis that the moral universe is created.
Our actions take on new and broader meanings; they are imbued with a
new sense of our interrelationship with the universe.
What form these actions take can seem horrible: jihad and murder.
But I cannot imagine these actions taken by a moral person without a
sense of grief and regret.  Indeed, all of life, by its very efforts
to survive, must be imbued somewhat with this sense.  Life is
essentially bitter-sweet, hopefully more sweet than bitter.  But to
totally overlook the tragedy of life is to be callous, inhuman, and
immoral.  We must exhibit in the heart and mind reverence and
gratitude for that which we devour. We must acknowledge and be imbued
with that cycle of eating and being eaten of which we are all a part.

To those of you who have skipped over most of this note I apologize
for being excessively wordy.  The relevence of this discussion to the
abortion issue is the following: we must be very clear as to whether
we are discussing the legality or the morality of abortion.
Deciding to have and abortion or a baby is neither moral or immoral.
I can easily imagine cases where both decisions would be immoral.
Laws, on the other hand, are not concerned with decisions, whereas
morality is founded on the act of deciding.  Laws are based upon the
stated and unstated objectives of a government.  They are codified and
enforced to prescribe a particular set of actions.  In the best of all
possible worlds they are only used as a guide, just as the ten
commandments is only a guideline for morality.  However, in mass
societies laws become a set of strict rules designed primarily to
protect the position of various groups.  If I had it my way, I would
pull the blind fold off of Justice's eyes.  But to do so is to trust
in the morality of others.  People tend to be very near sighted, and
therefore essentially unable to act morally.

Whether abortion should be legal or not depends on what your
objectives are.  I, for one, would rather see no abortions performed
and more emphasis placed upon birth control.
However, I don't believe that in the near future this will be
sufficient to eliminate unwanted pregnancies.  We, in this country,
have the luxury of not having to make abortion a requirement by law.
I see this luxury as the result of a very limited view of what
constitutes society.  I would not make abortion illegal because there
is no need for us as a society of Americans to do so.  We are not
short of able bodied citizens; indeed, we don't seem to care
sufficiently for those already here.  It is absurd to argue that the
availability of abortions is threatening the moral fibre of our
society.  That problem requires a restructuring of our society in a
manner that may have no effect upon the availability of abortion,
albeit the number of abortions may dramatically decrease.
Murder between citizens is illegal, but murder by the state is legal,
because the former is disruptive and other maintains order.
To argue that abortion should be made illegal is to argue that it
somehow acts in opposition to the objectives of a society.
One of those objectives cannot be a moral society, because laws can
only affect actions, whereas morality is only concerned with the act
of deciding, i.e., morality cannot be legislated and can therefore not
be the legitimate concern of a government.  Indeed, despite claims to
the contrary, it has never been the concern of a government of a large
group of people.

To conclude this much-longer-than-anticipated note, I would not, at
this time, make abortion illegal.  In fact, I don't believe that it
should even be the concern of the government at this time.  When
abortion was illegal there was a great need for the government to be
concerned because of disruptive influence of an underworld of
abortionists that were of general danger to increasing numbers of
women seeking abortions.
On the other hand, the moral act of having an abortion or a child,
must be dealt with in the same way: with fear and trembling.
By that I mean that we recognize something ( and that is only, at
best, a very small something ) of the meaning and consequences of our
action.  All we can ask of a moral person is that they try to do their
best to think about the seas, lands, animals, and people that may be
affected by their actions.