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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