Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!matt From: matt@brl-tgr.ARPA (Matthew Rosenblatt ) Newsgroups: net.abortion Subject: Equal access to pleasure Message-ID: <888@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Thu, 22-Aug-85 13:26:20 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.888 Posted: Thu Aug 22 13:26:20 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 24-Aug-85 18:02:14 EDT References: <661@ttidcc.UUCP> <14939@mgwess.UUCP> <396@mhuxr.UUCP> Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 39 MARCEL SIMON writes: > But why should not women have the > right to reproductive freedom *and* guilt-free pleasurable sex. Men have > the option to walk away after sex, never to be heard from again (some do.) . . . > The essence of the abortion debate is tied to a feminist issue: are women > going to have the control of their bodies and equal to sexual pleasure > or is a male dominated society going to retain that control? As Mr. Simon points out, their is a biological inequality at work here. As Mr. Pete Wilson says in article 1705, this inequality is not the fault of the Government, or of men in general. The Government, yea, even the Government of the hated-in-Cambridge-Mass President Ronald Reagan, is going to great lengths and expense to track down fathers and make them pay, even to an extent that worries civil-libertarians. (Thought your tax return and Social Security number were "private," huh? Big Brother is after you, and he'll make you pay Momma to keep 2-year-old Junior alive. I mean, Junior is not a very "independent" human being, since he would die in a week unless others, i.e., Father, are imposed upon to feed and shelter him, but good old Uncle Sam wants even the dependent to go on living.) Mr. Simon here ably demonstrates the linkage between extreme feminism and abortion. If there is an inequality, that inequality is _per se_ an injustice. And if the only way, or rather, what Mr. Simon believes is the only way at tolerable cost, to establish equality involves the messy and, to Matt Rosenblatt and many other men and women, abhorrent destruction of little fetuses, that's just too bad. Mr. Simon, equality is just one of many competing values in society. I have heard abortion justified as a way of preventing great hardship to the pregnant woman, and while I generally come down on the pro-life side of the hardship-versus-fetus-killing argument, I have seen enough of pregnancy, labor and delivery that I can understand why many people come down on the pro-choice side. But justifying abortion on the grounds of equal access to sexual pleasure is outrageous. -- Matt Rosenblatt