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From: quint@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Amqueue)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: The Status of the Fetus and Its Rights
Message-ID: <3708@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Fri, 20-Sep-85 17:01:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3708
Posted: Fri Sep 20 17:01:56 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Sep-85 06:31:40 EDT
References: <429@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA> <1546@pyuxd.UUCP> <998@brl-tgr.ARPA> <716@mit-vax.UUCP> <11232@rochester.UUCP>
Reply-To: quint@topaz.UUCP (Amqueue)
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 39

In article <11232@rochester.UUCP> ray@rochester.UUCP (Ray Frank) writes:
>> In article <998@brl-tgr.ARPA> matt@brl-tgr.ARPA (Matthew Rosenblatt ) writes:
>>                                   but the fact remains that China will
>> probably successfully curb the worst overpopulation in the world, while
>> ours gets worse. If the US were to ban abortion, thus increasing our
>> population, they would consider it equally as immoral as their methods
>> of controlling population.
>> 
>> -- 
>> Charles Forsythe
>> CSDF@MIT-VAX
>
>Well your colors are out and flying high.  You have declared above that
>abortion is a method of controlling population, in addition to getting rid
>of unwanted pregnancies.  I shudder when I think of what you have said.  Do
>you feel reasonably special or fortunate or even lucky that you were not
>singled out before birth to do your part in controlling population?

Mister Forsythe has merely stated a fact: The Chinese are using abortion 
to curb their population. You are using loaded words to skew his statement,
implying that he approves, which may or may not be the case. In the above
quoted article, I see nothing to imply that he approves of China's methods
of population control. The fact remains that if you kill off some of your 
population, be it through abortion, war, genocide, or rampant violence in 
the streets, you will have less people around. I personally think that 
the extremes that China is going to are unfair, but then I am not faced with
the choice of killing of 90% of the next generation, or watching a significant
percentage of *everyone* dying of starvation. Whether or not there are ways
to prevent it, there is most probably no *immediate* way, and these children
are likely to die anyway (or so I have understood from the various statistics
that have been bandied about regarding this policy). What they have sounds 
like a classic lifeboat situation... not everyone can fit in the lifeboat. 
Until you have been in a position where you *MUST* make a decision about who
lives and dies, dont criticize other's decisions... you do not know the 
stresses or the bases for it (and I include cultural biases and bases in 
that concept).

Can anyone clean up the mud that has been slung?
/amqueue