Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site gitpyr.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!gatech!gitpyr!myke
From: myke@gitpyr.UUCP (Myke Reynolds)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: ancients predict usenet
Message-ID: <811@gitpyr.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 21-Sep-85 00:50:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: gitpyr.811
Posted: Sat Sep 21 00:50:30 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Sep-85 12:03:10 EDT
Reply-To: myke@gitpyr.UUCP (Myke Reynolds)
Distribution: net
Organization: School of ICS, Georgia Tech
Lines: 173

Brian Wells writes:
>  Sure you could argue a line of demarcation at birth
>but I don't think it is a firm and immovable as a line at conception.
[go on down a little]
>	My daughter was born six weeks
>early and she certainly looks human.  According to all the classes and books
>I have had, she has looked human for a few months now even though she has
>been in the womb.  If you had something else in mind, please explain.

Do you have me and Rich Rosen mixed up? I never said abortions should be
legal anytime close to birth. They aren't now, and I certain never said they
should be!
I watched some of the PBS special on abortion. Even through all the
distortions of _Silent_Scream_, there was something about it, and the pro-choice
film that followed it, that deeply disturbed me.. All those gruesome pictures
of aborted children.. They didn't look like fetuses, they looked like half
developed babies?! The followup film did a good job of countering every point
the anti-abortion film made *except* that. A rather large except in my mind...
Were those medical complications? How late are unexceptional pregnancies
allowed to abort??

Paul Dubuc writes:
>A fetus may not be a thinking human being (according to your definition)
>at a particular point in her life.  But neither is the person who is
>unaware *at that particular point in her life*.

I don't follow you here.. For a person to become a non-thinking being
(at least by the way I was considering this) would require s/he to die.
I know thats not what you meant, you can't kill a dead person, much less without
his knowing it.. What do you mean by thinking being? I gather from the
parenthetical that your definition of thinking being might include a
fetus?? As the PBS documentary pointed out, the last 3 months of development
of a fetus are almost completely devoted to growth of the brain. It
increases in size incredibly till it makes up 1/6 of a child's body weight at
birth. Most abortions (according to the film) occur before the twelfth week
after conception. This seems reasonable to me, as long as it is before the
period of cerebral growth. This is the upper bound on where I would put a limit
on abortions if my say so meant anything.. (If anything, it would be earlier.)

>To you the future state or potential makes no difference with regard to the
>fetus.  Why does it make a difference with regard to the person who is unaware
>at a certain point in time?  Why can't the fetus simply be considered "unaware"
>for the time being?

The fetus is less then just unaware, there is nothing to be aware. The
potential life of the already existing woman is also at stake. Time is
precious and children require a great deal of it. I think it is quite callous
to call child baring a mere inconvenience.. I have great hope for the future,
a child would set me back 5 to 10 years.. To an unwed mother who does not have
the career options I do, having a child when she isn't ready could set her back
a life time. And for what? A mindless mass of cells?

My definition of sin goes like this; anything you do that hurts someone
unnecessarily is a sin. As such I do not consider abortion a sin, there is
no one to hurt. On the other hand I consider forcing someone to have a
child a sin.

>What difference does my social status or the fact that I won't be hurt
>personally make as to whether I'm right or wrong?  Would I be right to
>say that you shouldn't be pro-choice because your life will never end
>in an abortion?  You don't know anything about what I can or can't afford
>and it makes no difference one way or the other.  You need to discuss the
>argument on its own merit.  Is is wrong to be against racial discrimination
>if you're not in a minority?  Do you think that everyone in the lower
>"social classes" agrees with you on abortion?  Arguing with things that
>have nothing to do with whether or not the person's opinion is right or
>wrong is what is meant by and ad hominem argument.

I did not say your social status made your view invalid, what I did say
is that ones views can be very tied to their environment. Yes indeed, I
get the impression there are a lot of women who are stuck in the lower brackets
of life now because they were barefoot and pregnant early in life who favour
abortions for their daughters. The "I want you to live the life I never
had" point of view. Whether or not it is due to your environment, I don't
think you have much empathy for this, the other side of the coin. To you the
potential of an amorphous blob of cells is so much more important that women
should be subjected by law.
If you saw the last film in the PBS documentary this was brought out by
situation and by the pro-life activist (was he really a Dr.?) who was trying
to persuade a woman not to listen to her mother and to come live with
him and his wife, and the other expectant mothers he gave shelter to.
He considered the mother misguided..

>No, I'm willing to help her with alternatives.  My wife and I have personally
>done so.  How about you?
Sir, at 17 there are many things I haven't done.
>If this teenager doesn't want an abortion do you
>tell her that it's too bad, she'll have to tough it on her own?  Do you support
>both choices, or just abortion?

Thats absurd. Its is you who is arguing against choice, not me. I applaud
the nobility of your spirit, and apologize for accusing you of moral
hypocrisy, but your tunnel vision saddens me.. You remind me a great deal
of the "doctor" in the last film I mention above.. At first he was shown
standing with a bunch of pro-lifers who were yelling things like "Don't burn
your baby".. (not only tacky, but to me, sin) But then he was shown at home
in a much more tender setting with his wife and the expectant mothers he
cared very well for. It saddened me that here was such a passionate man
with such a misguided cause.. Not the cause of helping pregnant women who
could not other wise afford to keep a child, but the cause brought on by
thinking this sort of help should be forced on all women with unwanted
pregnancies.

>No, I wan't to know what your answer *is*.  Why aren't you telling me?
>You don't accept conception (that's what you're tearing down) so what's
>your line?
What difference does it make if I set a line? Myke Reynolds' line of
demarcation, oh boy. It is easy to have an opinion about something you know
little about.


>How do these scenarios affect the question of whether or not the fetus
>is a rightful human being?

The scenario wasn't addressing the subject of whether a fetus is a "rightful
human" or not. It was addressing the situation that you want to see there be no
out for. All for the sake of a rightful human fetus, a mindless blob of cells.

>A girl may carry the child for term and
>get help in raising it and finishing school or she may opt for adoption.
That doesn't even come close.. I can hardly spare the time to sleep at times,
raising a child PROPERLY requires more time then I could ever spare now and hope
to ever make anything of my life. As to adoption, I think I'll reply to that
in another message with some excerpts from a college life magazine that
floats around Ga. Tech at times..

>>A fetus is not cognizant.
>Neither is someone who is sleeping.  If the fact that they will be
>at other times matters for them, why does it not matter for the fetus?

That is not what I meant.. A sleeping person has a mind and a unique
personality. Sleeping does not preclude this.. A fetus has no mind.
>Draw your line between killing a human being and abortion for me.  At
>what point does the former become the latter?
When it has a mind!!!!!! arg...
>Yes, this is beginning to look like a merry-go-round. If your not going to
>make a reasonable attempt at defining the line and telling me where
>it occurs, then I'll be glad to get off.
You are very exasperating.. I've said all along, "when it has a mind", what I
will not blunder an attempt at is a point at which there is beyond a shadow
of a doubt nothing of the mind which makes us us. But it is certain well
after conception.

>The presence of a nervous system is not conclusive proof that a human being
>is a "thinking one". 
I'm not sure what you mean by that, but *NOT* having a nervous system is 
quite conclusive proof that something isn't a thinking being.

>Anyway, what I am trying to get at is how you define
>the line between the protected and unprotected, and why you feel that line
>makes a difference.  My point is that I don't think potential is irrelevant
>in considering whether or not the fetus is a rightful person.

>A body cell is not a fetus or a zygote, is it?  That is where the qualifier
>makes the difference.

The point I did a very poor job of trying to make here was stated much more
elegantly by Michael McNeil with his _Brave_New_World_ analogy..
You speak of the importants of potential, degrees of potential make a
difference to you however.. You wish to subordinate a woman to this potential.
Not to life, but to potential of life. My opinion is that this is not
justification enough. Your opinion is that it is. Maybe we will never reach
an agreement?
-- 
Myke Reynolds
Office of Telecommunications and Networking
Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!myke


"Too bad all the people that know how to run this country are busy cutting
hair and driving taxi cabs."
		-George Burns