From: jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard)
Newsgroups: tx.politics
Subject: Re: HR 4983
Date: 21 Jul 1992 14:27:39 GMT
Distribution: tx
Organization: UT Health Science Center Houston

In article <21176@rpp386.lonestar.org> jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II) writes:
>Go get that dictionary.  "Fetus" doesn't mean "non-human lump of tissue"
>either.  It means a small one of its kind.  The change to using the word
>"fetus" to describe the pre-born (pre-natal) child is modern.  It dates 
>to the abortion rights crusades of the 60's.

I'm not saying it's not human. I'm saying it's not a child. They are two
separate stages of development, and it is not possible for the same being to
be in both.

>Cover your eyes and you can kill anything you want.  Is that the message
>you are trying to convey?

No, the message is that you can see a child. You can't see a fetus without
those technological marvels I was talking about.

>At 4 months a woman knows that there is a child inside of her because she
>can feel it kicking the daylights out of her guts.  It doesn't take a
>camera or ultrasound to figure that one out.

No, she knows that she can feel a fetus inside of her.

>Look, the abortion issue is simply hypocritical.  There clearly is another
>human being involved.  You can't make this human being go away by calling
>it a "fetus" or a "parasite".

It's a human, but it's not a person. People aren't biological parasites.
Fetuses are. What's so difficult about that concept?

>Even the Roe decision is invalid - the
>basis for Roe was that a fetus couldn't survive at 26 weeks.  Well, the
>current record is about 20 weeks.  People, like you, who argue that the
>child at 20+ weeks can't survive without the mother are just plain wrong.

Any fetus that demonstrates that it can survive without that parasitic
attachment to the host mother becomes a child by virtue of that demonstration.
I wouldn't object to the attending physician being required to take all steps
reasonably possible to insure that the fetus removed from the mother has every
chance at survival. That requirement, though, cannot be allowed to override
the mother's right to terminate that parasitic relationship whenever she
desires.

>And your "legal v. biological" argument is likewise flawed - take the kid
>to the middle of the desert and drop them off.  I mean, you can't be
>forced into slavery to bring them home, can you?  Just like the mother who
>takes her 2 year old kid into the middle of the desert and now has to
>spend some time bringing the kid back to civilization, the women who is
>4 months pregnant has to spend the next 5 months providing a safe
>environment for her child.

Once again, you're missing (or deliberately ignoring) the point: There is no
biological requirement that that specific person has to bring the kid back. If
the mother does not wish to do so, then another person can be sent, and the
same results - the survival of the child - will occur. The same is not true of
a host mother during pregnancy.

>We've done this argument before.  Calling a human child a "parasite" is
>about as far fetched as this argument goes.

Well, except that it fits the scientific definition of such. I am trying to
recognize a basic biological fact. You are not.
-- 
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu      | adequately be explained by a .sig virus.
  "An empty stomach is not a good political adviser." -- [edible] fortune
          cookie, received the night Perot withdrew from candidacy