From: stevef@bug.UUCP (Steven R Fordyce)
Newsgroups: alt.rush-limbaugh,talk.abortion
Subject: Re: rights and responsibilities
Summary: What is self-defense?
Keywords: abortion
Date: 21 Jan 93 07:38:40 GMT
Reply-To: stevef@bug.UUCP (Steven R Fordyce)
Organization: Handmade Designs, Salem, OR, USA

In article <1993Jan8.092845.2048@hobbes.kzoo.edu>
k044477@hobbes.kzoo.edu (Jamie R. McCarthy) writes:
>stevef@bug.UUCP (Steven R Fordyce) writes:
>>If the unborn child is a person, then the mother may not
>>simply kill him for any non-vital rights she claims the child is
>>violating.  You can't kill a house-guest just because he has overstayed
>>his welcome and doesn't want to leave and you think he is violating your
>>rights.
>>-- 
>>orstcs!opac!bug!stevef          I am the NRA              Steven R. Fordyce
>
>If you are the NRA, then you will fight tooth and nail (and gun) to
>preserve your right to legally shoot and kill an intruder in your home.
>(If you don't subscribe to this, then you _ipso_facto_, Q.E.D., are not
>the NRA, and should stop misrepresenting yourself as such, or you will
>hear from their lawyers first thing in the morning.)

I fully support the right to self-defense and to the tools necessary to
do so, yes.

>I believe, in this state at least, you don't even have to prove
>self-defense.  A Man's Home Is His Castle, and Men have to have to have
>the Right to Defend their Castles against Intruders with Very Big Guns,
>eh?

I don't know which state "this" state is.  That is not the law in the
state I'm in, Oregon, or in most of them.  Most states have the
"reasonable man" test: to prove self-defense, a reasonable man in your
position would have to have reason to believe that he (or some other
innocent) was in imminent danger of being killed or gravely injured by
the assailant and the assailant had the means and opportunity to do so,
and the only certain way to stop the assailant was to use deadly force
(e.g. you couldn't just run away -- although you don't have to run if
you are in your home).*  However, there are one or two states (Colorado
maybe?) that recently passed laws that say (more-or-less, I'm not sure
of the specifics) that an intruder coming into your home while you are
in it is proof that you are in imminent danger of grave bodily harm.  I
don't know if you still have to show means and opportunity, or if you
can simply shoot them as they cowered face-down on the floor begging
for mercy.  I doubt the law in that state (or those states) works that
way, but if did, I wouldn't support such a law.  Otherwise I would. 

* This is my understanding of state laws generally, but I'm not a lawyer. 
Check the laws of your own state -- don't just go by my word.

>Yet a woman can't kill an intruder in her own _body_!?

Granting for the moment that the fetus can be reasonably called an
"intruder" (which is irrelevant anyway), no, not unless it is
self-defense, and self-defense exactly as described in the law
(more-or-less as I do above -- note there is no requirement that
assailant's threat be witting on his part).  Pregnancy increases the
threat to the mother, but that isn't reasonable grounds for killing the
fetus (if it is a person), because you can't say in general that he
poses an imminent threat of death or grave harm.  In the same way,
walking down a sidewalk with other people on it increases the threat to
you (they might rape or kill you and you don't know for sure), but that
doesn't give you the right to kill them without further cause (than
just sharing the sidewalk with you).

If you can show self-defense, i.e. the fetus does pose an imminent
threat of death or grave harm, in a particular case, then abortion is
justified.  I support abortion to save the life of the mother.  I've
never heard anyone who didn't.

As to calling the fetus an "intruder", I hardly think that is fair
unless the woman was raped.  If she willingly participated in
intercourse, she opened herself to the possibility (however small) that
she would become pregnant.  This is simply a fact, it can't be argued.

Some have already argued that the use of birth control shows that the
woman didn't want the child and the failure of birth control is
therefore justification for abortion.  If the fetus is a person, then
this is no justification for killing (in fact, murder).  It doesn't
matter how "unfair" the pregnancy is; that doesn't change what abortion
is.

If however the fetus isn't a person, then no justification is necessary,
and a woman can have an abortion for any reason.  That said, I see no
reason to say the fetus is not a person.
-- 
orstcs!opac!bug!stevef          I am the NRA              Steven R. Fordyce
uunet!sequent!ether!stevef         . . .  	        Deer are for Dinner
Newsgroups: alt.rush-limbaugh,talk.abortion