From: regard@sdd.hp.com (Adrienne Regard)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: Who is this reference?
Date: 22 Jul 1992 16:51:18 -0700
Organization: Hewlett Packard, San Diego Division
NNTP-Posting-Host: hpsdde.sdd.hp.com

In article <1992Jul22.211417.17188@menudo.uh.edu> HADCRJAM@admin.uh.edu (MILLER, JIMMY A.) writes:
>In <14kenaINNb11@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com> regard@sdd.hp.com writes:
>[lots deleted that basically comes to this:

Well, it's quicker.

>> Why?  Why do you feel abortion is wrong, Jim?  Take that paragraph you wrote
>> about two weeks ago, and insert a why after every sentence.  Then try to answer
>> them.  That would make more interesting reading.
>
>  Hey ho!  The crux of the matter.  I'll leave out the religion, as you're not
>a believer (that *was* you wasn't it?).  Let's keep it real simple for time.
>A fetus represents, at the very least, a potential human being.  I feel said
>potential deserves a shot at life, be it accidental or not.  Destroying that
>potential is wrong, unless to preserve an actual in reasonably proximate
>danger.


Since this is a public forum, and one of your four frameworks, I'll now give
you my viewpoint, and you are free to do with it as you will.  Note that while
I disagree with you, I am not saying you are "wrong".  

(how's that for a disclaimer!  Yuk!)

Each and every egg in my body has the potential to become a human being.  I
will mature some 360 of them in my lifetime.  Each one of those eggs is 
pretty damned unique, and would contribute to a pretty damned unique human
being.  I have borne two of those eggs to term -- I know whereof I speak.

I also know about the *cost* of bearing those eggs to term.  I've analyzed
those costs on a number of occasions, because I rather like children and
would enjoy having more, but I'm not going to have more because I cannot
afford more.

Yet those individual, magical, potential eggs just keep maturing, month
by month.  And will continue to do so.

Of course, if I were to become pregnant this month (with Heidi, just say),
little Frankie, who would have matured next month, won't.  Heidi's pregnancy
precludes Frankie.  For each of the children I did bear, I did not mature
8-14 eggs (I really can't recall when I began menstruating again after having
my girls.  Something along those lines).  And, of course, I intend to let
little Gus and Mable just pass out in their Natural path, unfertilized,
in the future.  So, two eggs fulfilled their potential.  358 eggs will not.

And that's a much better fruition ratio than men have (-:.

*MOST* potential WRT sperm and eggs goes nowhere.  MUCH of the potential
with fertilized eggs goes nowhere (maybe even most there, too.  There is
disagreement on this point).  

Yet, there are MILLIONS - ooops - BILLIONS of people on this planet.  We
aren't hurting for magic.

I don't see a single solitary reason to bind the real, thinking, breathing
woman, who is a miracle in her own right, based on my notion of potentiality.
That's why I oppose abortion restriction, and a part of why I don't think
abortion is 'bad'.  Abortion is a response to a pregnancy.  There are other
perfectly valid responses, but there isn't anything wasteful or sinful or
any-thing-else-ful about abortion itself, any more than about contraception
or abstinence.  They are all the same thing.

See you tomorrow.

Adrienne Regard

Xref: sparky talk.abortion:29760 alt.birthright:216 alt.abortion.inequity:2812