From: nyikos@cc.uow.edu.au (peter nyikos)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: Catholics for a Free Choice
Date: 27 Jul 92 05:22:59 GMT
Organization: University Of Wollongong

fkissling@igc.org (Frances Kissling) writes:


>FROM CATHOLICS FOR A FREE CHOICE

>The following is an article from the Spring 1992 issue of
>Conscience, the quarterly newsjournal of prochoice Catholic
>opinion published by Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC), an

>Personhood, human life, the moral status of the embryo and fetus-
>-these concepts wove a provocative thread through a computer
>dialogue on abortion during the autumn of 1990.  Leading
>prochoice and prolife thinkers, as well as notables in other
>fields, presented varied perspectives.

The portion of the dialogue reproduced in this post was like deja
vu:  Almost all of it like in _Abortion: Pro and Con_[publisher, etc.
given at end of my COERCED ABORTION post].  Characteristics:
1. Pro-lifers, such as they were, feeling compelled to state their
case in the most abstract, ivory-tower way, while pro-choicers
labor under no such compunctions, although most of their reasoning
is also of the ivory tower kind.
2. Pro-choice writers accorded a lot more space than pro-lifers.

  "Personhood" was
>approached as a subject informed by science or a question of law,
>a cultural phenomenon or a matter of experience, conscience, and
>philosophy.  

And like so many other discussions, it is essentially sterile, almost
devoid of hard facts, with the exceptions on the pro-choice side.

>Clifford Grobstein  Abortion terminates an otherwise existent
>human life.  That is, however initiated, the process results in
>the death of an entity which otherwise would remain alive if
>undisturbed.  
>     Other cases in which this is true include murder, capital
>punishment, shooting a war-time enemy, amputation of a limb,
>removal of a tumor, and discarding of human cells cultured in a
>laboratory.  In each case, existent human life is terminated by
>deliberate decision and action....  

Why does anyone bother to publish such drivel?  The next thing you
know, they'll be referring to removed tumors and fingernail clippings
as "human cadavers."

>[Lots of Grobstein's paragraphs omitted, presenting elementary
>embryological facts.]

>  To define a term so
>profoundly significant as "human person" without the most careful
>consideration of all relevant scientific information is to
>trivialize not only the phenomenon, but also the relevant
>knowledge so painstakingly acquired during this scientifically
>highly productive century.

>     The fact is that the changes undergone between the zygote
>and a human newborn are roughly equivalent to those undergone by
>one vanguard of life in perhaps the last billion years of earthly
>evolution.  It is enough of a near-miracle too recapitulate them
>in the developmental course of ten lunar months without
>attempting to further condense them into perhaps thirty to forty
>hours.

Possible paraphrasal: unless you are willing to study this whole
subject like a slave for a year or more, you might as well acquiesce
in the decision ivory-tower scientists made for you many years back,
when the National Academy of Sciences proclaimed that the question
of when human life begins is not a scientific question at all and no
one living can answer it anyway.  
	Justice Blackmun, writing in Roe
v. Wade said it best: [close paraphrasal] We need not resolve the
difficult question of when human life begins.  
	Agreed. But then he wrote his decision as though he had 
determined that life begins at birth.  The fetus is left out of
the equation altogether for the first two trimesters, and is 
reluctantly given a bit of weight in the third, along with the
State's legitimate compelling interest in potential [sic] life.
But the mother's health, both physical and mental, is allowed to
override even this "compelling" interest.
	

>Nancy Felipe Russo  Interestingly, we can agree to turn off the
>machines when adults are "brain dead."  Why can't we agree on
>access to abortion before the developing human becomes "brain
>alive?"

For once, a serious question.  And the answer is that the situations
are not symmetrical.  Even with life support systems, a brain-dead
person dies without ever [re]gaining consciousness.  On the other
hand, an embryo comes with a life-support system that puts 
artificial ones to shame, and left to itself, barring abortion
or other mishap, or rare defects such as anencephaly, will become
conscious in a few months. 
The foregoing argument is not decisive, but at least it answers the
question of why we, human beings with diverse philosophies, cannot
"agree on access to abortion..."

>     Some embryological knowledge can go a long way in
>discussions about abortions.  I've seen the prolife pictures and
>they are very misleading.

A peremptory claim, hardly borne out by the tentative arguments that
follow.

>  It is interesting that we can
>understand that a full grown human can have reflexes and a heart
>beat and be brain dead, but pictures of the developing embryo
>moving around [prompt] all kinds of attributions about cognitive
>and emotional functioning.

Of course, these attributions have to be corroborated by other data,
but that does not make the pictures "very misleading."

>     Being able to produce a squiggle is not having a human brain
>wave.  Cortical functioning that is comparable to human brain
>waves doesn't happen until much later. 

No articles cited.  How is one to judge the validity of this claim?
In the many-volume _Handbook of Electroencephalography and Neuro-
physiology_, there is reference to a 1951 experiment by Okamoto and
Kirikae on *cortical* electrodes applied to three-month fetuses 
producing a brain wave.  

[Nancy Russo will no doubt quibble about whether these are "human"
brain waves, bringing us back to Grobstein's ponderous discussion.]

By the way, the Okamoto-Kirikae paper is referenced in Hannibal Hamlin's
JAMA [that's Journal of the American Medical Association for the 
uninitiated] article, "Life or Death by EEG", where Hamlin talks about
Okamoto and Kirikae finding brain waves in embryos at "40-odd days"
and the crown-rump measurement of 16mm is consistent with this.
[Unfortunately, I don't have references here with me.  The Hamlin
article is referenced in Willke's book _Questions and Answers on
Abortion_, but with an incorrect page number given: the correct
page is about ten pages away.]  I have not seen the Okamoto-Kirikae
paper; not even the University of South Carolina library subscribes
to the journal in which it appeared.

Also that _Handbook..._ mentions Scandinavian experiments at 4 1/2
months finding brain waves coming from the hippocampus, a part of
the cerebral cortex absolutely essential to long-term memory.

> There is debate on when-
>-connections to the cortex are established certainly before
>thirty weeks, but also certainly after twenty weeks.             

False.  See above data.  Again, no references to Russo's claim are
given.

>Frances Kissling         While the graciousness, humor, and
>reasoning capacity of all of us is far superior to that
>experienced in the usual dialogue on the subject [of abortion],
>we face the same problem.  And to this there may be no direct
>answer.

Meanwhile, induced abortions continue to the tune of 1,600,000
per year.  No, I am not arguing for activism of the Operation
Rescue variety.  I am arguing for a freewheeling discussion such
as one sees in talk.abortion.  Lots of inane comments come out of
it to be sure, but it is infinitely preferable to the soporific
discussion that permeates the post to which I am responding.

>     Problem: no amount of discussion about good reasons for
>abortions can overcome the belief that prenatal human life is the
>moral equivalent--that is, has precisely the same value as--
>infants, children, or adults and deserves the same standard of
>review/reason to justify the termination of its life.

Note the use of words: this belief is a "Problem" to be "overcome."
Carelessly read, the foregoing paragraph sounds like a prolife one.

>     When the "difference" is this--fetus same as infant/fetus
>different from infant--both sides are appropriately horrified by
>claims or arguments of the other.

The author's true colors begin to show more clearly.  The pro-life
belief mentioned in the preceding paragraph is something about which
the other side is "appropriately horrified."

>     This can be seen in the remarks of prolife participants:
>[we] can't solve problems by killing babies.  After all, I would
>be horrified if in our time we suggested infanticide as a
>solution to overpopulation or poverty.  Or killing every fifth
>person if we faced a 20 percent reduction in food supply.  And
>I'd be at a loss to feel kinship with those who suggested it. 
>They'd scare the ---- out of me.

The author "gives equal time" to the pro-life side by shifting
the topic to infanticide.

>     By the same token, since I simply cannot see, no matter how
>much "evidence" I've looked at, the fetus as ... [having] the
>same value as an infant

All fetuses? even the viable ones? compared to prematurely born 
infants of the same gestational age?  [Yeah, yeah, I know: there are
fewer than 12,000 acknowledged cases annually of abortions past the
21st week.  That's still an outrageously high figure, and you have to
consider the tendency of abortionists to underestimate gestational
age, for obvious reasons.]

>, I am equally horrified at the thought
>that there are people who think women are murdering their babies,
>that they are committing, albeit unconsciously, child abuse and
>that they should be compelled to continue a pregnancy against
>their will.  These people scare me....

As long as there is no inclination to punish the women, only the
abortionists, as happened all through what NARAL calls the 
dark years, why is this woman scared?

>Catherine Bateson        When does personhood begin?  It is
>certainly true that the genetic specificity of every person is
>determined at conception, but that this is only potentially
>present.  But I would propose that we look ethnographically at
>behavior to see when personhood is implied.  
>     In many societies a newborn infant is only a person after
>some ritual, naming or bathing or whatever, that may not occur
>for a week after birth.  If you ask a woman how many children she
>has had she only counts those who made it that far.  

Does Bateson consider this to be a reasonable attitude?  Apparently
she does, because she is not appropriately horrified, like the
previous speaker was about similar things.

>     In our society we have a certain consensus that personhood
>begins earlier, expressed in a splendid old word, "quickening,"

This "consensus" disappeared a century ago.

>for when motion becomes directly perceptible to the mother.  Up
>to that point pregnancy is somewhat theoretical.  After that
>point women feel they are in relationship with a someone....

Only if they have not seen ultrasound scans of their offspring
vigorously kicking many weeks before quickening.

>     I had a premature infant many years ago, and it was clear
>when he was born that the technology available could not save him
>beyond a few hours, but I had the strongest sense of his
>personhood, gave him a name (which I would not recycle in that
>generation), baptism, a private funeral.  I think that's rather
>common--but you don't hear of people baptizing early miscarriages
>even if they are indeed very sad.

How can you baptize someone you can't find?  If all you see is the
chorionic sac [See my post, THE REAL LOWDOWN ON "CLOT," "CLUMP OF
CELLS," AND "FETUS"] and have no idea that there is a fetus within,
you are stuck.

If there are evangelical Christians or really devout Roman Catholics aware
of the nature of the chorionic sac and who miscarry, I would not be
surprised to hear of them searching diligently for the chorionic sac,
opening it up, and baptizing the little one within.  

By the way, a number of centuries ago, the Catholic Church in many 
places used syringes to baptize fetuses in utero. [See the 
book on history of embryology referenced in "THE REAL LOWDOWN..."]
A silly practice IMHO, based on a misunderstanding of original 
sin.

>  Their behavior reflects regret
>at the termination of pregnancy, not loss of someone who has
>become a person to them. 

This may be true of Catholics for a Free Choice, but it is totally off
the mark for Catholics in general.

>     In the middle ages it was believed
>that sperm contained a homunculus--i.e., full determination of
>individuality. 

This was one of many competing theories.  See the book on history 
of embryology.
> Onanism was of course regarded as a terrible
>thing--but not as mass murder.  Arguably personhood does not
>begin at a particular moment but arises through a process. 

I can't argue with that "arguably" since pro-choicers have
indeed been arguing that way for a long time.  That does not
make the argument a reasonable one.  It is totally unreasonable,
but I won't have the time to address this question for a month
or so.  These comments also apply to the next two lines:

>Arguably too, personhood often does not end at a particular
>moment, for instance, in patients with Alzheimer's disease. 

>Brain death has relatively recently--and arbitrarily--been
>selected as a medical, operational definition of that ending, but
>many of us feel that in many cases life, or rather personhood,
>ended earlier.

Note that viewpoints conflicting with that of the author are
"arbitrary" rather than "arguable."  So much for Grobstein's 
serious charge to look at scientific evidence, which is taken
seriously by pro-lifers, but not by the pro-choicer whose 
words I am dealing with.

>     Commonly, personhood and membership in the community, with
>its rights and protections, are related to some kind of
>participation.  These are matters of cultural definition like the
>question of when someone becomes an adult--not matters of
>biology.

A false either/or dichotomy.  Biology and culture go hand in hand
in defining "adult."

>Lisa Cahill         [T]he fetus ... is from conception (not a
>"moment" but a "process" of at least twenty-four hours, true) a
>distinct individual, a member of the human species, and not
>independent but certainly "alive" in some basic sense.  I do not,
>however, equate "human life" with "personhood" in the full sense. 
>In other words, I am not at all certain that a zygote has the
>same moral value as a six-month fetus or certainly a baby (or
>even a two-month fetus), but it is a living member of the species
>whose value cannot simply be reduced to the issue of its mother's
>choice, nor even of her own legitimate interests and needs.  It
>deserves consideration and even protection in its own right.

For once, an author I largely agree with, except that I place little
moral distinction between killing two-month fetuses and babies.
But the exposition on this will have to wait.

>Andrew Puzder  When does human life begin?  Some of you approach
>this issue from a religious or philosophical perspective which
>renders the problem unanswerable.  Others, such as Clifford
>Grobstein, address it from a medical/scientific perspective which
>renders the question easily answerable....
>     ... I am going to attempt to pull some very basic elements
>out of the medical, scientific data.  Basically, from the time of
>conception we know at least three basic facts:
>     1. We know we have a human because the unborn child has the
>correct number of chromosomes;
>     2. We know we have an individual because the unborn child
>has its own individual genetic code or DNA structure (different
>from the mother's, different from the father's, different from
>any individual in human history); and
>     3. We know we have life because we can watch the unborn
>child grow.  For example, in the test tube baby procedure (more
>appropriately, although less romantically, the petri dish baby
>procedure), the sperm and the egg are joined in a petri dish, and
>one can observe perhaps the first fifty cell divisions.
>     Thus, from the time of conception, we know we have a (1)
>human (2) individual who is (3) alive.  Quite simply, we have a
>human life.  As Dr. Grobstein states, "abortion terminates an
>existing human life...."  While the question of when human life
>begins may once have been an issue for discussion among
>theologians and philosophers, from a medical/scientific factual
>perspective it is no longer a serious issue.
>     Nonetheless, while I find these facts very convincing, I
>doubt that what I have just written caused any of you to change
v>your position....  Defining the terms "person" and "whole human
>entity" requires that we make value judgments or quality-of-life
>judgments.  
>     For example, there is nothing immutable about personhood. 
>The founding fathers defined blacks as two-thirds of a person in
>the Constitution, and the United States Supreme Court in the Dred
>Scott case called even this limited personhood into question. 
>Notwithstanding Dr. Grobstein's articulate note on the whole
>human entity concept, I have substantial concerns with respect to
>who can be excluded and who included as a whole human entity--
>and who makes the decision....
>     It seems to me that the relevant question is not whether we
>have a person or a whole human identity....  I would respectfully
>submit to each of you that, once we recognize the existence of an
>individual human life from the time of conception (not a person
>necessarily or a whole human entity), the issue is what rights
>(or as [some] might say, what value) that human life has,
>regardless of what we call it.

Agreed.  But note how deferential to the opposition this pro-life
speaker is, how remote his wording from the nitty-gritty of everyday life.  You
see this kind of thing in _Abortion: Pro and Con_ all the time from
the pro-life speakers, all of whom passed in silence over the statement that I
find abhorrent at the end of my post COERCED ABORTION.
These remarks apply also to the next speaker:

>Sidney Callahan     I think prenatal human life is human,
>genetically unique, alive, and the product of billions of years
>of evolutionary development.  Once an entity is part of the human
>species, or a conception has taken place, perhaps in some
>miniprocess, then I would accord that human life membership in
>the human family.  Once a part of the human family, a human life
>should participate in the fundamental moral equality of all human
>beings with all the fundamental human rights we accord to all.
>     * * *
>     My view is based upon a developmental approach to life.  I
>am impressed with the dynamic process of growth and change
>throughout the life cycle.  The fetus is creating cells and then
>250,000 brain cells a minute; at birth, humans are still
>unfinished, with only the beginning of what an adult brain can
>do.  The process of development goes on apace until the end of
>life reverses the process.  Because we live in time, the
>beginning and the end of life are patterned processes which have
>to be judged by taking their future potentiality or futility of
>treatment into account.
>     Thinking about life should be informed by a developmental
>imagination.  When I look at my thirty-five-year-old, six-foot-
>one, 195-pound, greying son, I can imagine the 5 1/2 pound
>newborn he once was.  It seems less of a trip from conceptus to
>newborn than from newborn to his full adulthood.  I see human
>life and the body as a dynamic genetically programmed process. 
>The body is not a machine or a frozen sculpture but an
>information system in constant dynamic exchange with the
>environment.   Our body/brain/consciousness/self is a unitary
>form developing and existing in time until the genetic program
>runs down and the information can no longer replicate the form or
>pattern.
>     So where does the idea of personhood come in?  If we use the
>word person to mean a human life protected by the law, then the
>conceptus and newborn can be persons. 

Whoa there! A conceptus is not the same thing as a fetus.  A conceptus
is everything arising from the original fertilized ovum, including 
the chorion, umbilical cord, and placenta.  [Pro-lifers make this
kind of mistake all the time, so some of the blame for the bizarre
things related in my post, "THE REAL LOWDOWN..." rests with them.]

> If we mean by "person" the
>full philosophical meaning of self-conscious, self-directing,
>rational free unimpaired agent, then most of the human race won't
>make it--and certainly not newborns, infants, toddlers, the
>mentally retarded, the mentally ill, the senile, the ill, or
>those temporarily in comas (or asleep!).

Quite so.  Of course, some pro-choicers have "arguably" argued 
for just such a definition, without properly addressing the
monstrous consequence.  And Callahan is polite to them, as usual.

>Clifford Grobstein  What and When is a person?
>     What is a person clearly must be addressed before one can
>say when a person comes into existence.  The word person has
>different meanings in various contexts.  In relation to abortion,
>person minimally designates an individual entity belonging to the
>species Homo sapiens, i.e., a human being....

And on, and on, and on, in the same soporific tones.

>     However ... during the continuous and gradual course of
>development, it is not easy to define sharp boundaries between
>stages (for example, between zygote, pre-embryo, embryo, fetus,
>and neonate).  And one cannot reasonably resolve the problem by
>sloganeering--for example, to proclaim one zygote, one vote. 
>Time must be respected as a change agent of steady continuity. 
>But externalities must also be respected when it is necessary to
>provide clear--albeit arbitrary--times to drive a car, to vote,
>to pay adult prices for admission, or to be legally recognized as
>a person.
>     Perhaps the least controversial definition of a person
>designates a typical maturing or mature adult of the species Homo
>sapiens, i.e., an adolescent or mature human being.

See what I said two comments ago.  This ivory-tower, off-the-top-of-
the-head thinking slips you imperceptibly into abhorrent consequences
before you realize what has happened.  Grobstein gives new meaning
to the old saying, "The sleep of reason begets monsters."

>  The most
>controversial definition asserts that a person exists from the
>"moment" of conception, i.e., a person is an individual belonging
>to the species Homo sapiens at whatever stage of development.

Grobstein's true colors really come out here.  Is this definition more
controversial than the one Callahan attacked at the end of his piece?
I don't believe, by the way, that Grobstein is at all aware of the
logical consequences of what he is saying.  His own voice is lulling
him to sleep.

I don't have the time to address the rest of what Grobstein says, but 
I think plenty of readers can pick up where I left off.

>Andrew Puzder  The [prolife] contention is that an individual
>human life begins at conception.  Whether we have a person is an
>issue of constitutional law, assuming you are referring to
>persons in the legal or constitutional sense.  If you are telling
>me that we have to wait a short time after conception to
>determine if we have twins before we can say there is an
>individual human life, I can understand your point and I am
>willing to listen.  However, when you start talking about having
>hair and mammary glands or that the unborn child cannot vote or
>pay taxes, you seem far afield.  You seem to take a nonscientific
>term such as person, give it a definition based on your beliefs
>as to what a person should have or be able to do, and define
>everyone or everything else as a nonperson.

My point, stated in a more polite way.

>Clifford Grobstein  Response to Andy Puzder:
>     Let me try to clarify the question you raise about the
>prolife "contention that a person exists from conception" ...  
>     I do not think that we can "keep the question simple"
>without ignoring the very essence of the problem.  The complexity
>of a person, however defined, clearly cannot arise in a
>"moment"....
>     I understand your impatience and desire to get on with the
>matter.  But while abortion does terminate existent life which is
>human, what is alive and human is certainly not always a person.
>     * * *     
>The concept of person is not derived from science although
>scientific understanding can be applied to it.  Its origins are
>more as a socio-political construct than a scientific one.  The
>issue with respect to ... abortion centers on when it should be
>applied in the course of development.  The issue becomes crucial
>if it is assumed that only persons have human rights.  This is
>confusingly transformed into the question--when does human life
>begin?

At the "least controversial" time, adolescence and adulthood?
Of course, not even Pudzer was "rude" enough to haunt 
Grobstein with his own words.

An exquisite irony: "Grobstein" means "gravestone" in German.
 
>     ... No life begins de novo on the earth today; it is all
>descended from previous life.  The lineage of previous life goes
>back continuously at least three billion years.  Humanoid life,
>depending on definition, goes back perhaps some three million
>years--through thousands of humanoid generations.  Our ancestors
>through these generations have become human and are always so in
>each generation.  When did they become persons?  When they
>declared themselves to be...

Grobstein obviously does not believe in a deity of the traditional
sort, and probably believes his epitaph will be the last word on him.
Do most members of Catholics for a Free Choice share these beliefs?
[Recall that this is all taken from one of their publications.]

>     It is not until implantation in the uterus, at about ten
>days after fertilization, that the then "pre-embryo" is
>definitely single as an entity.  But it is totally unrecognizable
>by anyone but an expert.

Should we not defer to experts, if we have nothing significant to
say against them?

>  Its cells are interdigitated
>[interlocked] with maternal ones, the relationships are more like
>those of a tumor than an offspring,

This is a description of a conceptus [see above], not a fetus,
nor even of a pre-embryo.
Of course, Grobstein restricts "offspring" to those already born.

>     Over the next four to six weeks, form and function gradually
>come into being so that it is recognizable as an animal, even a
>vertebrate, but still only an expert can recognize that it is
>human.

Grobstein is not about to defer to the experts.
>  Is this a likely candidate for personhood?  Not
>obviously.  Could a definition of person include it?  Yes, but
>not the ordinary one in secular usage.
>     * * *
>[A] rose is a rose is a rose, but one does not put rose seeds in
>a vase to decorate a table.  Yet the individual rose plant does
>begin with the seed.

Some time after I return to South Carolina, I will post
"*Oh, No* not that acorn-and-oak-tree analogy again!"

>Catherine Bateson      
[A number of lines deleted here.]
>     Reflecting on the word individual, it struck me that I hold
>quite a different view of the fetus, which is that the fetus is a
>part of the mother until viability.

This viewpoint is most unscientific, and has been since it was 
established in the 17th century that mother and fetus do not 
share a common circulation.

>  The issue of a woman's
>control over her own body is not so much the issue of being able
>to reject and remove a foreign being but of determining what
>happens to a part of herself.  A different genome?  Surely, but
>there are many examples of symbiosis so profound that two
>organisms which are genetically distinct become parts of a single
>whole (and I gather that the green plants originated in some such
>arrangements).

Gee, I thought the fetus was supposed by pro-choicers to be a 
parasite, not a symbiote, and therefore at the opposite extreme
from being a part of the woman's body.

>Gloria Feldt   I do not believe that the fetus, although it has
>value, is entitled to personhood status or to any other
>citizenship guarantee under the Constitution, and therefore due
>process for the fetus is not a legal right but a legal wrong.  
>     My logic is based on ... a religious perspective

Is this a private religion? If not, which religion is being 
followed here?  The  religion of Catholics for a Free Choice?

> which says
>that personhood begins at birth (actually a month after birth if
>we want to be precise) and that the well-being of the woman must
>prevail [and on] the ... information I have gained from looking
>at actual fetal life and at women involved in pregnancies,
>childbearing, miscarriages, and abortion....

Of course we are left in the dark as to what this "information" is.

>What religious perspective holds that the woman always comes
>first? Judaism.  The Talmud lists certain circumstances in which
>abortion should be performed for the benefit of the woman. 

Certain highly restricted circumstances, and poles apart from the
claim that the woman *always* comes first.

> It is
>clear in its teaching that life (personhood) does not occur until
>a point during the birth process--generally when the head is out. 

>     I was stretching things a bit to say that one month after
>birth is the more precise point, but it is true that, because of
>high infant mortality rates at the time, some believed that the
>baby should not be named or counted until that time (not because
>it was not valued, but because it was valued so much that there
>was great fear of losing it).  

Irrelevant to the proscription of abortion for frivolous reasons.

>     There is a recipe for an abortifacient in the Talmud, but
>even more interesting is that for the most part when the rabbis
>talked about abortion, it was about late procedures.  They
>implied that in early pregnancy, there are many remedies known
>only to women, and the men had just as well leave it that way.... 
>[T]hey were very wise rabbis.  

Joseph Dellapenna has made an exhaustive look at all recipies for
abortifacients that have come down to us, and found that the
only effective ones were "tantamount to suicide".  If there were
these remedies, when was knowledge about them wiped off the face
of the earth?  Why are the only abortifacients we ever hear of 
the highly artificial RU-486, and prostaglandins?  

>     Of course, you will find some very Orthodox Jews who are
>prolife generally, but even they will almost always say that the
>woman's life and health and that of her existing offspring must
>come first.

"Some?" Did you know that even in the USA, Orthodox Jews outnumber
Conservative, and Conservative outnumber Reformed?

Peter Nyikos
Newsgroups: talk.abortion