From: rdd@cactus.org (Robert Dorsett)
Newsgroups: tx.politics,houston.general
Subject: Re: Anti-choice vs. Pro-abortion (was Re: Houston Defending Choice Coalition needs you)
Date: 22 Aug 92 06:54:49 GMT
Followup-To: alt.flame
Distribution: tx
Organization: Capital Area Central Texas UNIX Society, Austin, Tx

In article <1992Aug21.153119.21631@menudo.uh.edu> moore@uhibpd.phys.uh.edu (Lorra L. Moore) writes:
>There were times when I didn't have anything.  When we worried where
>we were going to sleep the next week and prayed they would give us just
>a little more time on the rent. I have lived the very life I don't want to
>damn these children too.

Yes, but (if true), you lived through it, and are very much alive, quite
feisty, and more than willing to bet other peoples' lives on your opinions.
But at the same time, you wish to deny children--yourself, in another time--
the same opportunity to reach the same point in life.  Or do you truly regret 
being alive, participating in your pet causes?  Would you rather that YOUR 
parents had looked at the situation, like you, and aborted you?

Yes, we know about your "life-vessel" theory; that's very interesting.  If 
aborted, you'd just go back in line for the next life, or something like that, 
right?  But do you really have the hubris to project that personal belief on 
other lives? If so, it's a truly breathtaking example of the same type of
religious extremism you rail against.


>>Yeah, so what?  The difference is that they eventually decide to blow their
>>own brains out.  I don't make the decision for them.
>
>I am glad that you are such a great and gracious person that you give
>them a choice after years of misery to 'blow their own brains out'...
>how nice of you.

For your argument to have any merit, then the ultimate fate of all poor
people is suicide.  This is not so.  It may be an early death, it might be a 
normal death, or it might be a late death--but the death is rarely 
self-inflicted.  You seem to wish to damn the whole lot of them to non-
existence, because of mere temporal anguish.  

People live a long time.  People change, lives change, the times change.
The economic disaster of today may turn into the boom of tomorrow: if the
difference between the two is less than one lifetime, one certainly has no 
right to terminate lives on the basis of financial expediency--and, due
to the uncertainty of life, has no right to do so, otherwise.


>I believe in personal freedom.  You are the ones that advocate
>government domination.  Not I.  You are the one that is doing everything
>you can to keep the poor poor and not allow them even the slightest
>chance to not live that way.

Damned straight, when that "progress" can only come from them sacrificing
their young.  If your concern is, indeed, simply that the birth rate 
"anchors" the mobility of the destitute, why don't we see you campaigning
for birth control, or sex-education programs?  Why don't we see efforts
to improve the lot of the poor--by all indications, a lot of us will be 
joining their ranks, in the next fifty years?  Why don't we see an iota
of the effort put into the "pro-choice" movement, put into overturning 
the stale, old policies which help *make* the babies, not to mention the
environment they're born into?  Huh?  


>people... define 'people' and then we can continue this arguement.  I
>don't consider a 'fetus' a person.
>
I don't consider a baby a person, either, but that doesn't mean I approve
of the idea of killing them before they become *too* human-like, if, at
some point, they become too much of a burden.


>>Supposedly?  Is anyone out to get you, Lorra?  Are we feeling a bit
>>*paranoid*, all comfy cozy in front of our CRT?
>
>Well, no, last time I checked I wasn't paranoid at all.  Pro-lifers are
>attempting to take away the power to choose based on their religious
>upbringing.

Religious upbringing has nothing to do with it.  I'm a pragmatist.  I
don't know if there's a God, or a heaven or a hell.  I choose to err on the
side of caution, to assume there isn't, and to give each conceived human being 
the opportunity to live what may very well be his only chance at life.  That
life is the only "given" we have.  Everything else--your life-vessel
theory, organized religion, etc.--are articles of faith.

The bottom line is: we have a system of law, as well as an ethical
system, which states that taking another human life is "wrong."  The
origin of this idea is irrelevant: we're stuck with it, and, by most
polls, we believe in it; our society derives a great measure of stability
by its existence.  We support the idea of incarceration and murder
of those who kill others.  We applaud those who dedicate their lives to
helping others.  There is no place for discretionary abortion within this
ethical framework.  And I fear how permitting this will damage that 
framework.

The difference between a fetus and a baby, you asked?  About thirty 
seconds.




Cheers,


--
Robert Dorsett
rdd@cactus.org
...cs.utexas.edu!cactus.org!rdd
Newsgroups: tx.politics