From: bskendig@netcom.com (Brian Kendig)
Subject: Re: PRO-LIFE SEASON'S GREETINGS
Organization: Starfleet Headquarters: San Francisco
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 19:54:01 GMT

Peter, your message is appreciated, even if your motives are suspect.

nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos) writes:
>
>I wish a happy Christmas season to everyone, including the abortionists,
>those super-Grinches who steal EVERY Christmas from the little ones they
>abort.

Now THERE's a loaded statement, if ever I heard one!  ;-)  I could
similarly wish a happy holiday to everyone including the pro-forcers,
those super-Grinches who would rather see women properly subservient
to men by virtue of a legal decision that they don't have the right to
decide what's done with their bodies.  But I won't wish such a thing,
at least not in such words, because I would much rather see us all
united during the holiday season.  (Hey, I can always hope...)

>May they and everyone else begin to catch a glimpse of the twin
>paradoxical motives which prod me forward in my pro-life efforts:
>
>1.  The HOPE that there is a life after death and a very loving, very
>powerful, very merciful God who can make that life worthwhile.  For if
>either of these is missing, what do the little ones about to be aborted
>have to look forward to?
>
>Were it not for the above HOPE, I might well be a pro-choicer by
>default, blocking out all serious thoughts of the reality of abortion,
>lest I be brought to utter despair by the above fear.

I can't quite figure out what you mean by that, but you apparently
don't know what it means to be atheist.  I do not believe that there
exists a god nor an afterlife of any sort, and I certainly haven't
been despairing.  In any case, my atheist opinions have no bearing on
my pro-choice views.


>2.  The FEAR that this is all a pipe dream and that death means the end
>of everything for these little ones, who are destined not for a life as
>we know it, but an oblivion from which everything we hold dear is
>completely missing including (but this is really frosting on the cake)
>Christmas. 
>
>Were it not for the above FEAR, I might well be a pro-choicer by
>default, because I would be smug with the satisfaction that all's well
>that ends well (or, to put it more crudely, the end justifies the
>means) and that the aborted little ones are with God in His heaven and
>all's well with the world...

You seem to overlook that there could be other opinions on the subject
that are better thought-out than this one you've come up with.  Your
words, Peter, indicate that you haven't given a lot of effort to
really understand why pro-choicers feel the way we do about abortion.
My understanding of the pro-life side comes from the fact that I used
to be strongly pro-life, but after finding this newsgroup and doing a
lot of soul-searching, I came around to the pro-choice side.


>In neither case would I be likely to do much if anything to try to
>reduce the 1,500,000+ abortions annually in the U.S., of which well
>over 100,000 are past the first trimester and over 10,000 of which are
>past the point where the unborn child would be able to live outside the
>womb, albeit with intensive care in most cases.

I would very much like to reduce the number of abortions, and I don't
see why you wouldn't.  The only difference between our viewpoints,
Peter, is that I don't feel bringing the law into the picture is going
to help society in the long run, any more than instituting martial law
in the United States would be good for society by eliminating crime.
Do you want to deal with the problem of unwanted pregnancies by
forcing births, or would you rather work with us to find better ways
to deal with the source of the problem?

>Finally, here is a special Christmas season wish to those little ones
>whom I sometimes fondly call "Whos from Whoville", aborted by the
>super-Grinches, that they may indeed experience their First Birth, and 
>to us all that we may, after death, experience our Second Birth, as
>expressed in the final verse of the new, non-sexist version of "Hark!
>The Herald Angels Sing!":

Cute.  ;-)

Happy Winter Solstice!

-- 
_/_/_/  Brian Kendig                             Je ne suis fait comme aucun
/_/_/  bskendig@netcom.com                de ceux que j'ai vus; j'ose croire
_/_/                            n'etre fait comme aucun de ceux qui existent.
  /  Nolite te bastardes     Si je ne vaux pas mieux, au moins je suis autre.
 /    carborundorum.                                             -- Rousseau
Newsgroups: talk.abortion