From: stevef@bug.UUCP (Steven R Fordyce)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion,alt.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: rights and responsibilities
Date: 16 Dec 92 16:19:51 GMT
Reply-To: stevef@bug.UUCP (Steven R Fordyce)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Handmade Designs, Salem, OR, USA

In article <If9BW4W00WBNE2fx0p@andrew.cmu.edu> ml3e+@andrew.cmu.edu
(Michael Loomis) writes:
|Excerpts from netnews.talk.abortion: 6-Dec-92 Re: rights and
|responsibili.. by Steven R Fordyce@bug.UUC 
|> I frequently get irked reading these debates because it is often said
|> that abortion is a religious question, and therefore an individual
|> matter, not a proper subject for public control or even debate.  Those
|> for legal abortion often say that those against are just trying to
|> impose their religious values on everyone else, and in fact, many
|> people against abortion justify their position on religious grounds. 
|> I'm agnostic, i.e. not religious. My opposition to abortion has nothing
|> to do with the notion of sin, a soul, an after-life, or God.  I don't
|> view pregnancy as punishment.  I have nothing against sex and I don't
|> think it is a sin outside of marriage.
|
|    Mr. Fordyce is welcome to whine all he wants about the fact people
|perceive opposition to abortion to primarily come from certain religious
|groups that are obsessed with a need to control sexuality.  His whining
|does not change the facts that the opposition to abortion as political
|movement with some power solely derives from the power of those
|religious groups.

Mr Loomis can whine all he wants about religious groups and their
positions on sexuality, but that doesn't make abortion strictly a
religious issue any more than slavery was strictly a religious issue in
1860, even through many people took positions on slavery for religious
reasons.  Over 80% of the people in the USA claim to be Christians, so
it is hardly surprising that a majority of those who are Pro-Life (and
Pro-Choice) are Christians.  Do you think that should disqualify them
from the debate?

|Further, anti-abortion proproganda is littered with references to god,
|and the need to stop gay people from achieveing acceptance in society.

Prove that.  What anti-abortion literature mentions homosexuals, and
who was it put out by?

|People who favor aborition rights would be guilty of intellectual
|dishonesty to pretend that the anti-abortionist are motivated by some
|concept of abortion as murder.

Non-sense.  In any case, it is certainly my motivation.

|They must address the ideas that actually motivate the anti-abortion
|movement.  (After observing the lunatics in the animals rights
|movement, I will admit there may exist someone who was motivated to
|oppose abortion out of some idea of abortion as murder.)

The relevance of this escapes me.

|    Though I am glad that Mr. Fordyce claims not to be a member of any
|religous group, I don't think we should take seriously his stance as not
|being motivated by some need to oppress sexuality for two reasons.  
|
|1.  Even the most sex-repressing Catholic claims his opposition to
|abortion is based on the idea that abortion is murder.  It is just too
|convient that someone who believes that pre-marital sex, homosexuality,
|masturbation, and birth control are sexually immoral believes that
|abortion is murder.  
|
|2.  My experience with the religious is that they will often deny their
|religion for a rhetorical point.  I don't understand why they would deny
|their own god in some vain attempt to persuade a cynic in a debate, but
|they often do.

So now I'm a liar, secretly hiding my Christian identity just to fool
you.  Well I am not.  For your information Mr Loomis, I do not think
pre-marital sex, homosexuality, masturbation, or birth control are
immoral.  In fact, except for homosexuality, I approve of and have
engaged in all these things, and as you can see, I'm not shy about
saying so.  And I have nothing against homosexuals either; I'm just not
interested in engaging in homosexuality myself.
-- 
orstcs!opac!bug!stevef          I am the NRA              Steven R. Fordyce
uunet!sequent!ether!stevef         . . .  	        Deer are for Dinner
Newsgroups: talk.abortion