From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Subject: Re: The C word
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 00:42:01 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix & Internet, NYC

cj@eno.corp.sgi.com (C J Silverio) writes:

>jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>|mon@cray.com (Muriel Nelson) writes:
>|>What about married persons who have all the children they
>|>can support?  Do you think they should all be celibate?
>|
>|Depends on what the consequences of having another child would be.  If
>|they would be bad enough to make them think abortion would be justified
>|in case of pregnancy, then I think they should be celibate unless there
>|is a method of birth control available that is reliable enough to stake
>|a life on (surgical sterilization?).
>
>This is ridiculous!  Here you don't even have the conventional 
>crutch of christian condemnation of extramarital sex.  You're 
>presuming to judge the sexual behavior of MARRIED COUPLES.
>
>You do NOT get to make sexual decisions for other people.
>Especially not when you blithely ignore human nature and
>reality as you do above.

Why are sexual decisions any different from any other kind of decision?
When they have consequences that could involve the destruction of
something with value comparable to (although not necessarily identical
with) a human life, it seems to me that like other decisions they can
be judged in accordance with those consequences.

As to ignoring reality -- I would expect people who don't have a lot of
money to keep on having marital relations, and if a baby should appear
on the scene to deal with it then.  That's what lots of people have done
for lots of years, and I don't expect it to stop.

>jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>| [...] My 
>|reason for objecting to abortion is the one stated above, that while it 
>|seems to me that the unborn is not (at least in the earlier stages) a 
>|"person", it's not nothing either.
>
>I don't think it's "nothing", either.  (Aigh!  A double negative!)
>But is that "something" more or less important & valuable than
>the inarguably human woman carrying it?
>
>I say the woman is more important.

I agree with you that the woman is more important.  But what follows
from that beyond permitting abortion to save the woman's life?  The
woman would have to be incomparably more important for her mere will to
be sufficient reason to destroy the z/e/f.  In fact, the z/e/f would
have to be nothing by comparison, which I take it is the pro-choice
view.  Given that the woman is more important, the issue remains how
important the z/e/f is, and what reasons are sufficient to justify its
destruction.

>When Jim Kalb consents to get into a car,  he is consenting
>to automobile accidents,  since the foreseeable results of 
>driving include accidents & injury.  Jim Kalb knows that he 
>is morally enjoined from seeking medical treatment for any 
>bruises, whiplash, broken bones, lacerations from broken glass, 
>etc., that might occur in any accident.  

[several similar examples]

>What makes you so different from women who have sex, Mr Kalb?

I'm not at all different from women who have sex.  When I do something
and the forseeable happens, I think I should deal with it in a
responsible way, meaning a way that takes into account the value of the
persons and things involved.  If I were injured in an automobile
accident I would get medical attention because medical care for injuries
does not destroy anything of value.  If I got a woman pregnant I would
not try to induce her to have an abortion because having an abortion
does destroy something of great value.

-- 
    Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion