From: Larry Margolis <margoli@watson.ibm.com>
Subject: Re: THE IMPLICATIONS OF ABORTION ON OUR SOCIETY
Date: Wed, 08 Apr 1992 20:21:29 GMT
Reply-To: margoli@watson.ibm.com
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
Organization: The Village Waterbed

In  <1992Apr8.130503.15133@cs.dal.ca>  franklin@ug.cs.dal.ca (Steve Franklin) writes:
> In <1992Apr08.033447.5308@watson.ibm.com> margoli@watson.ibm.com (Larry Margolis
> >In  <1992Apr8.011210.18193@cs.dal.ca>  franklin@ug.cs.dal.ca (Steve Franklin) w
> >> You know what? You can't...
> >..and even if you could, it couldn't answer.  It has no mind.
> Ooooh, here's a man who knows what he's talking about.

Yup.

> Larry, I could spew about how a baby responds to touch
> after 4 weeks, blah blah bla, but I won't.

Good, because then I'd just point out that a unicellular organism
responds to stimuli also, but that doesn't mean it has a mind.

> Arguably to you of course in the first, maybe second trimester, but
> in the third?

Definitely not in the first two trimesters, which is what I assume we're
discussing.  Third trimester abortions are already restricted by (US) law;
there's only a handful performed in this country, and then they're done
to save the woman's life.  I assume that you're not arguing, as Kevin Welch
did, that the life of the fetus is *more* important than that of the
mother, and she should be forced to go through with the delivery even if
it would most likely kill her?

>    7 months? Where the (*5%^ did you get that?

The following, originally posted by R. Cage, is from:
"Documentary challenges claim of fetal pain", in the
Ann Arbor News, 31 August 1985:

     "Does the brain even exist at conception?" narrator
     Jaworski asks early in the broadcast.

     "NO!!!" shoots back Dr. Michael Bennett, chairman
     of the neuroscience department at New York's Albert
     Einstein School of Medicine.

     "Can there be a person without a brain?" Jaworski inquires.

     "No, no way," replies Bennett.  "You can't be a person
     without a brain, you can't be a dog without a brain,
     you can't be a cat without a brain or a chicken without
     a brain."

     Though her documentary did turn out to be a rebuttal to
     "The Silent Scream", Jaworski admits she was uncertain
     which way her research would lead her when she began the
     project.

     But to a person, Jaworski's "impeccably credentialed"
     scientists concurred that "there are no brain neurons
     prior to four weeks of fetal development.  They contend
     that the cerebral cortex, the portion of the brain
     needed for thought, feelings and conscious awareness,
     is the last part of the brain to fully develop."

     In fact, asserts neurologist and neuroscientist Dr.
     Dominick Purpura, former dean of the Stanford University
     School of Medicine, and current dean at Albert Einstein
     School of Medicine, before the 28th week of development
     the cortex lacks sufficient axons, dendrites and synapses
     to sustain the processes of thought, feeling and aware-
     ness the documentary deems necessary for "personhood".

     "We're putting the boundary condition, the limit, the
     minimal time for personhood to begin," Purpura says.  "It's
     not three months, it's not two months, it's seven months.

> You get rid of (ridiculous) 3rd trimester abortions, and THEN we'll talk.

Maybe the situation is different in Canada; I can only speak about the US.

Larry Margolis, MARGOLI@YKTVMV (Bitnet), margoli@watson.IBM.com (Internet)