From: Larry Margolis <margoli@watson.ibm.com>
Subject: Re: Only God Can Help Us!
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1992 06:35:10 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  <nyikos.715296853@milo.math.scarolina.edu>  nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos) writes:
> In <1992Aug26.112909.25187@rigel.econ.uga.edu> mills@uga.edu (Kathi Mills) write
>
> >Top Ten Reasons For Members of A Male-Dominated, Male-Worshipping
> >Religion to Oppose Abortion
>
> >1.  Abortion frees women from getting married because of pregnancy and
> >    thus deprives men of an easy way to capture domestic servants.
>
> 1*. Abortion frees men from having to get married, or as they used to
> say, "Do the right thing by the girl you got pregnant."

But it's the woman's choice.

> >2.  Abortion allows many women to complete their college education,
> >    and thus realize that they don't have to be men's domestic servants.
>
> That assumes they don't get injured or so emotionally scarred by the
> abortion that they can keep their mind on their studies.

A reasonable assumption, considering the unlikelihood of either.

> >3.  Abortion allows many women to keep and move up in their careers,
> >    thus freeing them from the necessity of relying on a man for money.
>
> what percentage of abortions are done on career women?

A woman with a career is not a career woman.

> These are the women who can afford to fly to Sweden,
> or wherever, to get an abortion that is a lot safer than what you can
> count on in the USA.

Not if they're working in a low-paying profession and barely making
enough to cover their cost of living.

> >4.  Abortion provides sexually active women with total control over
> >    their reproductive destinies.
>
> Unless the abortion makes them sterile.

There is no evidence of problems with later childbearing among women who
have an early abortion performed by the most common method - vacuum aspiration.

> >5.  Abortion provides rape victims with a way of escaping the additional
> >    torture of carrying her rapist's child to term.
>
> While suffering the torture of an abortion, which is like a second rape

This strikes me as incredibly ignorant and offensive, trivializing the
horrors of rape.  The woman who goes in for an abortion to terminate a
pregnancy resulting from rape is *not* being forced.

> >7.  Abortion ofte saves women's mental health.
>
> Abortion often destroys women's mental health.

"Often"?  Do you have any numbers to back this up?  I think it would be
more accurate to say "rarely".  (I think it would be even *more* accurate
to say that being coerced to take an irrevocable action which you later
regret can destroy one's mental health, *regardless* of what that action
is.)

> >8.  Abortion enables women to live free, independent lives, to have more
> >    of an opportunity to get involved with politics and move up the
> >    corporate ladder, evetually opening doors for other women and
> >    ultimately destroying men's straglehold on the money and power in
> >    this country.
>
> Contraception and natural family planning do it better.

Clearly they should be the first wall of defense.

Larry Margolis, MARGOLI@YKTVMV (Bitnet), margoli@watson.IBM.com (Internet)
Xref: sparky talk.abortion:34173 talk.rape:2372