From: garvin+@cs.cmu.edu (Susan Garvin)
Subject: Re: "Abortion" on a not-pregnant woman
Keywords: decay@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (dean.kaflowitz)
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 11:01:58 GMT

In article <nyikos.715896062@milo.math.scarolina.edu> nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos) writes:
#In <Bu4qGG.1Ho.2@cs.cmu.edu> garvin+@cs.cmu.edu (Susan Garvin) writes:
##In article <nyikos.715729698@milo.math.scarolina.edu> nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos) writes:
#
###My point went in quite a different direction.  Judge Kelly
###drafted a proposal that would limit pro-lifers to what kind of picketing
###they could do and still be acceptable to him, and proposed that a neutral
###party report on "what really goes on in Tiller's clinic," to be 
###accompanied by Operation Rescue types doing "community service", like
###homophobes being made to attend sensitivity training sessions.  This was
###totally unacceptable to Tiller's lawyers.  So far as I know, they would
###never let anyone mentioned by Judge Kelly, who so zealously arranged for
###arrests and convictions, to see the inside of the clinic.  
#
##Do you have any sort of reference for this?  
#
#Do you require references of people asking questions, and pleading
#ignorance about the answers to the questions?  You are one tough
#customer, Susan.

No, I'm asking for references for the claims that you made above.
You didn't ask *any* questions in the paragraph that I quoted.

#Or is your request slightly misplaced and you are referring to "This
#was totally unacceptable to Tiller's lawyers?"  I have two different
#sources for this, both pro-life, one a book, another a national magazine.
#I realize these sources aren't worth diddly to you, so I won't even 
#name them, but merely ask whether you have any news of what really
#happened the day before Kelly was asked on the Phil Donahue show why
#he abruptly released the "rescuers" from prison and answered
#"Because the other side pissed me off."

No, I don't get my news from the Phil Donahue show.  Are you
willing to tell us the names of your sources or not?  

###And maybe
###not even Kelly himself.  Nor any of the marshals.
#
##If you could leave this sort of speculation out, people
##wouldn't respond as angrily to your articles.  You
##have no way of knowing this.
#
#Right. That's why I keep asking about it.  In the absence of answers,
#am I not even allowed to say "maybe"?

I think that you should invest a little time in learning the
difference between a question and a speculation.

###Of course, you can all go on believing Tiller had nothing embarrassing
###to hide.  
#
##You've certainly not offered anything to convince me otherwise.
#
#Well, I've had so much else to do, I just haven't had the time to 
#present the evidence I have.  And, given how skeptical you and your
#fellow pro-choicers are, it's going to have to be a long, tightly
#reasoned post.  But I'll do my best, and I hope to have something
#for you by the end of the week.

I'd appreciate it.

###But his activities, while perhaps legal under Kansas law, 
###were still of a sort that most ordinary people find repugnant.  
#
##I'd find it a lot more repugnant to see the dead bodies of
##the women who would be denied abortions by people like
##you. 
#
#Now don't you start misrepresenting me.  It's bad enough having
#Adrienne accuse me of endangering women's lives when I've said
#over and over again that I have nothing against an abortion done
#to save the life of a woman.

If you don't allow Dr. Tiller to practice, you're denying
women abortions.  I'm not misrepresenting you, I'm 
merely illustrating the effect of your desires.

## I'd find it a lot more repugnant to see the shattered
##families created when the wife and mother is permanently
##physically impaired by a pregnancy that people like you
##would force her to carry to term. 
#
#I've also relaxed my opposition to abortion to where I would 
#allow it if the impairment were as great as the permanent loss of
#one kidney.  But I believe the difference between
#that and a life-endangering situation is nonexistent in the real
#world.  Does anyone here know otherwise?

I have no idea what you're trying to say here.  I would
suggest that mathematicians are hardly qualified to make
medical decisions.  

## I'd find it a lot more
##repugnant to watch an infant die in pain because you
##would insist that it suffered needlessly.
#
#I have also said that if not giving abortion means an infant is
#sentenced to a fate worse than death, I would allow the abortion.
#I guess that was all before you started paying close attention 
#to my posts.

(I remain grateful that each woman who believes abortion to
be her best alternative need not clear it with Nyikos first.)

Again, you miss the point.  You have inisinuated that Dr. Tiller
should not be allowed to do the abortions that he does.  The
alternative is that women will be denies abortions.  I can
understand your unwillingness to accept responsibility for
this.

##I saw photographs of one of the cancerous tumors they
##removed from me.  I am not comparing a fetus to the tumor,
##understand that.  I am saying that the operation and the
##results of that operation were disgusting to look at.
##On the other hand, I would surely be dead if that operation
##had not been performed.
#
#When I say "repugnant," I am speaking morally, not esthetically.
#Sorry if it wasn't clear before.

I was misled by your insistence on a visual.

I don't need to see something to know if I find it morally
repugnant.  I guess you are more limited.

##You continue to miss that point, though.  Many life-saving
##operations are hideously ugly.  
#
#That does not bother me.  They are "beautiful" in the moral
#dimension.

Did you have to see them to reach this conclusion?

###Perhaps
###some pro-choicers here would too, if they saw them, but they never get
###the chance.
#
##I would strongly doubt that there is a single person who reads
##this group and supports legal abortion who does not know
##what a late term fetus looks like, and who can't imagine
##what happens when such a fetus is aborted.
#
#But some deny that such a fetus suffers terrible agony in many abortions.

That's because there is no proof of this.  

##The abortions done in Dr. Tiller's clinic are tragic, Nyikos.
##The alternative to those abortions, though, is even more
##tragic to the women who undergo them. 
#
#That remains to be seen.  I guess you missed my post about the woman
#who, on the evening TV news, went to Kansas to abort a baby "whose
#brain was not developing properly," and suffered massive hemorrhage
#as a result of the abortion.  I don't recall anyone saying that the
#anencephalic baby who was born in Florida not long ago had its birth
#accompanied by massive hemorrhaging.  

This is nonsensical.  Do you actually believe that all such
births are without complication?  In other words, why do
you think that your comparison is valid?

#[Don't confuse statements of fact, or speculation, with reproaches.  No
#reason why you should have caught that earlier post.]
#
#And people were quite 
#positive that the anencephalic baby was NOT suffering.  If they are
#indeed incapable of suffering, what's the point of aborting them
#in the first place?

Some people have compassion for the parents, Nyikos.  

Susan

Newsgroups: talk.abortion