From: gaj@n8ppd300.DOMAIN.NOT.SET (Gerald A. Josephson)
Subject: Re: ProLife, ProMurder, ProCrime And Iraq
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 20:49:28 GMT
Reply-To: gaj@n8ppd300.DOMAIN.NOT.SET (Gerald A. Josephson)
Organization: BNR, Inc.


| >
| >The_Doge Writes:
| >
| >	Are you sure you want to advance this?  This means your second
| >criterion for losing one's right to life would be:  "lives in a country whose
| >leader(s) have ordered military operations resulting in the deaths of non-
| >combatants".
| >	Alas, this means that every one of us in the USA lost our right to
| >life long before Saddam Hussein moved a single troop into Kuwait (remember
| >Panama?  Nicaragua?  Heck, let's throw in Vietnam, too...).  And it looks like
| >we just lost it again (Dead Again?) when one of our cruise missles wiped out
| >some civilians in the Al Rashid Hotel Sunday.
| >	I can see some real problems with this ethical system.....

No, It means that I have no ethical problem with the deaths of civilians in
a war zone, so long as the civilians were not an intended target.  As Gen.
LeMay told his bomber crews in WWII, "You're going to be mommy killers, and
baby killers."  He did not mean that they would be going out with the
intention of killing civilians, he meant that it was a fact of war that
non-combatants will be killed.  The point of the statement was that in a war
innocent people die. Your argument is based on the belief that I thought these
people _should_ be killed, this is not the case.

How do you feel about the deaths of these civilians?  By the way you tie
a Pro-life abortion stance to all aspects of life, does this mean that
a pro-abortion stance means that these deaths are OK? I doubt it, logically
it does not have to follow.


| >
| >>to any other than this question is inconsistent.
| >	Not at all.  It just requires one to recognize (as some of us keep
| >pointing out) that being "pro-life" doesn't really mean being pro-life.  It
| >just means being anti-abortion.
| >	Isn't it nice that we could keep this civil, though?
| >The_Doge
| >

By this standard, Pro-choice should be viewed as Pro-murder.  Thus allowing
any who wish to kill at will with no legal reprocussions.  Obviously this is
not what you mean, so please accept that when I, and most people on this net,
say pro-life we are addressing a specific situation, abortion.  Also you asked
me _my_ views on abortion, as in what I would counsel a friend of mine to do
if they _asked_ my opinion. That is what you got, not how I feel about 
attempting to legislate morality, which is what so many people seem to want
to do.  I beleive that abortion as a form of birth control is wrong.  I 
beleive that abortion may be the only option if the mothers life is in 
danger.  I beleive that any attempt to legislate morality in this way is 
stupid and doomed to failure.  Now, if some other person wants to go out
and get what I consider to be an unnecessary abortion, do I believe I have 
the right to stop them? No.  But at the same time, I don't believe that they 
have the right to make me pay for thier abortion through public assistance.

gaj
Xref: sparky talk.abortion:57446 talk.religion.misc:27327 alt.atheism:26872