From: bskendig@netcom.com (Brian Kendig)
Subject: Re: No Human Worth in Unborn (was Re: Poof! Martins a frog (was: I had an a
Organization: Starfleet Headquarters: San Francisco
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 18:18:22 GMT

Martin, now you're _starting_ to understand our position.  You're
bringing up some of the same concerns that also bother a lot of
pro-choicers, and that a lot of us can't answer, either.

Martin writes:
>So only the born have any human worth.  How about an unborn child
>a day before birth?  It definitely is a human, and it certainly looks
>like one too.  Now to say that we can't award these humans
>human worth would mean that the law, in fact, would allow these humans 
>to be aborted (i.e. killed).  

That's a touchy issue, admittedly.  It seems that the majority of
Americans would agree with you here and favor restrictions on
late-term abortions.  (I, personally, lean towards letting the woman
remain in charge of the fetus's fate up to the very moment it's born,
but I'm not very strong on that point.)

>But how can someone say that human worth is given because of a location
>of that person?  The unborn one hour before birth is not much different
>from the newborn one hour after birth, but where did its worth change?
>Did the "initiation" of birth give that child the privilege of life?

The difference is that one is inhabiting the mother's body, and the
other isn't.

Let me think out loud here for a moment.  I don't think the primary
reason of abortion is that a woman wants to kill the fetus; I think
it's that she just wants to cut off support to it and get rid of it.
Unfortunately, in this day and age, that can't be done to a fetus
before eight months or so without killing it.

Perhaps we should be upholding the woman's right to stop giving her
bodily resources to the fetus, instead of her right to kill it?  That
way, if she wants to abort a late-term fetus, it could instead be
removed from her body via C-section and taken care of in some other
way (that's the rub -- state funding?) while the woman can walk away.

Of course, if she cuts off support to an unviable fetus, it will die,
although maybe someday we'll have "artificial incubators" to support
it.  Right now, that can't be helped.

>Location shouldn't change the value we place on human individuals.  A boy
>in Zaire is worth no less than that same boy hiking up Half Dome.  To say
>that a man has no right to life in Phoenix but suddenly has a right to life 
>because that individual moved ten miles away from Phoenix defies common
>sense.

The question here isn't just one of location.  The woman is more than
a physical location; the fetus is drawing sustainance from her body,
and imposing physical and emotional strain on her.

>To allow the unborn to be aborted five hours before its birth when it is
>clearly a fragile human just because of the notion that only born humans
>should be protected is preposterous.  Clearly, it is a human life, and
>clearly, we must protect its life.

That sounds awfully close to my position a month ago.

"Human life" is irrelevant here, because a ninth-month fetus is every
bit as much a human life as an embryo is.  I put importance on
'personhood', and I feel that a fetus becomes a person at myelination,
because that's the first point at which it's possible that the fetus
might be thinking.

Therefore a ninth-month fetus is a person and ought to be protected.
I only changed my position on this after I was informed of the rarity
of abortions this late and the difficulty of coming up with "fair and
just" legislation to pick exactly when a fetus deserves protection and
how "good" a reason a woman must have to obtain one; I now tend to
feel that the woman's still the only person who can choose for
herself, because I can't believe that she would take a third-trimester
abortion lightly at _all_.

>Larry writes:
>>If they use someone's body without that person's permission, we can
>>sentence them to death.  We can kill the zygote, embryo, fetus, or
>>"unborn Jesus" just as we could if it were a real person violating
>>someone's body.
>>
>So you would establish the right to kill, then.

Yes, of course!  We kill lots of things -- bugs, birds, cattle -- and
nobody even bats an eye.  I feel that we have even _more_ of a right
to kill something which not only is biologically far inferior to any
of these (it hasn't developed enough yet), but is also incapable of
living outside the womb, instead requiring that it draw all its
sustenance from a woman's body.  It's not a person YET.

>Why do "persons" have the right to life while other humans don't.  This
>type of discrimination between humans can often be dangerous.

Giving the right to life based on something purely genetic, a low
physical level, seems very arbitrary to me.  This would mean that you,
I, a single fertilized egg, and a brain-dead (but still alive with
artificial help) victim all deserve to survive at all costs, but that
a dolphin who appears to be as intelligent and emotional as we are, or
a computer that is self-aware, doesn't deserve this protection.

"Persons" have the right to life because (by definition) they are
capable of thought and emotion, the two things which make us distinct
from any other form of life we know.  "Humans", on the other hand,
aren't necessarily capable of either of these all the time.

>The existence of a person in location independent.  Sure, some human
>may die when put inside a furnace but that doesn't erase the fact that
>that human did exist and that human was certainly real, regardless of its
>location.

I am a person, and I have a right to life.

If I connect myself to a woman and feed off her bodily resources, and
can't survive without doing so, then there is a conflict of interests;
the woman's right to her body might give her the right to disconnect
herself from me, even though it would kill me.

Now, consider the case where I'm completely dependent on her -- but
remove my brain.  Now it's just a case of an individual mass of
unthinking human tissue being a parasite, and I doubt that anybody
would argue that she has no right to cut off her support to me.

>Larry writes:
>>We discriminate all the time.  I discriminate between things
>>that I put in my mouth (like food) and things that I don't (like small
>>furry animals).

This wins my vote for Quote of the Week!  :)

>>I'm also able to discriminate between people that can
>>breathe, think, move around on their own, etc., and the union of a sperm
>>and an egg.  That you can't tell the difference is, I believe, rather sad.
>>
>This discrimination involves leaving certain humans outside the
>"umbrella" allowing these humans to be killed, used for genetic experiments,
>etc.  The disrespect for human life should affect us.  WHen we start
>"limiting" certain humans to be "worthy" to live, it becomes apparent that
>our society becomes an exclusive one where those who are not wanted are
>discriminated against.  

I don't know if you don't understand our position or if you're just
outraged at it, but let me try to explain it anyway.  Discriminating
between one thinking, living person and another based on skin color or
hair color or sex is bad, of course.  But discriminating between one
organism and another based on the existence of a brain or the ability
to survive without being a parasite seems only logical to me.

>Cooperation not annihilation.

I would VERY MUCH like to work with you to eliminate the need for
abortion.  I hope that someday we can make sure that every conception
results in a happy, well-adjusted person.

But legislation only fouls up the gears and rouses hostility and
frustration.  If pro-lifers were to just decide to drop their legal
agenda, then we all could work together towards the common goal of
making abortion an option that's never used.

-- 
_/_/_/  Brian Kendig                             Je ne suis fait comme aucun
 _/_/  bskendig@netcom.com                de ceux que j'ai vus; j'ose croire
  _/                            n'etre fait comme aucun de ceux qui existent.
                             Si je ne vaux pas mieux, au moins je suis autre.
                                                                 -- Rousseau
Xref: sparky talk.abortion:42510 alt.abortion.inequity:4417