From: sa114984@longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu (Steven Arnold)
Subject: Re: Christian Pro-Choicers 
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 01:42:25 GMT
Organization: Colorado State U. Engineering College

In article <1993Jan25.152756.9283@pwcs.stpaul.gov>, chrisl@stpaul.gov (Chris A Lyman) writes:
|> cobb@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu (Mike Cobb) asks why analogies to the H********
|> are not useful:
|> 
|> > Anything emotionally painful or visually repulsive (pictures) are impossible
|> > to use when discussing the issue.  It hurts to much to see that these
|> > "things" look so much like a little child.  It makes us feel better to keep
|> > those emotionally troubling issues out of the discussion.  We're happy, and
|> > the child, is dead.  It is emotionally troubling.  Just asked the group
|> > Women Exploited by Abortion.
|> 
|> Of course, when we discuss legislation or public policy that abridges or
|> curtails a woman's right to control her body, we should get ourselves as
|> emotionally riled up as possible.

	Legislation forbidding many abortions does not curtail or abridge a
woman's right of ownership over her own body.  Such laws govern and dictate the
method by which she waives that right and to what extent.
	Laws forbidding abortion (except in the case of rape) merely require the
woman to not kill the person she caused to be in her womb.

|>  Forget the 9th, 10th and 14th Amendments,

	Every time an abortion is performed we forget the 14th amendment.
	As for the 9th and 10th, it is reasonable to assume that they were
included to make it clear that states could add other rights beyond those found
in the Bill of Rights; in other words, the purpose was to make it clear that
merely because the federal government had established certain rights, this did
not imply that states couldn't guarantee additional rights.
	You really have to stretch seriously to read a right to abortion in the
9th and 10th.

|> forget Griswold vs. Connecticut, forget Roe vs. Wade,

	Let's!

|> forget the hundreds
|> of hours that medical, legal, pastoral professionals and others have expended
|> in research, meditation and writing on this issue.

	Medical research cannot tell us when the baby becomes a person.  It can
tell us that from conception on we are dealing with a living human being who will
eventually grow into a full-grown adult human being.  Denying personhood to the
unborn child requires an assumption that human governments can have a right to
decide, based on some criteria, that some living human beings are persons while
others are not.
	This idea can be denied in the first place.  Why accept it at all?  But 
I deny it because I can't think of any criteria for personhood that both refuse
personhood to the unborn, and that are also simultaneously:
	1. Medically meaningful,
	2. Objective, measurable, not matters of opinion, and
	3. Free of arbitrary exceptions.
Birth, for example, while it is an objective event, is not medically meaningful
as far as the development of the child.  The child is not appreciably more
intelligent out of the womb than it was in the womb.  "Birth" passes tests 2 and
3 but fails test 1.
	The criteria of intelligence doesn't work because it fails tests 2 and 3.
	It fails test 2 because the issue arises of who decides how intelligent
is intelligent enough.  There is no truly reliable way to even measure
intelligence, much less any objective way to decide how much is sufficient for
personhood.
	It fails test 3 unless you take a Naziesque approach or the approach of
radical animal rights activists.  Let me explain.  Suppose you call the newborn a
person with a right to life because it is intelligent.  Many mammals are more
intelligent in every measurable way than a newborn human baby.  Therefore, if
intelligence is the reason the child is a person, all animals that intelligent or
more must also be persons.
	If you deny that any animal is a person, then you must deny personhood to
all human children until they provide proof that they are more intelligent than
any animal -- that is, until their vocabulary reaches somewhere in the vicinity
of 500 to 1000 words or so.
	Every other test I have ever heard of fails one or the other of these
tests, except for conception.  Conception passes test 1 -- it is about as
medically meaningful as an event can get, because it marks the creation of a new
individual in the human species.  It passes test 2 because it is objective,
measurable, knowable.  It passes test 3 because there are no exceptions
whatsoever, much less any arbitrary exceptions.

|> Let's just repeat after Peter Finch in "Network":  "I'm mad as hell, and I'm
|> not going to take it anymore!!!"
|> 
|> Since we're talkin' emotionally painful or visually repulsive pictures, let's
|> turn to page 310 in the new edition of "Our Bodies, Our Selves" and see what
|> the aftermath of a fatal illegal abortion looks like.
|> 
|> Or, we could build a case that the availability of safe, legal abortion has
|> certain affects on society and public health, positive and negative, and
|> whether these affects, if negative, are compelling reasons to place
|> restrictions on abortion.

	Come on.  Even if, say, killing Jews were somehow beneficial to society,
we wouldn't have a right to do it.

|> > So, please explain why it is such a stupid and  senseless argument, without
|> > just saying it is so.  It's convenient to not have to, but we don't get
|> > anywhere.  It is an emotional issue, for everyone.  
|> 
|> Since I don't remember you participating when I last wrote this, I'll be
|> happy to explain.  The Holocaust was the result of a totalitarian government
|> policy.

	So is abortion.

|>  It was systematic and deliberately cruel.

	The deliberate cruelty aggravates the crime, but the fundamental crime
was the killing of innocent people.  It would have been wrong even if there was
no cruelty involved.

|>  The total number of
|> abortions in the U.S. is the result of an _aggregate_ of decisions of
|> individual women.

	The number of rapes in the United States, also, is the result of an
_aggregate_ of decisions of individual men.

|>  It is in no way systematic or deliberately cruel.

	So abortion is the soulless and cold killing of millions, while the
Holocaust was the hateful and viscious killing of millions.  Somehow, I'm not
comforted.

|>  The
|> only attribute that the Holocaust and abortion share is that the numbers
|> are real big.

	Another similarity is the refusal of people to recognize the personhood
and humanity of "inferior" races and unborn children.  In both cases, the reasons
for the refusal were arbitrary.

|> Imo, the Holocaust is not an analogy to anything.  It simply is what it is,
|> an expression of hatred and bigotry.  It is a monument to what happens when
|> an entire society surrenders to the Big Lie that all problems are caused by
|> that different sort of person over there.

	The Holocaust was the killing of millions of people because someone
deemed them inconvenient.  So is the abortion holocaust.

Steve
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