From: mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Re: abortion
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 07:25:07 GMT

In article <1992Apr12.185046.10343@cs.rose-hulman.edu> lindercs@HYDRA.ROSE-HULMAN.EDU writes:

>	Okay, this is Galadin again.  I just got done reading CD's answer to my
>and Kateri's post.  He does raise some good points, but he also misses some of
>my points.  The first thing that comes to mind is that I agree with him that 
>abortion, adoption, sex education, and such do have to be answered together.
>The sad part is that this is not easily done.  With the way the American 
>system handles sex is very puritan controlled.  That is, force the only 
>education to be abstinence and anything else is their problem.  With the way
>that I was arguing, all of these situations would be handled together through
>the same agency.  This agency would have to be supported by public dollars 
>which is why I said earlier that it would take government funding.  I would
>hope for a system where this agency would be independent of the government.

	This is a problem I see many times when someone proposes
that the government create a program.  Essentially, the idea seems
to be that the government can provide some measure of impartiality
and hence is the best arbiter-- despite the fact that we see
in practice that this is not the case.  Whatever happens, we'll
still be dealing with a government made up of people, with problems
of puritanism, corruption, and the simple fact that other people's
problems don't matter to most of us as much as our own do.  Note
that there are many caring, talented, overworked, underpaid people
in government.  But there's nothing in the structure or nature of
government which ensures that it will get more of those than of
other sorts, and even the best may not be entirely in control of
what they're allowed to do.

	I see the same problem with those who call for a national
health care plan.  We want the same federal government which promulgated
the abortion gag rule on federally funded clinics to have control
of all health care funding.  While it would be nice to suppose that
government would limit itself to dispensing money without passing
judgment, in point of fact it _can't_.  It has to decide whether to
fund chemotherapy or Laetril, heart surgery or placating the elves.
Those are easy choices, but it becomes harder as the level of
controversy rises.  In the case of abortion, in which significant
numbers of people hold strong view, placing a monopoly of power
in a single body's hands is an invitation to abuse, whether one is
pro-choice and sees that abuse coming in the form of a total abortion
ban for federally funded doctors (which under a national health care
regimen may well mean virtually all of them) or one is pro-life and
sees it as funding _only_ doctors who agree to perform abortions.

	(An analogy is the National Endowment for the Arts.  Jesse
Helms never made the best argument there is against it: that people
like Jesse Helms are given the power to decide what is and what
is not "art".  When the government dispenses money, it gains the
power to control the behavior of those it gives money to-- there's
no federal law mandating the 21 year drinking age or the 65 mph
limit... just a law which says that states which don't comply
don't get highway funds.)

	What happens when people who don't comply with the rules
don't get medical care?

>	Of course, there is still the problem of the third party counselor. 
>Well, we are dealing with humans here and so there is not going to be any
>perfect solution.  But, because there is no perfect solution, does that mean we
>should not work towards one?

	Maybe it does.  There's a very human reaction which says,
"Don't just stand there, _do_ something!"  I feel it too.  But there
may be nothing to do.  If you don't have modern medicine, and someone
is ill, there's still a powerful urge to do something.  This has led
to some effective cures, but it's also led to trepanning and
bloodletting.  Every time there's a recession the government "does
something"; personally I don't know whether it's the equivalent of
giving us an aspirin, a sugar pill, or a dose of cyanide, and I don't
think that they know either.  They just know they should do
_something_.

	Sometimes something works by accident.  Back in the sixteenth
century there was a cure for wounds called the weapon-salve.
Basically, you applied a solution to the weapon which caused the
wound.  The silly pre-moderns argued whether it worked for half a
century.  ...Except, it turns out that when you were applying these
weird things to the weapons, you _weren't_ putting lye or mercury or
grave dirt on the wound-- instead they kept it clean and dry.  And, lo
and behold, the weapon-salve worked better than any other cure they
knew.  But _not_ for the reason they thought it did (which had to do
with magnetism and such; anyone who _really_ wants to know more about
this can read my 40-page BA thesis.  Don't all ask at once.  :-) ) In
fact, it worked because they were doing nothing to the wound, and
while there _were_ things that would have been better (alcohol
antisepsis, say, or carbolic acid) _they_ didn't know what they were,
and nothing was better than the _something_ they otherwise would have
done.

	I don't have mystical faith in markets; I don't believe that
everything that governments do would be done better and cheaper if
only it didn't stick its nose into our business.  But conversely I'm
skeptical whenever someone wants to set up a body to make decisions
for other people with still other people's money.  After all, the
decision to _have_ a child is a pretty important one too.  Should all
couples have to go to a guidance counselor to be approved as parents?

>  I feel that there has to be a solution out there that is better
>than the one that the US has now.  I totally disagree with granting
>states their own rights on the abortion issue.  This only gives more
>fuel to the state elections for the popularity vote in their state.
>Also, if a stated did make abortion illegal.  How hard would it be to
>go to another state.

	Well, how hard is it to go to another country?  Easy, if you
live in Detroit or Buffalo.  Pretty tough if you live in Wichita or
St. Louis.  Is it fair to make so much depend on where you live?  Hard
to say.  In any case, recall that the Constitution gives the federal
government only specific, enumerated powers.  There isn't a federal
law against murder, for example (though there is one against
assassination of certain federal officials).  There's no general
federal law against theft.  Of course, the Federal government has
expanded its power over the years, and the Supreme Court has pretty
well ignored the Ninth and Tenth Amendments for a long time.  But I
really don't see where federal power over abortion comes from.

>	As for the government running the system.  This is a social
>issue an as such should be addressed and handled by soceity.  The
>organization that soceity implements to handle issues is suppose to
>be the government.  As such, I see no other way than to involve the
>government in the issue.  As for having the government control my
>life, I am not in favor of that.  I would still make my own
>individual choices, but there are some choices that do have to be
>handled by the government.  Hopefully, I would like to see something
>where the choice is handled by a compassionate but impartial judging.

	Again, I ask: where will you find someone who is impartial on
this issue?  Government is not the only way society handles issues, it
is one of many.  To pick a trivial example, society believes that one
should say "please" and "thank you" in appropriate circumstances.
Many people don't do this on a regular basis, to the consternation of
many others, but I'd say that most do.  Would we be better off if
politeness were legally enforced?  Alcoholism causes a myriad of
social problems, but we don't have any mechanism for licensing
people to drink.

	I suppose as a law student I ought to be in favor of more laws
and more court rulings-- it would increase my chances for employment.
:-) But I think that the default should always be "no law" until and
unless there is good evidence that a) there's a need for a law, b) the
benefits to people outweigh the costs.  Will the people who are
genuinely helped by the program you propose outweigh those who are
genuinely harmed by it?  And what about the general loss of autonomy
which results, the fact that there's one more decision which we have
to ask someone else about before making?

>	Now, on to the issue of backdoor abortions.  It seems to me
>that you all are making me out to be a bit heartless and this is far
>from the case.  The only problem that I have is that if abortion is
>made illegal, then it is the choice of the woman on top of all of the
>other factors to go to the backdoor.  If the woman felt that strongly
>that the abortion was necessary, there is a chance that the decision
>would have been made.  Remember, that the majority of people today
>are in favor of abortion.  Therefore, there is a good chance that the
>decision makers would be more apt to hand them out.

	Again, the obvious counterexample is the gag rule.  Whenever
you propose a program, you should always imagine that the worst
political opponents to its spirit will be in charge of administering
it.  Because someday they may be.  What sort of executive order do you
think the Bush administration would give to the agency in charge of
approving or denying abortion requests?

> If anything, I would just like to get another party involved in the
>decision that don't have the emotion attached to the choice.

	But to put that another way, that's someone who can affect the
decision without having a stake in it.  I'm not sure I'd want that for
even relatively trivial decisions.

>I do feel that since there is no absolute way of knowing what is
>right or wrong (just look at the difference of opinions on this issue
>and none of them can be called wrong since each person believes that)

	I'm not sure that's a fair statement.  People held strong
beliefs whether Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin were good or bad, but I
don't think that there's no absolute way of knowing which is right.
The fact that there were many impassioned defenders of slavery doesn't
make slavery less an evil.

	But you are right in that _I_ don't claim to know that
absolute good.  There are many good, honest, reasonable people who
believe that a fertilized egg is a human being.  There are good,
honest, reasonable people who believe a fetus is not a human being
four hours before delivery.  Personally, I think that electrical
activity in the brain is probably a good guideline, but I certainly
can't hold this standard up as absolute Truth.

>but that the choice could be better if there is more people,
>especially educated in the areas of psychology, were involved in the
>decision making process.

	Don't know about that.  Knowing psychology in its current,
primitive state doesn't translate to knowing what's best for
particular human beings who didn't ask for the psycholgist's help.
And one wise opinion is worth a million foolish ones-- though I'd
still let the million fools decide their _own_ fates if they chose to
disbelieve the wise person; who says _I_ can judge wisdom?  To the
extent that I might wager a million people's fates on it?  When I buy
a car, would I be better off if an expert who had fifty car buyers
weighing on his time could veto my purchase decision?  He may know
more, but I _care_ more.  How much more so in matters of life and
death?  I've had twelve years of public education, six years (so
far) of higher education-- but am I better qualified to tell a
sixteen year old girl what to do when she's pregnant on the basis
of a case file and a few hours worth of interviews?  Would I
really be qualified if I knew clinical psychology?

Michael
-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Never let your sense of morality prevent
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 you from doing what's right!"
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 --Mayor Salvor Hardin of Terminus
mss2@usite-next.uchicago.edu     Isaac Asimov, _Foundation_