From: chaneysa@nextnet.csus.edu (Stephen A Chaney)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: Compassion (was: Re: I Tend To Be Pro-Choice Because: )
Date: 15 Aug 92 20:22:25 GMT
Organization: California State University: Sacramento

In article <1992Aug12.175404.2108@brandonu.ca> mcbeanb@brandonu.ca writes:
>In article <tgreen.713578667@pv1788.vincent.iastate.edu>, tgreen@iastate.edu (Todd Greenfield) writes:
>> In <oeqd9g0@fido.asd.sgi.com> cj@eno.wpd.sgi.com (C J Silverio) writes:

[ deletia ]

>>>Unwanted pregnancies are going to happen, whether abortion is
>>>legal or not.  Women are sometimes going to be desperate,
>>>whether abortion is legal or not.  Women are sometimes going to
>>>terminate unwanted pregnancies, whether abortion is safe & legal
>>>or not.  Do these women deserve injury & death?
>> 
>> No, they don't.  But would a back-alley abortion be a smart
>> thing for them to do?  No.  Do they know that they could
>> die or be injured?  I don't know, but they probably should.  
>
>My my, that sounds very compassionate.  So, do you or do you not hate
>women?  One or the other.  Should women desperate enough to seek
>a back-alley abortion be killed or not, in your opimion?  

1) Unwanted pregnancies are going to happen, whether abortion is legal
or not. 
	Well, unwanted hunger is going to happen, whether theft is
	legal or not.
2) Women are sometimes going to be desperate, whether abortion is
legal or not. 
	Well, hungry folks are sometimes going to be desperate,
	whether theft is legal or not. 
3) Women are sometimes going to terminate unwanted pregnancies,
whether abortion is safe & legal or not. 
	Hungry people are sometimes going to terminate hunger, which
	is deadlier than pregnancy, whether their methods of doing it
	are safe & legal or not. 
4) Do these women deserve injury & death?
	Do these hungry people deserve injury & death? 


Your reasoning is highly flawed here. For the same reason theft is
illegal because it victimizes someone innocent, abortion should be
illegal because it victimizes someone innocent. 

The issue of hunger & theft is a lot larger than pregnancy & abortion.
Hungry folks are dying of hunger or dying in attempts to steal food,
which is, to them, their only way out. It isn't their only way out,
anymore than abortion is the only way out for pregnant women. 

Your assertion reads, "Because someone does something illegally, and
they can be injured or killed, compassion says it ought to be legal."
When compared to another issue, even bigger and in more need of this
"compassion" than abortion, it fails by induction. 

It follows that your assertion has no logical ground.  

>> abortion has nothing to do with compassion.  If you were truly
>> compassionate, you would feel compassion for the baby (fetus) that is
>> killed.  

It has a lot to do with compassion in _some_ minds, morally. But while 
we must recognize the strong basis that gives many people justification 
to feel it is compassionate to legalize abortion, we must also compare
it to the light of well-reasoned, logical analysis. 

And that's where the "compassion" approach used by pro-aborts, is
false.

>But none for the woman, who may be good as dead with a kid anyway.  So
>is this an answer to my question?

So since robbery is illegal, we have no compassion for hungry people?
More people are going to be good as dead or dead absolutely, when
there's no food or money to buy any, around them. They're more assured
death than a woman whose social life may be ruined by a pregnancy (or
ruined by people who have narrow minds about motherhood), yet we draw
the limit on their right to relief, and the limit is where it will end
up in someone else's harm or detriment. 

If we were to treat things consistently, we'd never even bring up the
word compassion in abortion WRT legal issues. However, as Todd
Greenfield suggested, compassion would be addressable in issues of
_preventing_ unwanted pregnancies, or making society more open-minded
and accomodating to pregnancy and motherhood.  

Translation: how do you explain it that if Todd or I were running a
business, no woman would ever lack for childcare or parental leave w/
a guaranteed job to come back to?  

>> Compassion doesn't mean to let everyone take the easy way
>> out of difficult or desperate situations.  Compassion would be to
>> help them (not just the mother, also the baby) through it. 
>> 
>> There is never no other choice but to get an abortion.
>
>Of course not, but maybe abortion is the best choice in some situations.  

But maybe, when there is no other option, theft is the best choice for
one to save their own life. 

Will you feel for them when they're being put in the morgue, tagged,
"died by bullet wound in gunfight?" 

Obviously, where harming someone else is concerned, "best choice" or
"choice" in general, is irrelevant, legally. Such choices do not exist
unless you attempt them unsafely & illegally.  


The only way for your posted assertion in this article, could hold, is
if we applied this principle to hunger as well. 
And we wouldn't exactly mean a court decision that would force cops to
stand by as people loot the store. NO. The way we would do a Roe v
Wade to our theft laws, would be to do it the way they do it in an
abortion clinic: 
1) We get a request from someone who's hungry. 
2) We go to the store. 
3) We categorically remove the food they want. 
4) The owner's wishes are irrelevant. 

What would it be called? Legalized theft? Anarchy? 
NAW! If I read my politics right, that'd be called the first step
towards _SOCIALISM_. 

>Brian McBean  -  McBeanB@BrandonU.Ca
See you soon, comrade.

===============================================================================
		  Pro-Choice means pro-adult/child sex! 
	        With the little girl's consent, of course. 
		 Don't you pro-choicers just _hate_ this? 
===============================================================================
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