From: kevin@rotag.mi.org (Kevin Darcy)
Subject: Re: Darcy and the Twelve Specious Arguments.
Organization: Who, me???
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1992 22:59:35 GMT

In article <34636@rnd.GBA.NYU.EDU> smezias@rnd.GBA.NYU.EDU (Stephen J. Mezias) writes:
>In article <1992Dec25.033234.4258@rotag.mi.org> kevin@rotag.mi.org
>(Kevin Darcy) writes supposedly `specious' pro-choice arguments:
>
>>	o  "abortion can be handled as strictly a medical issue"
>
>With respect to government policy, I believe all policy questions that
>have broad implications for public health, e.g. abortion, alcoholism,
>drug abuse, etc., should be handled first and foremeost as a medical
>issue.  

Your definition of "broad implications for public health" are arbitrary,
however. Is murder to be considered primarily a health matter? You can't
get much more unhealthy than DEAD, after all. Is rape to be considered
primarily a health matter? Sure, if you arbitrarily pick a range of issues
and say "THESE are health issues", then a nice neat distinction between
so-called "medical issues" and legislative issues can be made. But who makes
that selection in the first place? LEGISLATORS! They are the ones who pass
on whether the issue is "unimportant" enough to be left primarily in the 
hands of medical professionals or not. So, what the specious argument
really boils down to is:

	"abortion can be handled as strictly a medical issue, as long as
	the legislators believe it can be handled that way"

which is a true, but useless assertion.

>>	o  "legislation is distinguishable from morality" / "morality 
>>	   should not be legislated"
>
>The correct statement is that legislation is distinguishable from
>absolute morality if such a thing exists.  

Thanks for rewriting the argument to suit your purposes. Now, please define
"absolute morality".

>
>>	o  "the collective has no (moral(?)) right to abrogate the legal 
>>	   rights of an individual"
>
>This is specious as a general statement.  

Thank you.

>>	o  "a fetus has no value whatsoever"
>
>An overstatement and specious.

Yup.

>>	o  "a fetus is just a parasite"
>
>From the point-of-view of the person who does not want the /z/e/f/ in
>her body I do not think a characterization of it as an unwanted
>parasite is specious.  

Well, sometimes in the dark of night, when I'm half-asleep, half-awake, my 
nightstand looks kind of like a gnarled tree trunk. Subjective appearances
are all very fine and good, Stephen, but equating subjective appearances with
objective realities is often false. My nightstand is not a gnarled tree trunk,
neither is a fetus (unwanted or not) a "parasite". It displays some parasitic
behavior, true, but its species is _homo sapiens_, and that species is NOT
classified as a "parasite".

>>	o  "a fetus is just a part of the woman's body"
>
>I understand that a /z/e/f/ has a potential eventually for life apart
>from the mother that no other part of a woman's body has.  

Weren't you just asking me, in another article, why viability was important?
You seem to be answering your own question here.

>However, at
>a very general level of abstraction, I believe that since the /z/e/f/
>is contained wholly within the mother it qualifies as part of the
>mother.  The metaphor is not specious.

It's specious when, as with the subjective impression of "parasite", the
metaphor is elevated to the level of an objective fact.

>>	o  "a fetus is no different than a cancer"
>
>See discussion of parasite.

See discussion of parasite.

>>	o  "pro-life is inherently a religious view"
>
>The correct statement: Pro-life is frequently associated with
>fundamentalist religious views, Roman Catholic and other.

"Frequently associated with" != "inherently"

>>	o  "pro-life is inherently misogynistic"
>
>If one accepts the disparate impact of the legislative agenda of the
>fetus fanatics as sufficient evidence of misogyny, then this is not at
>all specious.

To judge intent solely by effect IS specious. A meteorite that falls and
injures two women and only one man is NOT necessarily "misogynistic". 

>>	o  "restrictive abortion laws violate Equal Protection"
>
>Do you think they enhance equal protection?  

No, but neither, as far as I know, does the depletion of the ozone layer.

"Lack of enhancement" != "violation"

>>	o  "deadly self-defense is generally permissible against rape"
>
>I can't say I know much about this issue.  Are you saying that a woman
>who is being raped cannot use deadly force to stop the attack?

I'm saying it has not been demonstrated that this is generally permissible
under the laws of the various states, so the generalization should not be
made. There are also lots of other problems with the analogy. There is the
matter of IMMEDIACY, for instance, where the woman being attacked by a 
rapist may reasonably believe that her life is in danger, and even if it
ISN'T, she is given latitude in her defensive actions. Since the risks 
involved with pregnancy are much better known and controllable, the same
latitude cannot necessarily be given. Also, there is the possibility that 
the manslaughter exceptions for deadly-self-defense-against-rape were 
motivated at least in part by a need to DETER rape. This too, does not 
survive from the analogy to the abortion issue, because there is no
practical way to "deter" a fetus out of the womb.

>>	o  "abortion is not 'murder' in any sense, because it's currently 
>>	   legal"
>
>If murder is a legal term, which it is, then this is factually correct
>with respect to that definition.  

It's also traditionally been a moral term, therefore the blanket "in any 
sense" makes it a specious argument.

								- Kevin
Xref: sparky talk.abortion:53632 talk.politics.misc:65782 alt.fan.rush-limbaugh:10963