From: sunder@altair.crhc.uiuc.edu (Srinivas Sunder)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian,talk.abortion
Subject: Re: Arrogant Indians and Susan Forgach
Date: 6 Sep 1992 19:57:30 GMT
Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: altair.crhc.uiuc.edu

In article <1992Sep6.174454.14354@news.columbia.edu>, rgm4@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Raghuram G Murtugudde) writes:
|> 
|>  Hi Rohit,
|> 
|>  it is obvious that you are pro-life. Now, do you support CAPITAL 
|>  PUNISHMENT? Do you know how many of these people with souls support
|>  capital punishment ? Do you know any of these pro-lifers who actually
|>  adopt these unwanted babies brought into this world ?  The so called

The apparent conflict between pro-life conservatives' support for capital 
punishment and their opposition to abortions is really the dumbest argument 
I have heard from pro-choice liberals aiming to prove the hollowness of the pro-life
community's arguments. A simple reply to your argument is this: If you charge
a fetus with a capital crime, give it a fair trial with due process as well as
a criminal defense attorney and a jury, sentence it to death, allow it to file
innumerable habeas corpus petitions with state and federal courts (as is the
current practice for capital punishments), stretching out the process for over
10-15 years, and THEN cause it to be killed, I am sure that you will find very
few proponents of the death penalty opposed to the "abortion." The basis
of the death-penalty is that an appropriate response to a crime that results
in society being horrified by it is to put the perpetrator to death. The
basis of the pro-lifers' opposition to abortion, on the other hand, is that it 
results in the loss of INNOCENT lives. That is of course, only if you accept the 
premise that a fetus at any and all stages of development is a life, on par with 
human life.


|>  people with souls are typically conservatives who oppose most social
|>  programs to assimilate the poor into the rest of the society. How
|>  do you reconcile this two-faced approach to life ? Abortion is

Listen closely: Conservatives and libertarians oppose GOVERNMENT-sponsored 
social programs, not ALL social programs for the simple reason that they
believe the Government to be a bad allocator and spender of the taxpayers'
money, and that the private sector + charitable organizations are better at 
doing these things. A clear example is the incredibly slow and inneficient 
response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to Hurricane Andrew. 
Charitable and private organizations were doing a darned better job of cleaning 
up the place than was FEMA.

Which is not to say that there is no role for Govt. at all in social reform,
education, etc. The idea is to reduce it to a bare minimum, and allow more
efficient and less bureaucratic methods of achieving the same goals. Examples
being enterprise zones, school choice-vouchers, home-ownership schemes, small
business loans etc.


|>  not a black and white issue and you can not claim moral high-ground
|>  based on your pro-life stand. If you insists on bringing the child into

The argument is fundamentally one of liberty vs life. No one can argue for
absolute protection for either because both are valued highly by the public
and the Constitution. The solution is to allow public debate to find a consensus
and frame laws appropriately, not tilted to one extreme or the other.

|>  this world then you must stand by and bear the responsibility for the
|>  real life of this child after it is born. If it starves or goes into
|>  a an orbit of drugs/crime/jail because the society couldn't provide
|>  the child subsequent care, then you pro-lifers are responsible. If your

Nope. Individuals are primarily responsible for their actions, whether those
actions involve getting pregnant or getting hooked on drugs or getting AIDS as
a result of irresponsible behaviour. I do wish though, that a lot more of the
pro-lifers would put their money where their mouths are and contribute heavily
to adoption agencies and organizations that provide post-natal care. At the
same time, pro-choicers who argue that fathers have no say in the decision of
whether or not a fetus should be aborted should not yell from the rooftops to
crack down on deadbeat dads who don't pay their child-support.
 

|>  Raghu
|> 
|>  

-- 
Srinivas Sunder                                         sunder@crhc.uiuc.edu

If my employer shares these views, I'd be most surprised.
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian