From: rivk@quads.uchicago.edu (nora gayle rivkis)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: What the pro-lifers do not tell you
Date: 12 Apr 92 04:28:42 GMT
Reply-To: rivk@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <1992Apr11.002631.4790@cco.caltech.edu> anne@cco.caltech.edu (Anneliese Lilje) writes:
>In article <1992Apr10.225631.24842@midway.uchicago.edu> rivk@midway.uchicago.edu writes:

>Yes. NOW I see this. But I don't think that pro-choice people take
>abortion "lightly". I would say that they see the worth of the woman
>as being of importance. Especially in the light of being able to make her
>own choices.

Right; sorry, missed my semantic fine points again. I meant "lightly by
comparison to mass murder." There are a few pro-choice people I have met
who don't see it as less destructive than mass murder and simply think
that freedom is more important, but not a whole lot. Mostly, they seem
to think of it as a freedom issue on which murder has nothing to do with
it (in which I tend to agree).

>>there's plenty of evidence for the "crying-wolf" effect -- scream "Nazi"
>>or scream anything else about too many different things, and can you
>>blame someone for ignoring it?
>
>Well. Hmmm. Hmmmm. But is it a case of "crying wolf"? In the case of 
>Nazi Germany the events were REALLY happening whether one shunned it or
>not. In this case the ACTION is abortion. The NAZI is only a comparison..
>not a scream in a movie theatre of "FIRE".

That's probably true, but they can say the same thing about what we say,
when it comes up. It's unlikely to be anyone calling themselves the
American Nazi Party (which exists, of course, but which I don't think
can get its act together to do very much without help); instead it will
be people behaving as the Nazis did. And then we're going to have to say,
"Hey, everyone! This is getting to be as terrible as WWII Europe! Help!"
and they are likely to say, "Yeah, right; that's what they all say."

>>>DO you *really* believe that Jews are going to be thrown into a camp in
>>>Chicago some day soon? 
>>
>>Yes. Maybe not in the next few years -- though if certain people end
>>up in political office, probably -- but within my lifetime. Or in Minsk,
>
>Hmmm. You are allowed to have that opinion if you like. I can't say that
>I would agree with you. But then again perhpas you know something *I* don't?
>In L.A. harassment of Jews is pretty rare compared to say in New York
>(where I used to live). What is CHicago like so that they would harass
>Jews *so* much as to want to throw them into a downtown Chicago concentration
>camp. Seems like you gotta hate them before bothering to go to all this 
>effort. Never having been in Chicago I can't say. I would look for it in L.A.
>any time soon.

New York speaks for itself, I think -- I was there last summer, during
the worst pogrom in the western world of the last thirty years. In Chicago,
in the five years I've lived here, I've been physically assaulted twice 
and verbally abused a lot more times than that, for wearing a Star of David
on a chain around my neck; and synagogues are vandalized with swastikas on
a pretty regular basis. I also wasn't confining it to the United States.
In Russia, the organization to which President Yeltsin belongs coordinated
an assault on a mostly Jewish town a couple of years ago. In Lebanon, there
is an organization protected and aided by the state and by several states
around (Iran and Syria, mostly), that has declared that "the war is not
over until Israel is destroyed and the last Jew in the world has been
eliminated."

>>>I also take GREAT offense at your saying that Warsaw Ghetto broadcasts
>>>we're ignored by EVERYONE. THere is a GREAT difference between hearing
>>>broadcasts and being ABLE to do something and hearing them and NOT being
>>>able to do something. There we're people who believed these reports but
>>>were powerless to do anything. 
>>
>>"ignored" can mean "behaved as though it hadn't happened." Nobody did
>>anything about them, you're correct; and the ghetto was broadcasting
>>specific instructions on what *could* be done. They may simply have
>>not had the courage, but I somehow don't find that an excuse; the people
>>in the ghetto somehow managed to find the courage...
>
>Well. It's easy for us to sit here and say that...but considering the 
>climate at the time I can't blame decent people for being scared shitless
>for their own lives or the lives of their families. Many took the 
>policy of GET THE FUCK OUT. SOme could some couldn't. Fear is a tough
>emotion. To ignore.

True. And in some ways, it wwas easier for the people in the ghetto --
they were well aware by then of the plans to liquidate the entire ghetto;
they had nothing to lose. I'm not exactly blaming people whose nerve was
not up to heroic actions, and what they were being asked to do was on
that level; I'm just taking issue with the theory that there was nothing
they *could* have done. There was. It was very hard and very scary and
they chose not to do it. But that's different.

>anne

	-Nora
-- 
Oseh shalom b'imromav, hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu v'al kol yisrael.