From: johnt@meaddata.com (John Townsend)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: I became pro-life...and pro-choice...
Date: 5 Jan 1993 18:37:28 GMT
Organization: Mead Data Central, Dayton OH
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: skibum.meaddata.com

In article <1993Jan5.150542.15081@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, gjh@galen.med.Virginia.EDU (Galen J. Hekhuis) writes:
|> ...
|> You can be truly pro-life and oppose any attempt at bringing
|> legislation to bear in the case of abortion.  Respect for life
|> hardly implies or demands a particular legislative agenda.
|> Pro-life can mean many things.  Here it often means a 
|> legislative agenda and a desire to bring fear and punishment
|> to bear on abortion.  Pro-choice can mean many things too.
|> Here it often means opposition of any legislation which
|> would restrict abortion.
|> ...

Sorry for the brevity, and thanks for a very insightful post.  It was one of
the most reasonable pro-choice positions I've heard in a long time.  However,
I think that your premise, that legality has little or no bearing on individual
morality, is suspect, as evidenced by the large number of times that we have
seen it said in this forum that abortion is not murder because the law
currently says it isn't.  Murder, the unjust taking of a human life, is morally
wrong regardless of what the law says because of the degradation in the quality
of our society that it would naturally bring.  The law merely spells out
artificial consequences for murdering, in order to prevent the natural ones.
Abortion, among other things, reflects and contributes to the cheapening of
human life in society, the natural consequence of which is that individuals
become more likely to take or abuse the lives of others when others are in
conflict with the individual's other desires.  Please read the article by Bob
Greene that I have attached.  Although it has nothing to do with abortion, it
has a lot to say about what is happening to the value of life.

Otherwise, I agree.  I call myself anti-abortion because that is the best
one-word description of my views on the subject.  All I want to do is limit the
number of abortions to the lowest possible number, ideally zero, and I really
don't care whether it's done legally, socially, religiously, or however.  As a
rule, I adamantly favor less government over more government, and I would
vastly prefer any other solution, but the legalization of abortion has allowed
the number of abortions performed to grow every year since RvW.  I believe that
requiring the government and insurance to pay for abortions will likewise
increase the number of elective abortions performed.  Ultimately, I personally
think that the only way to reduce the number of abortions will be through a
combination of legal and cultural taboos against it, but I agree that the
cultural ones are the most important.

Bob Greene's article follows:

                    Copyright 1992 Chicago Tribune Company
                                Chicago Tribune

                   December 13, 1992, Sunday, FINAL EDITION

SECTION: TEMPO; Pg. 1; ZONE: C

HEADLINE: A stolen life, a dying soul

BYLINE: Bob Greene.

BODY:
   In San Jose, Calif., last month, burglars who intended to steal items from a
house found that a resident of the house was unexpectedly at home that day.

   Instead of fleeing from the house, or leaving the resident unharmed, the
burglars, according to police, beat the resident, hacked at him with a butcher
knife and a meat cleaver, marched him from room to room, stuffed a sock into his
mouth, wrapped tape around his face, and left him in the house to die slowly.

   The resident of the house did, indeed, die.

   It is hard to make a case that he presented much of a danger to the burglars.

   For the resident of the house was an 8-year-old boy, a 3rd grader who was
staying home from elementary school that day because he had a cold and a fever.

   And the killers, according to police, were neighbors, friends of the family.
The killers, according to police, were three teenagers who butchered Melvin
Ancheta, an 8-year-old who knew them and who let them into the house because he
trusted them. The items they stole while Melvin Ancheta lay dying had a market
value of less than $100.

   Our nation grows increasingly violent, and children are being killed in
heartbreaking numbers by teenagers who seem to have no concept of the value of
life. We can try to fix the economy, we can strive for a strong military, we can
endeavor to help people in need around the world. But if we cannot solve the
terrifying soullessness that we are seeing among murderous young criminals from
one coast to the other, nothing else will matter. We will be finished.

   What happened to Melvin Ancheta defies understanding. He had stayed home from
school that day to try to rest and recover from his cold. There was no one
with him because both of his parents worked.

   According to the San Jose police, the three neighborhood teenagers - one of
them was the best friend of Melvin's older brother - had decided to steal items
from the Ancheta house that day.

   "Our understanding is that they had made the decision that they would kill
whoever happened to be home," said Sgt. Dennis Luca. "They expected the mother
might be home, but she had left for work."

   When the teenagers - 18, 16 and 15 - knocked on the door, Melvin told them
they could not come in.

   "He was an 8-year-old boy who had been taught not to let anyone into the
house if his parents weren't home," Sgt. Luca said.

   But the teenagers returned. Through the door, they reportedly told Melvin
that one of his brothers had run away from home, and that they had been sent to
pick up some clothes to take to him. Because Melvin knew the teenagers,
apparently he decided he should let them in.

   Police say that the teenagers took Melvin upstairs to a bedroom and
apparently beat him, then stabbed him repeatedly with a butcher knife. He did
not die.

   "They walked him downstairs," Sgt. Luca said. "At some point they stuffed a
sock into his mouth and then wrapped tape around his head. They put him on a
couch while they looked for items. They turned on a television set to a cartoon
show."

   Then, according to the police, one of the teenagers took a meat cleaver and
hacked at Melvin's throat. They left the house with a hand-held video game and a
portable telephone.

   Melvin lay face down on the carpet all that day. There were slashes on his
neck and head, and his chest and back were covered with puncture wounds. His
right arm was twisted behind his back, his palm up. His brother Ryan, 14, came
home from school around 3:30 p.m., let himself into the house, and found Melvin.
According to police, Melvin's eyes were wide open, the brown plastic tape
wrapped over his mouth, a cord twisted around his neck.

   "The officers who made the arrests talked to all three of the teenagers who
are charged with doing this, and 'remorse' was not a word that came up," Sgt.
Luca said.

   Melvin's 3rd-grade classmates struggled to understand what had happened. They
knew he'd had a cold the day before. The San Jose Mercury News reported that
some of his schoolmates talked about the movie "Home Alone." That's what they
could relate it to. A friend of Melvin's, the newspaper reported, agonized that
perhaps he could have saved Melvin by trapping the intruders, like the boy in
the movie.

   "You grope for words to explain it," Sgt. Luca said. "But there's no
explaining." And meanwhile our society veers ever out of control. Balance the
budget, repair the highways, feed the hungry. But unless we can figure out a way
to cure the dying national soul, we might as well just turn out the lights and
say a prayer on our way out, because it's over.

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Melvin Ancheta thought he could trust his attackers.

-----------------------------------

Also, here is an ABC News transcript about the story, from November 24, 1992.
Note the statistics and the closing line:

PETER JENNINGS: From San Jose, California, tonight, one example of an alarming
rise in teenaged violence.  Consider this: nationwide, the number of juveniles
arrested for murder has nearly doubled in the past decade.  In San Jose, this
week, an 18 year old boy pleaded not guilty to charges that he and two
companions murdered an eight year old.  ABC's Tom Foreman is in San Jose.

TOM FOREMAN: {POLICE / PHOTO} Even police were shocked when they arrived at the
apartment where Melvin Ancheta had been left home alone with a cold.  The
eight year old boy was lying on the floor, his mouth taped shut.  He had been
stabbed, hacked with a meat cleaver and strangled to death.

SARGEANT DENNIS LUCA: They had a hard time killing him.  They thought they
killed him upstairs.  They brought him downstairs and they had to finish
killing him downstairs.

DENISE THORP / NEIGHBOR: Everybody's been crying.  It's just something you don't
expect to happen to an eight year old.

TOM FOREMAN: {Newspaper Articles} But the bigger shock was yet to come.  Police
charged three teenaged friends of the victim in the murder - a 15 year old, a 16
year old and an 18 year old.  {SUSPECT} Police say Melvin trusted them enough to
let them in the front door, then they stole 100 dollars worth of property and
killed him because he was a witness.  For San Jose, it is a horrifying example
of growing teenaged violence.

MARC BULLER / DEPUTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: We never used to call juveniles
sociopaths.  Now that word's coming up all the time.

TOM FOREMAN: {KIDS' BASKETBALL GAME} Melvin's murder was not an isolated
incident.  Violent crimes committed by teenagers increased 25 percent here in
the past year.  Many blame gangs.

TEENAGE BOY: I think it's getting worse every day because everyone wants to be
like someone that's bigger than them.  They want to be like those gangs.

TOM FOREMAN: {GIRL WITH MOM} But even nongang members, like the suspects in this
case, are being swept into the violence.  Now, Melvin's playmates dream of
killers outside their doors.

ROSA RAMIREZ / NINE YEARS OLD: Like, he's out there and we're going out to play
and he's right there at the door and he's just, like, trying to stab us with a
knife.

TOM FOREMAN: {FUNERAL} It will be a long time before this town comes to terms
with Melvin's murder.  Few here have any clue how to deal with the kind of teen
violence that killed him.  Tom Foreman, ABC News, San Jose.

---------------------------

Incidently, it was the 15 year old who actually killed Melvin.  Life is cheap
and getting cheaper.  How low will we go?

-- 
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