From: shagan@gandalf.rutgers.edu (Susan Hagan)
Newsgroups: alt.abortion.inequity
Subject: Re: About those UnBornThi
Date: 24 Jul 92 18:52:05 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

stevens@eatdust (John Stevens) writes:

>In article <Jul.21.12.09.01.1992.9014@gandalf.rutgers.edu> shagan@gandalf.rutgers.edu (Susan Hagan) writes:
>>stevens@eatdust (John Stevens) writes:
>>
>>>In article <Jul.17.11.45.51.1992.25073@gandalf.rutgers.edu> shagan@gandalf.rutgers.edu (Susan Hagan) writes:
>>>>stevens@eatdust (John Stevens) writes:
>>>>
>>>>>In article <Jul.13.13.45.36.1992.15647@gandalf.rutgers.edu> shagan@gandalf.rutgers.edu (Susan Hagan) writes:
>>>>>>stevens@eatdust (John Stevens) writes:
>>>>>>>In article <Jul.10.14.41.22.1992.12484@gandalf.rutgers.edu> shagan@gandalf.rutgers.edu (Susan Hagan) writes:
>>>>

>>A consent to sex implies a consent to accept responsiblity for whatever may 
>>result.  This is true.  However accepting responsiblity for a pregnancy 
>>does not necessarily mean carrying it.  It can also mean terminating it.

>Agreed.  But this is not the issue.  The issue is equal rights.

Exuse me, but when we began, this was part of your arguement.  Your made a 
big stink about the notion that consenting to sex was consenting to get
pregnant, and consenting to get pregnant was an implied promise to carry
the pregnancy to term.

If you are going to change your mind and agree with me, great.  But don't
pretend that you agreed with me all along.

>Yes, but if your are the sole responsible person (as you have so often
>stated) and therefore should be the only person who has any rights to

I didn't say I was the sole responsible person.  I said I was the primary
responsible person.  Big difference.

>your body and *YOUR* fetus, it doesn't matter whether I agree to support
>you and your baby or not.  I should have no responsibility for the
>products of your body at all.  If I *DO* have responsibility, don't you
>consider it to be unfair to give me no rights (no say) in the matter?

In light of what I just said, we can consider this point moot.

>I have warned you that this is a very dangerous precedent to set, as
>it would set the equal rights movment back at least a decade.  You

I don't see that. If we apply the rule that your body is under your
jurisdiction and my body is under my jurisdiction, then I don't see
where we have a problem.  In the case of a pregnancy, two people share
an interest in what occurs in one body, but I think that the owner of that
particular body should have primary rights and responsibilities and the
other person should have secondary rights and responsiblities.

Tell me how this idea could be carried over into any other situation.

>responded by stating that this is the only ABSOLUTE difference.  Ignoring
>for the moment that it does not require an absolute difference to pass
>a law that gives more rights to one or the other sex, we still have to

The government cannot pass a law governing what goes on in a man's uterus, 
because HE DOESN'T HAVE ONE! You are trying to find the male equivalent
and there is none.  The testicles are equivalent to the ovaries, the
penis is equivalent to the vagina, but there is no equivalent for the
uterus.  None.

>address the other side of the story.  In other words, if the absolute
>difference is that women bear children, then the absolute difference
>for men is that they father them.  If bearing the child gives you
>rights that men should not have, then fathering a child should give
>the father rights that the woman does not have.

Yes.  You can decide whose children you want to father.  But to bring the
plant analogy back.  If you leave *our* plant, in my house because you
*can not* keep it at your house, do I have to care for it?  No.  If you
tell me to destroy it, do I have to?  No.  I would give it to you rather than 
destroy it myself, but since you can't have it, and I don't want it, what 
choice do I have?

>All along, I've said that less rights, should mean less responsibility.
>More rights should mean more responsibility.

Fine.

>You seem to be saying that the man should have NO rights, but should still
>bear responsibility.  This is unfair.

No, he does have rights, but those rights are limited by physical capacities.

>>>No financial burden.  But it does place other burdens on me.
>>
>>But we can only accurately measure, prove, and defend financial burdens, not
>>emotional one.

>Wrong.  In a court of law, emotional damage is OFTEN the basis for a
>monetary award.

Not wrong.  I said that cannot be *accurately measured, proven, and defended*.
In court, emotional damage is estimated and financial compensation is
estimated arbitrarily.

>>>Nope.  Makes it possible to get his sperm back.
>>
>>How?  Can he separate it from the ovum at that point?

>Yes.

>>You are ridiculous.

>You have no answer, so you have a knee jerk attack reaction.

Tell me how the man can separate the his sperm from the ovum and take it
back, while leaving the ovum in tact. 

The mere thought of such a procedure strikes me as a ridiculous waste of
time.  

You don't understand me, so you assume I have no answer.

>Not ridiculous at all.  An abortion does not make it like you never got
>pregnant, it TERMINATES a pregnancy.  Aborting would not make it like the
>sperm and the egg never got together, but it would give the same end
>result as if the father had had his sperm returned.  After all, you wouldn't
>be pregnant without that sperm.

But thats not what we're talking about.  You said you wanted your sperm 
back.  I fully understand that a sperm and ovum, once joined, cannot be
separated.  

A man, just like a woman, has to accept the fact that having sex means, that
he can't have his sperm back.  He engages in the act with the knowledge that
that will be the end result, pregnancy or not.  He is not consenting to be
a father, but he is consenting to secondary responsiblity for whatever occurs
as a result of that union.  Just like the woman is consenting to primary
responsiblity.

>Therefore, according to your own reasoning, the father should be able to
>require you NOT to use his sperm to get pregnant.  This would mean requiring
>the mother to have an abortion, as it is the only way, with current
>technology, for this to be done.

Nope.  See, as soon as you try to require someone to do something with
their body, you step over the line. Don't try to tell me that anything
involving this follows my reasoning because it doesn't.  

This arguement follows your, tit for tat, reasoning.

>You are the one being ridiculous.  By your own arguments, it follows that
>it is only fair to allow the father to decide that he did not want his
>sperm to be used to make a baby.  After all, if the woman should have

By my reasoning, this situation is not fair.  I'm not going to try to
make it fair by violating basic human rights. When you deposit your
property in a place in which you do not have jurisdiction, then your
rights are limited, including your right to say what is done with that 
property.

>the right to make abortion a unilateral decision because it is her
>body the fetus is growing in, shouldn't it be the father's right to
>require that his sperm be used ONLY for the purposes that he agrees to
>allow it to be used for?

No. See above.

>Or is the right to decide what to do with your body only a right that
>women have?

Again, see above.

>Of course.  We have agreed on some things all along.  What I cannot seem
>to communicate to you is that pregnancy is a different condition from all
>others.

I understand that perfectly, but not in the same way that you do.

>Pregnancy is, by it's very nature, the sharing of a woman's body by both

Yes, when the woman consents to remain pregnant, a situation which she has
every right to refuse, even if she made herself to that situation in
the first place.

>the mother and father, to grow a baby.  Your body is the one that shelters
>and sustains the baby, but you would not even be pregnant without the
>father.  That baby is not solely owned by either party, it is an
>ireversible joining of sperm and egg.

Again, I agree.  If I choose to remain pregnant, then I am sharing
my body with the unborn child and its father.  Its my house, and I'm
letting the child stay there.  However, just because the child is half
its fathers, doesn't mean that the father gets to make any rules in my
house that I disagree with.  It is ultimately my house.

>The end outcome can be avoided by abortion.  And because the abortion
>affects something that is the combination of both parents, it seems only
>fair that the decision to abort should be made by both parents.

Ideally, the it should be an amicable, and mutual decision.  However,
ultimately, the woman has the final say.

>What to do if there is a disagreement is the issue.  You claim that the
>mother should have the right to terminate her pregnancy unilaterally
>at any time.  But what you seem to just blithely ignore is the fact that
>the woman is NOT the only interested or involved party.  There is at
>least one, and possibly two other people who have and interest in the
>abortion, the father of the baby, and the baby.  In other words, the
>interests of all three parties are iretrievably intertwined, and it is
>an unfair to simply ignore the rights and interests of ANY of the parties
>involved.

I never said that the woman should ignore the best interests of the other
two parties. If she wants to put the wished of the father first, that is
her choice, and its a very nice thing to do, but it is her choice.  I will
never agree that woman should be forced to sustain or terminate a pregnancy
against her wishes.

>I have attempted to give a LIST of possible solutions that allow the
>rights and responsibilities of at least the mother and the father to
>be represented equally from the standpoint of law, if not biology.

Because your list of possible solutions involves forcing the woman to
either gestate or terminate, and I will never agree that that is right.

>You have consistently made statements about a woman's rights, without
>acknowledging that the interests of the other parties involved should
>give them rights as well.  This seems to be because you don't believe
>that they should have any rights.

Because I believe that a person's right to decide for oneselve how 
to use one's body is sacred and should not be compromised.  

>If you are getting tired of this debate, it may be because you are repeating
>yourself.  

That is exactly why I am getting tired of it, and I am repeating myself because
you have shown me know reason to change what I think.  

>Try addressing the issues from the standpoint of creating a set
>of laws that are just and fair.

You mean, try agreeing with you?  Try pretending things are equal when they
aren't.  Sorry, I don't think that will work.  This is as fair as I can be
given the circumstances.  When men are capable of gestating fetuses, then
we can try this again.

See, you are saying that a man should be compensated for not being born
with a uterus.  This compensation is the power to force a woman to allow
him to use hers.  This would make everything equal.  Men don't have uteruses,
so women have to share.

I think this is no less than punishing a woman for having a uterus.  She's
the one with the extra body part so, she looses part of her personal freedom.

Did you ever read a book called "The Hand Maid's Tale"?  It is also a film.
It takes place after a nuclear war of somekind (I think).  Anyway, the result
is that about 90% of the women are sterile, so those who are not are rounded
up and forced to bear children for the society.  They are revered and enslaved 
at the same time, but they have no personal freedom.  Since they are the only 
ones who can bear children, the legal system forces them to do that.

In a very small way, this is how I view your proposals.

>So far, when your reasoning is applied to both men and women, you complain
>that the resulting scenario is unfair.  It would seem that you are advocating
>different standards of justice and fairness for women and men.

I am.  Equal rights means that if *everything* else is equal, a person's
gender should make no difference in a situation.  For example, if two
people apply for a job in a warehouse, and the job requires that person 
be able to lift 100 pound boxes all day long, whoever fills the requirement
gets the job, regardless if they are male or female.  It doesn't mean that the company has to change the requirements of the job to make it more likely that 
a woman will qualify for it.

Thats the problem!  We also have a different view of what equal rights is
all about!  Oh boy!


-- 
Susan R. Hagan (shagan@gandalf.rutgers.edu) 
Publications Coordinator - User Services
Rutgers University Computing Services
Newsgroups: alt.abortion.inequity,talk.abortion