From: rroy@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Raja R Roy)
Subject: Re: Arrogant Indians and Susan Forgach
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 12:25:36 GMT



In article <92250.091118RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> <RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> writes:
>
>         However, the business about abortion  has bothered me a lot.   How
>    can people with souls be so STRONGLY pro-choice?  I can understand that
>    abortion might sometime be the lesser  of two evils.  But a `right  to
>    choose' seems to imply that we need not even consider the other evil.

       How did you come to this conclusion ? It is evident that you don't
 know the people who believe in souls. Your opinion is based on educated
 people, whom you have met, and they don't bother about souls anymore.
       Go to any Indian village and ask a villager this question. The 
 answer will  be this : They ( childs ) are god's gift. How can we stop
 them from coming. That is why they don't believe in contraceptives,
 because they can have a kid only when god wishes and grants a soul for
 his gift. That is why they have kids at the rate of one every year. If
 it were not so, how can we have the problem of population explosion.
 Only ray of hope out of this quagmire is education.
  The educated indians are strongly prochoice because they know that 
  being so is the road to prosperity. 

  I am very strongly pro-choice and proud of it. I really don't under-
 stand how can people in America, who arrogantly claim themselves as 
 world's most advanced peolple, be so backward in their views. It is 
 plain simple that this country is being run by church as long as 
 republicans are in power, going back to dark ages.
 Who is going to think about the mother who does not want this kid ?
 What about her future ? Can we sacrifice the future of the mother 
  for someone whose life itself is debated ?


>         Moreover,  abortion  is  now  legal  also  in India, and routinely
>    advertised on Indian trains.  It seems  to me that every time that  the
>    West has  a moral  disease, then  they call  it progress,  and Indians,
>    anxious to `enter the 20th century' are only too happy to catch it.
>
>         This is why  the postings of  Susan Forgach have  been an enormous
>    comfort to me.  Her position is more strict than mine, but only because
>    she is ALWAYS willing to put morality before pragmatism.
>
>         Pro-choicers might  not be  aware that  they, while  attacking the
>    fundamentalists, are RELYING on  the Old Testament.  In  Hindu-Buddhist
>    theology, all life is sacred (Krishna says explicitly that animals have
>    souls, and Buddha's record is well known) and so the argument, that the
>    foetus is not  a person and  so we can  treat it with  contempt, has no
>    standing at all.  An acceptance of this seems to be in the offing  with
>    respect for whales - so why not include unborn pre-humans?

         If you know this much then you should also know that how a foetus
 gets a soul according to Hindu philosophy. I will suggest that you 
 read " yogavashishtha ". A soul gets a choice depending upon its past
 actions to choose a lifestyle, and hence parents , which will be suitable
 for it, one in which it can achieve its goals and pay for its past deeds.
 Now if a souls goes in a foetus, which will later be aborted, it damn 
 well knew it and went there to repay for its sins. So even in the 
 framework of Hindu philosophy, your argument holds no water.
       Krishna himself was responsible for Mahabharat war, which cost many
 million lives. It is obvious that you do not understand his philosophy.

 raja


>
>         Man (or woman)  is not the  measure of all  things.  If we  want a
>    decent soceity to live in, we could start by acting decently  ouselves.
>    the recent decision by the Connecticut  high court that it is OK  for a
>    woman to take  cocaine an hour  before delivery -  severely harming the
>    `non-person', is just bonkers.  This is what happens when all decisions
>    are made on legalistic grounds.
>
>         Rohit Parikh
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian