From: rainbow@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Jennifer Lynn Hammond)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.rush-limbaugh,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.elections,talk.abortion,alt.sex
Subject: Re: rights and responsibilities
Date: 12 Oct 1992 19:11:21 GMT
Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: ucscb.ucsc.edu


In article <1992Oct2.113139.24273@sniap.mchp.sni.de> Frank.ODwyer@ap.mchp.sni.de (Frank O'Dwyer) writes:
>In article <lc3rr8INN66a@spim.mti.sgi.com> mpolen@suntory.mti.sgi.com (Michael Polen) writes:
>>Jennifer Brindle) writes:
>>Let me try another example.  Someone sneaks into Frank O's bedreoom
>>and implants a 2 month old fetus into his wife's womb.  Would removal of
>>that fetus be an immoral killing of a person?
>>
>
>What you are actually describing, michael, is my wife being raped.  Thank you
>Did my wife consent to this?
>No?
>Then her right to bodily autonomy should obtain.
>She may keep it if she cares to, not if she doesn't.
>In short, if she didn't have a hand in putting it there, then she is not
>responsible for its care and feeding, either.
>
>Does the fact that they did not MEAN to do it count for very much?  I crashed
>my car into another a couple of years ago, despite my best efforts to avoid
>it.   I even had a good excuse for doing it (I was rushing to visit my child
>in hospital), and I didn't MEAN to do it, but I still had to buy the guy a
>new door for his car.
>Frank.ODwyer@ap.mchp.sni.de 
--------------------
I note that the guy did not have to spring for a new door himself
nor did he have to go through the life of the car with a smashed
door. In otherwords, it was an accident, but you still had to
correct it. Having one's birth control fail is simply, an
accident, but we do not make people just go on with a bashed
life for the rest of their lifetime. We do something about it. We
have abortions.

Note that this is strongly similar to a man who must sleep in a
room that is unbearably hot to sleep in unless the window is
open. Liken this to the human sexual drive. He has installed bars
over the window and bought a gun to protect himself so he can
feel somewhat safe opening the window. Liken this to
contraception. The risk versus benefit of this is acceptable but
not perfect. In the middle of the night a medical crew
anaethetize our sleeping hero and when he awakes he finds that he
has been connected vein and artery to another man in an adjacent
bed which was brought in while he was out, and that the medical
crowd and people from the government are telling him he must
sustain this other comatose and nearly unresponsive man for nine
months until his condition corrects itself. Liken this to
unwanted pregnancy. Now quickly flash upon all the people who can
be in the bed, robbing him of his freedom and pursuit of
happiness: Einstein, Mother Teresa, a child, his father, his
mother, etc. I don't care who he sees there or who they tell him
that might be, if I were him I would exercise my right to live
without being used as an organ bank or surrogate cardio-vascular
system for whomever it was and I would take the gun which I still
have, if I were that man, and I would emmpty the full clip into
that person and into any government or medical "officials" who
managed to remain in the room before my sights were trained upon
them. I would not be chattel to anyone.

You don't have the right to make me give you blood, even if you
will otherwise die. And you don't have the right to make me loan
you my organs while I'm using them, for dialysis or any other
usage, without my express permission, even if someone else no
matter how innocent will die. And you don't have the right to
hijack a woman's organs to do logically the same thing with them
without her express permission, and if she finds that someone,
fetus or fully formed Saint, has done this to her, she has the
right to kill them with all due haste if she wills. In the case
of a fetus which has not existed as a human before, she has the
right to decide whether that being can even be considered a human
being, because it carries her DNA, for which only she has a say
in its use. And only if she says it is a baby or shall be can it
then be considered such. No potential father has a claim that
excedes hers, since she imperils her body to cause it to be born,
if that is her decision. If you don't think there is a risk to
life and health, consult this groups FAQ file. If you don't know
that early and even midterm abortion is less dangerous, then read
the FAQ file. Early abortion is some thousand times safer than a
full term pregnancy.

And if you think that somehow a fetus is a human, anyway, after
showing you how even a human doesn't deserve what you would
demand of a pregnant woman who is not so by choice, then recall
that neither you nor anyone recalls being a fetus, even under
hypnosis, and that most aborted fetuses have the brain capacity
of a rodent and less brain activity. It is only the coincidence
that they look a little like us that even inspires this argument,
since many species have a larval form which would be much harder
to get people to identify with, even if it is shown on TV cut up
on a medical tray. The hallmark of human existence is awareness
and a continuity of memory that gives us a sense of being. A
fetus doesn't have that. Also recall that some plants have 23
pairs of chromosomes, so don't try to turn DNA into some kind of
mysticism.
- Steve W.