From: regard@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com (Adrienne Regard)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: Spoken Like a True ProLifer
Date: 8 Jan 1993 17:21:42 -0800
Organization: Hewlett Packard, San Diego Division
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: hpsdde.sdd.hp.com

In article <C0K8Mw.MBz@ra.nrl.navy.mil> lebow@psl.nrl.navy.mil writes:
>In article <1ifv15INNpco@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com> regard@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com (Adrienne
>Regard) writes:
>
>>Because, in this country, you get to use your own body as you see fit, 
>>based upon your own values. 
>
>I don't think this is true at all, Adrienne.  You can't used drugs, sell your
>body, gamble, drive against traffic, etc, etc.

Oh?  Really?  Well can you cite for us some laws that require you to do with
your body things that you object to doing with your body that are sensible
and just laws?

I mean, sure, we all know that some states would regulate behavior in bedrooms
between consenting adults, but most of us are sensible enough to recognise
that this regulation is both futile and undesireable.

You can't eat peanuts in church, either, according to some dumb law somewhere.

Now the POINT is, do you disagree that we have individual freedoms in this
country?         

Do you disagree that adult human beings have a right to privacy, grounded in
our constitution?    

Do you disagree that our constitution specifically limits the methods by which
privacy and individual freedoms can be curtailed or infringed?

Do you need a copy of the Bill of Rights?  We have one on line if you want
to check it before you answer. 

>> And that includes denying the use of that
>>body to someone else who really is, or merely claims to be, in dire need
>>of your body for their own purposes.
>
>Abandonment of a child is certainly a crime.  Witness the current couple who
>flew off for a week and left their kids home alone.

Abandonment of a child and giving up a child for adoption would seem to be
essentially the same things.  What makes one OK and the other not OK, and 
where do the similarities end?

You would agree, would you not that my statement above is perfectly true
in the context of bodily servitude, would you not?  That, even IF you have
a spare kidney, you are not compelled by any law of this land to give it up
to someone who is dying, or thinks they are dying?

You would agree, would you not, that my statement above is perfectly true
in the context of bodily servitude, in the case of someone who just needs a 
little of your physical effort (to pick their cotton, say) to keep them
alive?  

You would agree, would you not, that my statement above is perfectly true
in the context of bodily servitude in the case where you CAUSED an auto
accident, your 'victim' requires blood, and that there is no law in this
land that compels you to give yours (REGARDLESS of how advisable it may be
for you to do so)?

You would agree, would you not, that my statement above is perfectly true
in the context of a rape, would you not?

You would even, if you are being honest, agree that my statement above is
perfectly true with regard to one's own CHILDREN, once they have been 
surrendered to the state for adoption, wouldn't you?

Now, er, what were you saying?


>>The only way to get around this little standing rule is to 'deny the true
>>significance of the burdens placed upon the mother.'  Refusing her sovereignty
>>over her own body makes her less than any other citizen in this country.
>That she has the ability to nurture life makes her more than any other citizen
>in this country.  I think we come out even.

You know, I've got a womb.  I didn't ask for one, and I'm not all that thrilled
that you figure that requires me to gestate young, thanks.  I don't much 
care if *you* figure we are 'even' or not.  I'm a little more concerned about
my own point of view. 

And, frankly, I'm not thrilled that your view of my 'advantage' gives you
some sense of twisted justification that somehow my womb is any business of
yours!

Telling any woman anywhere what she must do with her body, and enforcing
that with the law of this land makes her LESS of a person, because you 
have removed from her one of the individual freedoms that each and every
other citizen enjoys.  Her ability to gestate or not has zip to do with her
status as a citizen.

>>If it's fair game for women, it's fair game for men, and we can use your
>>extra kidney, thanks.  Regardless of your own values about that.

>I don't feel one should glorify pregnancy, but to equate a kidney donation to
>giving birth doesn't seem right to me.  I as an unborn child will live if no
>one deliberately kills me.  I as a kidney patient will die if no one come to my
>aid with a donated kidney.  Death just as Life is a natural process.  Killing
>is not natural.


Ya know, clothing is not natural, either.
Ya know, computer use is not natural, either.

Most of what we do in our lives is no longer 'natural', Paul.

That's a bankrupt standard, and one you cannot defend even in your
*own* existance.  Yet you would require it of women?

Let me point out that for thousands of centuries, exposing children one
did not want, to die on a hillside WAS natural.  If you want to use the
standard of 'natural', I suppose we could oblige you, but it seems needlessly
cruel.

The point, above, which you haven't really answered, is that *your* body
is your business, because you do not have a womb.  My body, for the reason
of having a functioning womb, you propose should be controlled by the state
I object to this.  Regardless of whether a seized kidney or a forced
pregnancy is 'the same' or not.

Adrienne Regard
Newsgroups: talk.abortion