From: adams@spss.com (Steve Adams)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion,talk.religion.misc,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Abortion and Religion I: The Great Paradox
Keywords: paradox, afterlife, abortion, secular
Date: 16 Dec 92 15:54:51 GMT
Organization: SPSS Inc.

nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos) writes:

>******* From "The Mind-Body Problem and the Abortion Issue"  ************
>Copyright 1992 by Peter J. Nyikos

>These brain waves can be picked up, as remarked above, around day 40, still 
>within the first half of the first trimester of gestation. 
Simply because brain-waves become present (literally, the electrical
stimulus of neurons) does not imply consciousness or ability to think, or
even awareness.  Absence of these things in a person where they once
existed, is a pretty good indicator of death.  Autonomous bodily functions
are controlled electrically...this doesn't imply consciousness or
sentience.

>    Whenever it happens, we are from that point on dealing with an individual
>self, with its own personal identity. In the event of abortion this self 
>is prematurely wiped out, perhaps forever.  
'Self' is a concept of develpoed minds, isn't it?  I'm no expert in
psychology, but I'm pretty sure that 'self' is limited to conscious,
thinking beings.

>    After all, the Roman Catholic church officially subscribes to
>the doctrine that there is a God who judges each individual according to that
>person's conscience, and rewards or punishes him in an eternal hereafter
>accordingly [Romans 2: 12-16], and this view is shared by many
>evangelicals.  Those who have been aborted, being incapable of evil, would 
>thus be spared any punishment in the life to come. 
This would be pretty messed up theology...it falls into the same grouping
as the idea that since God's Grace increases when sin increases we should
sin more to get more grace.

>    In a similar vein, the fact that the wars against the
>American Indians included massacres of defenseless women and children is taken
>to be a special blot on the history of the United States.
Irrelevent appeal...

>    To expand on the metaphor in that last line: in abortion, a life is nipped
>in the bud before it can bloom, and in some cases with the accompaniment of
>agonies such as most of us have yet to experience, and, hopefully, never will
>experience. 
All that is lost is potential...there is no guarantee of a live baby at
birth...

>Alas, all too many today accept just such a happiness and even claim any
>means of abortion directed at attaining it to be a "right"--not just a
>legal right, as in abortions before viability, and in abortions done
>to preserve maternal life "and health" afterwards, but a natural right
>extending all the way to birth, for whatever reason.
Bodily autonomy....what a concept, eh?

Remember Peter, one can be religious, and object to abortion on religious
grounds, yet still be pro-choice.

 -Steve
--
  The opinions expressed above are those of the author and not SPSS, Inc.
                         -------------------
   adams@spss.com                                  Phone: (312) 329-3522
   Steve Adams        "Space-age cybernomad"       Fax:   (312) 329-3558
Newsgroups: talk.abortion