From: slkg9733@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Steven L. Kellmeyer)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Re: Family Values?
Date: 23 Jul 92 03:20:30 GMT
Distribution: misc.kids
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana

pburch@roc.mbcr.bcm.tmc.edu (Paula Burch) writes:


>In article <BrsJF4.7r8@news.cso.uiuc.edu>, slkg9733@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Steven L. Kellmeyer) writes:
>|> Well, think about it.  Hillary is saying that the 12-year old child
>|> capable of making such a decision is basically an adult. 

>No, she wasn't. She was saying the child is old enough to ask a court for 
>help. Big difference there. I hate the way people with political agendas 
>twist the words of others to make them seem like monsters. It's just another 
>form of lying.

Well, Hillary used the word "divorce".  I don't know about you, but
"divorce" has a VERY specific connotation to me.  It involves the 
breaking of a contractual agreement between two adults.  If she didn't 
mean "divorce", she shouldn't have used the word.  Now you are telling
me that she really meant "ask court for advice about leaving" parents,
not that a child should be able to "divorce" parents.  Maybe you know
Hillary better than I do.  I don't know her at all, so I have to go with
what she says.  I have no way of knowing that she _really_ meant something
other than what she said.

Yeah, I'd have to agree.  I hate the way people with political agendas
twist the words of others to make them seem like monsters.
              It *IS* just another form of lying.

>|> These biological ties are being destroyed even as we speak, however.
>|> We can look at the popularity of in-vitro fertilization with anonymous
>|> donor sperm, surrogate motherhood, donated eggs, donated uteruses -
>|> everything that makes the biological tie binding is being trivialized
>|> and blown away by the twin tornadoes of technology and social mores.

>So family ties would be strengthened by denying these new reproductive 
>technologies to the infertile, so that they can't have children of their 
>own? Shaky logic.

If you'll note, I referred to "biological ties".  You were the one who
immediately made the leap to family ties.  You see, we still think of
biology as family.  But the very technology of artificial insemination
by donor (AID) and in vitro fertilization (IVF) simultaneously do two
things: they relegate the status of biological father to that of 
unnamed drone and they inform women that the highest good is "natural"
children.  

Why are adopted children less "real" than "natural" children?  Are they
somehow less human than "real" children?  We talk of children like we 
talk of household objects.  "Children of their own" "can't afford a 
child (couch, vacation, etc.)".  Saving up for IVF so that we can buy
a child of our very own.  Or we can rent space in someone else's womb
and have them manufacture the child for us.  Maybe using an egg we 
bought in Florida, and that sperm that was on sale in Houston.  
I exaggerate, but only by today's standards.  In ten or twenty years,
this could be a real conversation, seriously discussed.  

>|> I don't know what you people think about this, but *I* think the world
>|> is becoming a very lonely place.

>The world is becoming lonely, you think, because biological ties are no 
>longer cast in stone. Does this mean that nobody would live with you if 
>they were not forced to by law? That's what it sounds like. Pitiful.

It means that solipsism is beginning to gain ascendancy.  
There can be no society where solipsism reigns, since the universe
is, by definition, only me or only you.  Everyone else is just another
object to manipulate, a thing to satisfy our own desires.  Society 
breaks down when we go to the machinery, the system, and demand that it
solve our problems.  Machinery doesn't solve problems.  People solve
problems, together.  But if all we see is the machine, if all we want is
the machine, if justice and mercy and love come only from the machine,
then there is no reason to consider anyone else a person.  

Read de Tocqueville.  Read Aldous Huxley.  Read E.M. Forster.
They all saw it coming.  Hillary's proposal is perfectly logical,
if you really want a Brave New World.  But beware, "The Machine Stops".

>Why is it that people say that "family values" require limiting the choices 
>of others? "Family values" is generally a code for "don't support daycare, 
>it would make life easier for working women" and "don't allow women to make 
>their own reproductive choices."

I don't know anyone who opposes daycare.  Some (including me) might point
out that daycare is best provided by one (non-gender specific) of the 
parents who's action makes them responsible for the children's existence
to begin with.  Personally, I have no problem with taking care of the
children.  I don't see the point of giving them to someone else to raise
though.  I note that you didn't mention "allowing men to make their own
reproductive choices".  I know several pro-choicers who support the man's
right to leave without paying child support.  They argue that it is
his right to choose not to be a father.  A court in Tennessee agreed, 
at least in re frozen embryos.  You're right, what good are biological
ties, after all?

>I think that "family values" demand that every child be given good medical 
>care and a good education, regardless of what resources the parents have. I 
>think that "family values" should strengthen the families that exist now, 
>rather than only families of the officially approved types. Why is this 
>so unpopular a viewpoint? Don't Americans care about families?

Some do.  But others others support Hillary Clinton  and her husband.

>Paula Burch
>pburch@bcm.tmc.edu

Steve Kellmeyer
Newsgroups: misc.kids,sci.med