Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian,talk.abortion
Subject: Re: Arrogant Indians and Susan Forgach
From: J.Ainikkal@massey.ac.nz (J. Ainikkal)
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 92 22:18:14 GMT
Organization: Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
Keywords: Religious redundancy?
Summary: Religious Redundancy?
X-Reader: NETNEWS/PC Version 2c

>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. 

What is 'evil' and what is 'not evil' is only a matter of
definition. What U 'believe' to be evil - I might not. Our
society has evolved to take into consideration the situation of
today - Not preachings of 2000 to 4000 year old 'preachers'.
 
>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. 

India has one of the most liberal abortion laws in the wrold -
With abortion we have 'evolved' far more than the West.
 
>Susan Forgach  position is more strict than mine, but only
>because     she is ALWAYS willing to put morality before
>pragmatism. 

Susan Forgach (whoever she is) and U seem to be walking with
blinkers. What You'll see is what You'll want the rest of the
world to see. Thankfully that is not the case today. Having your
morality enforced makes me lose all my 'rights' to entertain my
morals. I hope U realise that I might have my own set of morals -
different from yours.
 
>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? 
 
Religion, IMO, was meant to show a way of life. The religious
philosophies that U use above are more than 2500 years old. If
U want to get a point across, try to give reasons as to why and
how it will help the situation today - Do not just play on
religious sentiments. U are talking to educated people on the
net.

>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. 

Yes - that includes realising that in India today - Abortion is
a necessity - not an 'evil' that can be used by politicians to
get votes from people frozen in their pre-historic beliefs.

Lets hope the laws around the world evolve into a more humane one
which supports abortion, rather than have children who grow up
leading miserable lives. Statistics on who are the people who are
pro-choice and who are the womyn who have abortions will be more
useful than just the use of 'religion' and 'beliefs'. Go back and
do your research - Do not try and get us to stand up and shout
"YES, YES our religious beliefs told us so".


>Rohit Parikh 

John Ainikkal
'Aotearoa' - Land of the long white cloud