From: chall@eco.twg.com (Charles Don Hall)
Subject: Re: I became pro-life...and pro-choice...
Organization: The Wollongong Group (East Coast Operations)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 93 20:53:19 GMT

In <1ickh8INN200@meaddata.meaddata.com> johnt@meaddata.com (John Townsend) writes:

>Sorry for the brevity, and thanks for a very insightful post.  It was one of
>the most reasonable pro-choice positions I've heard in a long time.  However,
>I think that your premise, that legality has little or no bearing on individual
>morality, is suspect, as evidenced by the large number of times that we have
>seen it said in this forum that abortion is not murder because the law
>currently says it isn't.  Murder, the unjust taking of a human life, is morally
>wrong regardless of what the law says because of the degradation in the quality
>of our society that it would naturally bring.  The law merely spells out
>artificial consequences for murdering, in order to prevent the natural ones.

Well, this is a pleasant surprise! After my exchanges with Loren
Finkelstein last month, I had just about given up on finding
a pro-lifer who was able to come up with a coherent explanation
of the difference between a "good law" and a "bad law". (Mr.
Finkelstein has "studied neither law nor sociology".)

Anyway, I agree with everything you've said above.

>Abortion, among other things, reflects and contributes to the cheapening of
>human life in society, the natural consequence of which is that individuals
>become more likely to take or abuse the lives of others when others are in
>conflict with the individual's other desires.  Please read the article by Bob
>Greene that I have attached.  Although it has nothing to do with abortion, it
>has a lot to say about what is happening to the value of life.

I suppose that this is possible, but it doesn't seem likely to me.
I don't think that the mere existence of legal abortion causes people
to believe that life is cheap, or encourages them to commit violent
crimes. As far as I know, there is no correlation between the crime
rate and the legal status of abortion. 

If there is indeed a trend towards the cheapening of human life, then
I'd have to blame it on the breakdown of the legal system. And, of 
course, the reason that the legal system is breaking down is because
of this stoopid "War on Drugs", which has created more criminals
than the courts and the prisons can handle. [There was a similar
increase in the violent crime rate in the '20s and '30s, when the
government was fighting the "War on Alcohol"]

If that's the case, then it might be a good idea to think about
whether the government should really start fighting a "War On
Abortion".

I also have to wonder if you've considered all of the relevant
factors. If abortion is illegal, then there's going to be a
certain amount of increased pain and suffering. You know the
drill: Young married couples having to be celibate until they
feel that they can afford to raise children properly. Pregnant
women having to drop out of college and go on welfare because they
don't have resources to do otherwise. 14-year-old rape victims.

All of this is _real_, _observable_, _measurable_ suffering. 
How can you justify inflicting it, for no better reason than 
to eliminate some hypothetical "abortion-related cheapening of
human life"...when you can't even provide evidence that such a 
thing exists?

>[...]
-- 

===========================================================
Charles Don Hall, Licensed Philosopher  (chall@eco.twg.com)
===========================================================
Newsgroups: talk.abortion