From: chall@eco.twg.com (Charles Don Hall)
Subject: Re: Loren Finkelstein, dictator, decides limits of religious freedom.
Organization: The Wollongong Group (East Coast Operations)
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 19:06:26 GMT

[Sorry about the bogus postings I made earlier today. This one ought
to go through correctly.]
 
In <11DEC92.05351754@vax.clarku.edu> lfinkelstein@vax.clarku.edu writes:
>In a previous article, chall@eco.twg.com (Charles Don Hall) wrote:
>>In <9DEC92.21535269@vax.clarku.edu> lfinkelstein@vax.clarku.edu writes:
>>>In a previous article, chall@eco.twg.com (Charles Don Hall) wrote:
>> 
 
[This was getting a bit long, so I've trimmed everything except
the sections that I thought were most important. Let me know
if I deleted any points that you think I should have addressed.]
 
Throughout our recent exchanges, I've been trying to get an
answer to a single question. It's a fairly complicated question,
though, and I don't think that I've done a good job of
communicating my intent to you.
 
I'm going to try to come at it from a different angle: The word 
"person" means, basically, "that which it is wrong to kill". 
Different people have different ideas as to what is a "person"
and what isn't. Some religions teach that animals have souls,
and that they are therefore "people".
 
My point is that when you say "It's wrong to kill a zygote
because it's a person", all you're really saying is "It's
wrong to kill a zygote because it's wrong to kill a zygote."
What I've been trying to do is to get you to expand on that.
_Why_ is a zygote a person? What criteria do _you_, _yourself_ 
use to tell whether it is wrong to kill something or not?
 
In our last exchange, you took a few stabs at answering this 
question, but they seem awfully weak to me. To be frank, it 
looks like you just typed in the first responses you could 
think of, without stopping to consider all the possible 
ramifications. I've included them below, with my commentary.
 
>>[...]
>> 
>>Now, suppose that your law is passed, and you're confronted by a 
>>14-year-old rape victim who asks why you think that this law is "good", 
>>when you know that it causes far more misery than happiness: 
 
>Back to the subjective good and bad again?  I never said either was "good" or
>"bad".  As for more misery than happiness, how are you rating "more".  Are you
>saying that the 14 year old girl will be miserable her whole life, and never
>experience happiness again?  Are you saying that her period of misery will be
>greater that the accumulated happiness the child will experience in its whole
>life, added to any happiness that the mother gets from the child (Yes, it is 
>possible for rape victims to love their children, and to be made happy by 
>them)
 
Do you really believe this?
 
Suppose that the 14-year-old girl turns out not to be pregnant after
all. By the argument you've just given, we would be justified in
forcing her to be artificially inseminated against her will. [We
could anesthetize her while we did it, so it wouldn't seem like
a violation.] She might have to drop out of school, and sacrifice
some of her potential future happiness, but it's not like she'll never
be happy again. And the eventual child will presumably be grateful 
to us.
 
>>[...]
>>I'm going to try asking this again: Do you think that the level
>>of happiness in society will be greater if abortion is banned? 
 
>If such a thing as the level of happiness in a society could be measured, 
>then...
>Absolutely.  Even people who get abortions are not happy about it.  I imagine 
>that most of them are unhappy about the fact that they need one.  If abortion 
>was illegal, these people would still be unhappy, but the pro-lifers would no
>longer be unhappy.  Then add in any happiness that the children may experience 
>at being alive.
 
This argument is even weaker than the first one.
 
I'll grant that there's room to argue about how to measure the level
of happiness in society, but you've made some singularly bad
estimates.  You're comparing "People who want abortions, and 
receive them" with "People who want abortions, and are forbidden
from having them". OK, both groups of people are unhappy. But do 
you think that they're _equally_ unhappy? That seems rather
improbable.
 
And, of course, I'm still a bit hazy on the difference between
the "future happiness" of a zygote, and the "future happiness"
of an unfertilized egg. 
 
>>[...]
>>The kind of attitude that Mr. Finkelstein displays is regrettably 
>>common. It seems like a lot of people are given lists of "good things" 
>>and "bad things" as children, and that they are encouraged to memorize 
>>the lists by rote, and not to stop to think about why a particular item 
>>is on one list and not the other.]
 
>Sorry, but I choose what I think is good or bad all by my self.  While there 
>are people who have exactly the same views as their parents, they are on both 
>sides of this issue, and therefore not something to complain about in relation 
>to this.
 
Hmmmm.....
-- 

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