From: nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos)
Subject: Re: A mirror for Adrienne Regard's NO OTHER HUMAN...
Keywords: puberty, surrealistic
Organization: USC  Department of Computer Science
Date: 18 Aug 92 18:56:12 GMT

Here we go again.  This time an entire post defaulted to local
("uscar") despite
my typing "world" in at the prompt.  Now I erased "uscar" after "distri-
bution and put in "world."  See if this fares any better...  


In <nyikos.713885513@milo.math.scarolina.edu> nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos) writes:

>In a recent follow-up to "Another good reason not to vote for Bush", 
>Ms. Regard harped on a theme she hammered away at a little over a month
>ago.  Back then she posted a statement which went about like this.

>"NO OTHER HUMAN BEING on this planet has the right to occupy a woman's
>body against her will, yet you would give fetuses that right?  I think
>that's bogus."

>Compare that to the following statement:

>"NO OTHER HUMAN BEING on this planet has the right to have a fetus occupy
>his/her body, yet you would give women and
>girls past puberty that right?  I think that's bogus."

>[I decided not to mention the will of the fetus.  When last I checked, 
>Ms. Regard seemed to have the opinion that fetuses cannot will anything.]

>Like Ms. Regard, I have carefully isolated the class of humans that is
>physically capable of the act in question, and lumped everyone else into
>the OTHER HUMAN BEING category.  Not too long ago, I could also have
>said "pre-menopausal" before women, but what with the news that a woman
>has borne the child of her daughter [the blastocyst was implanted into
>the womb of the grandmother-to-be/mother-to-be...this gets confusing...]
>I don't know whether that insertion would be correct.

>Admittedly, my statement sounds a bit surrealistic because we in the USA
>take the right to bear children for granted.  It is quite otherwise in
>China, where women are strongly encouraged (with financial inducements, 
>etc.) to bear at most one child, and are generally compelled to submit 
>to abortion if they become pregnant after having two.  

>This results in many more otherwise unwanted abortions ["every abortion 
>a wanted abortion," I say!] than might seem at first glance.  Say a woman
>finds out that her first child will be a girl unless she aborts.  
>Chances are, she badly wants her firstborn to be a boy; for one thing, she
>is afraid of just how strong the inducements to stop at one child are going
>to be, and does not want to have to face them.  And, despite all the lip
>service paid to women's rights in China, and despite some real advances
>in their status, the old desire to have at least one male child is
>something that is almost impossible to eradicate.  

>So she is strongly tempted to have her first unborn child 
>[by the time of amniocentesis, I think this apellation is justifiable] 
>aborted, and hope the next one will be male.

>But suppose she has heard that in Czechoslovakia, where abortion obtains
>under much better conditions for the mother than in the USA [see two
>paragraphs hence], "Roughly 25 percent of the women who interrupt their first
>pregnancy have remained permanently childless," [Pre-1989 statement
>by the Czechoslovak Deputy Minister of Health] and "...permanent 
>complications such as chronic inflammatory conditions of the female
>organs, sterility and ectopic pregnancies are registered in 20-30 percent
>of all women..." [according to a 13-year study done by a Prague university
>hospital, again under the old regime].  

>Then she might well decide not to abort, have her daughter, and hope that
>(1) the next one will be male, and (2) she will be able to cope with the
>additional difficulties imposed on those with two children.  But if her
>second pregnancy also comes up "girl", she'll really have her back against
>the wall.  Even though she is not legally required to abort, her desire
>for a male child, coupled with the continued benefits of having only one
>child, will practically amount to a coerced abortion for her.

>[Under the old Czechoslovak regime, abortion done in the first trimester was
>by vacuum curettage; the patient kept under observation in the hospital for
>3-5 days; ordered to take bed rest for one week at home; and paid by 
>insurance for her lost wages.  Yet there were still all the problems 
>mentioned above; compare that to the risks of a 2nd or 3rd trimester 
>abortion in China, which is what we are dealing with above.]

>Can't happen here, you say?  But already we have cases where women, in
>order to continue welfare payments at the usual rate, have had to submit
>to Norplant embeddings.

>[By the way, Ms. Regard, in case you are reading this: should a woman have
>the right to use *LETHAL* force, if necessary, to prevent a Norplant 
>from being implanted in her body against her will?]

>Also, a father can legally compel a daughter, in some cases, to submit
>to an abortion of a pregnancy due to incest at his hands.  In my
>COERCED ABORTION post last month, I mentioned a South Carolina state
>law governing 3rd trimester abortions, which stated that unless an
>incest victim is deemed competent [and who does the "deeming"? the
>abortionist?], her consent to an abortion performed on her 
>"must be waived."

>I am currently trying to find out whether this applies to incest abortions
>all through pregnancy.  It makes a macabre sort of sense: what with the
>added risks of late abortions, even an abortionist should want to get
>things over early, and not wait for the 3rd trimester to bring such a
>"consent must be waived" clause into play.

>A final note.  In Aldous Huxley's _Brave New World_, humans are raised
>in artificial wombs, contraception is mandatory, and pregnancy is 
>punished by banishment.  In such a world, it is my statement that is
>realistic, and Adrienne Regard's that is surrealistic.

>Huxley's novel is set 6 centuries in the future.  At the rate we have
>been going this century, we'll get there ahead of schedule, if the
>pro-choice myrmydons keep having their way.