From: nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos)
Subject: Re: "Abortion" on a not-pregnant woman
Keywords: decay@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (dean.kaflowitz)
Organization: USC  Department of Computer Science
Date:  7 Sep 92 20:01:02 GMT

In <Bu4qGG.1Ho.2@cs.cmu.edu> garvin+@cs.cmu.edu (Susan Garvin) writes:

>In article <nyikos.715729698@milo.math.scarolina.edu> nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos) writes:

>#My point went in quite a different direction.  Judge Kelly
>#drafted a proposal that would limit pro-lifers to what kind of picketing
>#they could do and still be acceptable to him, and proposed that a neutral
>#party report on "what really goes on in Tiller's clinic," to be 
>#accompanied by Operation Rescue types doing "community service", like
>#homophobes being made to attend sensitivity training sessions.  This was
>#totally unacceptable to Tiller's lawyers.  So far as I know, they would
>#never let anyone mentioned by Judge Kelly, who so zealously arranged for
>#arrests and convictions, to see the inside of the clinic.  

>Do you have any sort of reference for this?  

Do you require references of people asking questions, and pleading
ignorance about the answers to the questions?  You are one tough
customer, Susan.

Or is your request slightly misplaced and you are referring to "This
was totally unacceptable to Tiller's lawyers?"  I have two different
sources for this, both pro-life, one a book, another a national magazine.
I realize these sources aren't worth diddly to you, so I won't even 
name them, but merely ask whether you have any news of what really
happened the day before Kelly was asked on the Phil Donahue show why
he abruptly released the "rescuers" from prison and answered
"Because the other side pissed me off."

>#And maybe
>#not even Kelly himself.  Nor any of the marshals.

>If you could leave this sort of speculation out, people
>wouldn't respond as angrily to your articles.  You
>have no way of knowing this.

Right. That's why I keep asking about it.  In the absence of answers,
am I not even allowed to say "maybe"?

>#Of course, you can all go on believing Tiller had nothing embarrassing
>#to hide.  

>You've certainly not offered anything to convince me otherwise.

Well, I've had so much else to do, I just haven't had the time to 
present the evidence I have.  And, given how skeptical you and your
fellow pro-choicers are, it's going to have to be a long, tightly
reasoned post.  But I'll do my best, and I hope to have something
for you by the end of the week.

>#But his activities, while perhaps legal under Kansas law, 
>#were still of a sort that most ordinary people find repugnant.  

>I'd find it a lot more repugnant to see the dead bodies of
>the women who would be denied abortions by people like
>you. 

Now don't you start misrepresenting me.  It's bad enough having
Adrienne accuse me of endangering women's lives when I've said
over and over again that I have nothing against an abortion done
to save the life of a woman.

> I'd find it a lot more repugnant to see the shattered
>families created when the wife and mother is permanently
>physically impaired by a pregnancy that people like you
>would force her to carry to term. 

I've also relaxed my opposition to abortion to where I would 
allow it if the impairment were as great as the permanent loss of
one kidney.  But I believe the difference between
that and a life-endangering situation is nonexistent in the real
world.  Does anyone here know otherwise?

> I'd find it a lot more
>repugnant to watch an infant die in pain because you
>would insist that it suffered needlessly.

I have also said that if not giving abortion means an infant is
sentenced to a fate worse than death, I would allow the abortion.
I guess that was all before you started paying close attention 
to my posts.

>I saw photographs of one of the cancerous tumors they
>removed from me.  I am not comparing a fetus to the tumor,
>understand that.  I am saying that the operation and the
>results of that operation were disgusting to look at.
>On the other hand, I would surely be dead if that operation
>had not been performed.

When I say "repugnant," I am speaking morally, not esthetically.
Sorry if it wasn't clear before.

>You continue to miss that point, though.  Many life-saving
>operations are hideously ugly.  

That does not bother me.  They are "beautiful" in the moral
dimension.

>#Perhaps
>#some pro-choicers here would too, if they saw them, but they never get
>#the chance.

>I would strongly doubt that there is a single person who reads
>this group and supports legal abortion who does not know
>what a late term fetus looks like, and who can't imagine
>what happens when such a fetus is aborted.

But some deny that such a fetus suffers terrible agony in many abortions.

>The abortions done in Dr. Tiller's clinic are tragic, Nyikos.
>The alternative to those abortions, though, is even more
>tragic to the women who undergo them. 

That remains to be seen.  I guess you missed my post about the woman
who, on the evening TV news, went to Kansas to abort a baby "whose
brain was not developing properly," and suffered massive hemorrhage
as a result of the abortion.  I don't recall anyone saying that the
anencephalic baby who was born in Florida not long ago had its birth
accompanied by massive hemorrhaging.  

[Don't confuse statements of fact, or speculation, with reproaches.  No
reason why you should have caught that earlier post.]

And people were quite 
positive that the anencephalic baby was NOT suffering.  If they are
indeed incapable of suffering, what's the point of aborting them
in the first place?

>Susan

Peter Ny.


Newsgroups: talk.abortion