From: anne@cco.caltech.edu (Anneliese Lilje)
Subject: Re: What the pro-lifers do not tell you
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 20:55:28 GMT

In article <1992Apr7.193927.20170@midway.uchicago.edu> rivk@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>In article <1992Apr6.182855.3079@cco.caltech.edu> anne@cco.caltech.edu (Anneliese Lilje) writes:
>
>>>>In <1992Apr5.070049.2778@midway.uchicago.edu> rivk@quads.uchicago.edu
>>> (nora gayle rivkis) writes:
>>>
>>>>I understand your point, Mikeey, and it's fine as far as it goes, but please
>>>>try to avoid making this kind of argument even in a jesting analogy. There
>>>>are some of us it hurts needlessly, and a lot more who it endangers even
>>>>beyond their current danger level. Try to find some other way.
>>
>>Why does this analogy hurt some needlessly? And why does it endanger some
>>beyond current danger levels? 
>
>Because it devalues the term... makes people think that when someone
>starts yelling about Nazis they *really* don't mean anything worse
>than the stuff we hear about and many of us don't mind, all the time.

But the stuff that we do hear about *is* bad. Tales of suffering in 
camps, the torturing of individuals are bad. How comparing one group
of people (abortionists) to another group of people (Nazis) devalues
the latter is not clear to me. Many pro-lifers see a strong comparison
between abortionist and others (present or past) that have killed others.
THey see both as evil. How this devalues the term Nazi is not clear to 
me at all. 

>Which means that when the real ones reappear, and some of us start
>calling for help, we will be ignored and disbelieved exactly the way
>we were disbelieved the first time, by decent people who have simply
>been dulled to the sense of danger by all the hyperbole on the subject...
>about abortion, about pro-life control, about fur-wearers, about those
>who favor capital punishment, about whatever anyone's pet political
>cause is. And they won't listen, until it's far too late to help. And
>we probably can't manage to survive another try.

I think your getting a bit PARANOID here. If you have a fear that the 
Nazis will be rising again, then your point is well taken. 
I wouldn't COUNT on this happening any time in the near or distant future
but you are free to believe that this would happen. 

I am curious of your link between abortion, pro-life control, fur-wearers, 
capital punishment and other political causes and the idea that the 
victims of future holocosts (wherever they be or whoever they are) will
be disbelieved? I don't see the connection.

>>If people who are pro-life truly and passionately believe that the 
>>FETUS is a human being fully deserving of life, than the analogy
>>to pro-choices being at least "Nazi-like" may or may not have a grain
>>of truth to it. I could see it as being somewhat correct. Not totally
>>correct but somewhat.
>
>This would have a point, except that I have a VERY hard time believing
>that saying that pro-choicers are Nazis will change a single person's
>mind about abortion, or will stop one abortion from happening. In which

Well perhaps it won't. But then again maybe neither will calling abortionists
"evil" or "satan" or "perverted" or whatever. But I can totally understand
the connection between things that represent and are evil in the world and
what some pro-lifers believe. Because they believe (enough sometimes to 
risk their own lives) that fetuses are people like you and me. I think they
are full of shit...but that *is* their mentality. Like it or not.

>case people who are truly pro-life (and whose definition of "life" in-
>cludes Jews, a premise that is risky at best) will recognize that they

Oh please! Now give *ME* a break here. Your being pretty bigoted here.
There are pro-lifers that are as bigoted as the rest of the world. They
hate Jews, they hate Blacks, they hate WOMEN. THey are shits. But to make
such a glaring generalzation like this is pretty bigoted.

>are risking lives by saying such things, while saving no lives even of
>fetuses in the process, and they'll turn to techniques that don't kill
>some to save others.

Huh?


>
>	-Nora
>
>
>-- 
>Oseh shalom b'imromav, hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu v'al kol yisrael.


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