From: mon@cray.com (Muriel Nelson)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: The Right to Exist
Date: 8 Apr 92 16:42:42 GMT
Article-I.D.: hemlock.1992Apr8.114242.6003

Warning: LONG!
In article <1992Apr8.014927.5236@ncsu.edu> dsh@csl36h.csl.ncsu.edu (Doug Holtsinger) writes:
>In article <1992Apr7.141153.5249@hemlock.cray.com> mon@cray.com (Muriel Nelson) writes:
>
>>> The right to exist is supreme above all other rights. Without the
>>> right to exist, no other rights are possible, including the right
>>> to freedom. Without existence, freedom is not possible. All humans
>>> should have an equal right to exist, and since the right to exist
>>> is supreme, no human can deny another human the right to exist,
>>> unless their own existence is threatened. 
>> In order to hold this position consistently, you must also affirm 
>> that an individual has no right to use lethal force to defend
>> against a rapist unless it is clear that the attacker also intends
>> to murder.
>
>Rape implies the use of force, which may result in the death of
>the potential rape victim. 

If the attacker makes it clear that he won't harm the victim, if
the victim does not resist, does the victim have the right to use
lethal force simply to prevent physical violation?

[deletions]
>
>>> The right to exist includes the right not to be killed by others, 
>>> and the right to receive support from others, but it does not 
>>> necessarily include the right to expect support from others. 
>> I'm not sure what you mean by this.
>It is the essence of my argument. I have the right to exist. No person
>should be allowed to prevent other people from supporting me. If I am
>dying, then no person can prevent a doctor from healing me. 

BZZZZZT. How about someone from the accounting department at the
hospital?
>                                                            But, I
>cannot force any person to support me against their will. I should not
>be able to force a doctor to heal me.
>
No, but you'd like to be able to force a woman to remain pregnant.

>>> The fetus either has rights, or it does not. 
>> Since a fetus is not a person, 
>Irrelevant. All human life should have the right to exist. A fetus is a 
>human life, and therefore it should have the right to exist.
>
A severed wart is human life, too. You'll have to do better than
that if you wish to remove existing rights from persons on the
basis of your reasoning.

>> and it poses a risk of terminating
>> the existence of the woman (who IS a person), it has no rights.
>The existence of the woman is not always threatened by the presence
>of the fetus. 

She's 22 times more likely to die from carrying a pregnancy to 
term than from a first-trimester abortion. Non-lethal damage is
almost inevitable.

>              When the woman's life becomes threatened by the fetus, 
>then she should have the right to kill the fetus. She cannot kill
>the fetus simply because it "may" threaten her existence in the distant 
>future. 

You have still not given any good reasons for granting any 
rights to a fetus.
>
[deletions]
>future. I cannot kill a person who threatens to kill me in the
>distant future. I may kill them if they threaten my immediate

Many wartime defense scenarios do exactly that. (Kill those who 
pose a distant threat to our lives, that is.)

>>>                                              If the fetus has any 
>>> rights, then it must have the right to exist, and this right is 
>>> equal to that of any other human being.
>> You make quite a leap here. Why would its rights be equal to a born
>> human being? 
>A fetus is no less human than any other human life. If it is not a human 
>life, then what is it? All humans should have the same right to existence. 
>
You assign the same rights to a small, barely differentiated blob
of cells as you would to a thinking, living breathing woman who may
have several born children depending on her for nurturance and 
livelihood? You have a very high opinion of women, don't you?

YES, ROCKER! PLEASE REPOST 'The Value of a Man'.

[deletions]
>The woman should have the right to refuse to support the fetus. But no
>person should be allowed to kill the fetus, or to prevent others from
>supporting the fetus. 
>
This is a convoluted approach. You would allow the fetus to be 
removed and allowed to die slowly from lack of support (at an
exponentially increased expense) but not allow simple abortion.
Is that correct?

>> Until you
>> show that bodily autonomy is subordinate to the right of others
>> to exist in all circumstances, 
>
>Define "bodily autonomy".
>
The right to determine the uses to which one's body may be put.
Includes the right to withhold consent for sexual activity,
even from a spouse, the right not to be forced to perform
slave labor, and the right to terminate  the attatchment of
any other organism, internal or external, that attatches itself
to one's body. The latter depends on available medical care,
whether you're talking about abortion or treatment for a
parasitic condition.

>> and prove that a fetus should have
>> rights equal to any other human organism, you've proved nothing.
>I cannot prove that a fetus should have the same right to exist
>as other humans. Nor can I prove that I should have the same right to
>existence as the fetus, or any other human life. 
>No human can judge the value of another human life, because a
>value judgement is merely an opinion, a subjective judgement, 
>which is valid only to oneself. No person should be allowed to kill
>the mentally retarded, or the autistic, or humans born without a brain, 
>simply because their lives are not valued by some persons. A human 

Are these individuals living off the physical resources of a thinking,
feeling, contributing member of society?

>can only judge its own existence, not the existence of others. A fetus 
>is the only human life who is fit to judge its own existence. By killing
>a fetus, a person has denied the fetus its right to exist, and therefore 
>has denied the fetus its right to judge its own existence.  

You really don't address the woman much in this diatribe. A fetus
is incapable of judgement, but a woman is not. She should have the 
right to determine how her physical resources are used. What if a 
woman objects to her pregnant state so strongly that her own existence
is worthless to her if she has to continue pregnancy? (This is NOT
hypothetical. I have personally seen a woman take action which had
about a 90% liklihood of killing her, and a 99% chance of causing a
miscarriage if she survived.) If she commits suicide while pregnant,
she's denied the fetus a right to exist. Would you would deny her
the right to judge the value of her _own_ existence while pregnant?
Perhaps you don't realize it, but you've created a subclass of
humans with _less_ rights than all the others, even zygotes. You
will, I hope, understand why I do not wish to embrace this body of
thought, much less to codify it into law.

muriel
standard disclaimer