From: kevin@rotag.mi.org (Kevin Darcy)
Subject: Re: t.a. FAQ (part 3 of 3)
Organization: Who, me???
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 23:44:41 GMT

In article <1992Dec31.192723.7258@ncsu.edu> dsholtsi@csl36h.csl.ncsu.edu (Doug Holtsinger) writes:
>In article <1992Dec31.171914.12814@watson.ibm.com> 
>margoli@watson.IBM.com writes:
>>dsholtsi@csl36h.csl.ncsu.edu (Doug Holtsinger) writes:
>>>margoli@watson.IBM.com writes:
>>>>dsh@eceyv.ncsu.edu (Doug Holtsinger) writes:
>
>>>>> Roe v. Wade is essentially unrestricted abortion-on-demand throughout
>>>>> the term of pregnancy.
>
>>>> Dougie just can't stop lying about this.  Perhaps we should add the
>>>> refutation of his lies to the FAQ?
>
>>> You mean you're going to add more falsehoods to the ones
>>> that are already in the FAQ? :-)
>
>> Yes, we'd probably have to include your falsehoods in order to refute them.
>
>Are you saying that the following quote from a law professor
>at Georgetown University is a "falsehood"?  

Doug, nowhere in the quote you've produced over and over again appears the
term "unrestricted abortion-on-demand". You have interpreted Prof. Tushnet's
in that manner, but you're not any more a law professor than I am, so how do 
you know your interpretation of Tushnet is correct?

Furthermore, Tushnet may be a law professor, but he is certainly not an
undisputed authority in this area, and, perhaps more importantly, he's a
HUMAN BEING as well as being a law professor, and therefore subject to many
of the same experiential, socio-economic, ethical, political, etc. factors
that you and I are. Therefore, he cannot necessarily be considered to be
free of biases, preconceptions, etc. That goes with the territory. Why do
you think we have multiple judges decide by concensus such difficult points
of the law? -- because we recognize that even learned professionals can have
different subjective "takes" on the same issues, and concensus at least
affords us a modicum of objectivity. For all I know, Tushnet might be a
stereotypical raving lunatic pro-lifer, who happens to be good enough at
expressing his distorted ideas that he is permitted to publish. I'm not
suggesting that he is, of course, but he COULD be. The standards of 
objectivity for a law school journal contribution, or a monograph, which 
maybe only a tiny percentage of the population will ever read, are far more 
lax than a Supreme Court decision which by definition affects every U.S. 
citizen's life to some degree.

So, what we have is the RvW decision, which itself is the product of 
interpretation, integration, synthesis, of all of the facts of the RvW case, 
the historical data, statistical data, medical data, legal precedents, etc. 
then expressed in an imperfect medium, filtered through the human mind of 
Professor Tushnet, with all of his own biases, preconceptions, etc. then his 
perspective on it expressed over again in an imperfect medium, and then 
filtered yet again through the mind of Doug Holtsinger to become "RvW is 
unrestricted abortion-on-demand". Is it any wonder that people don't believe 
you?

Now, I'm just a human too, and not even a law professor, but it seems fairly
obvious to ME that RvW/DvB is _not_ "unrestricted abortion on demand". 
Numerous quotes directly from RvW have been posted which seem to support the 
claim that states MAY restrict abortion -- the value of DIRECT quotes, of 
course, is that one skips a level of interpretation/biases, and therefore, in
theory, gets closer to "the source". Further evidence against the claim is
that many state statutes exist which purport to restrict abortion, and, given 
that all of the known late-term abortions to which those statutes would 
primarily apply would fall under the explicit exceptions outlined in RvW 
(threat to the mother, etc.), I would have to conclude that people are 
COMPLYING with those statutes instead of trying to overturn them using the 
Constitutional "ammo" you and Professor Tushnet believe RvW/DvB gives them. 
So either there _is_ no Constitutional "unrestricted abortion-on-demand" 
recognized by RvW/DvB, i.e. Tushnet is mistaken in his interpretation, or it 
exists "in theory", but people are choosing not to exercise it; in which case, 
for all intents and purposes, it doesn't exist. Either way, it doesn't seem 
particularly productive to keep on claiming that RvW/DvB is "unrestricted 
abortion-on-demand" when your "proof" of that claim is so indirect and 
subjective.

Also, didn't we already establish that, at most, the RvW/DvB combination
gives the ultimate abortion say to medical professionals? That's not the same 
as "abortion-on-demand" then, Doug. "Abortion-on-demand" means that when a 
woman asks for an abortion, assuming she asks "correctly" (which subsumes 
paying for it), she gets it. If a medical professional can say "no", though, 
then it's not "abortion-on-demand" anymore. RvW/DvB doesn't in any way, shape
or form stop medical professionals from saying "no", so it can't be considered 
to protect "unrestricted abortion-on-demand". 

								- Kevin
Newsgroups: talk.abortion,alt.abortion.inequity,soc.men,soc.women