🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 5 Apr 2005 10:18:57 -0400, "Seven of 3"
<Defenderofenormousmanhood@rogers.com> wrote:

[snip]

==>Anyway the only thing I don't agree with Ivan, totally. I think the desire 
==>for some men to control women is definitely behind the forces agaist 
==>abortion on demand. But let's use logic, how does that work for women who 
==>argue against abotion. Obviously it's not in their interests to advocate 
==>men's control over women.

		Actually, women have always been in the forefront
		of the forces arrayed against women's rights.
		There are (inexplicably?) a goodly number of
		hyper-conservative females who are only comfortable
		with the male-as-master model of society, and
		desperate to block equal rights for women because
		that challenges their self-image.

		As but one piece of evidence, I submit the execrable
		Gwen Landoldt and her "Real" Women, who campaign
		tirelessly to relegate women to a Victorian model
		of servitude.

[snip]

==>I have an issue with abortion on demand.

		Should it be "abortion on request?"  "Abortion
		on supplication?"  "Abortion on bended knee
		with a note from one's mother?"

		Forgive the sarcasm, but it's always irritated me
		that otherwise intelligent people parrot that
		meaningless piece of anti-abortion propaganda.
		It's a phrase designed to conjure up visions of
		endless queues of irresponsible, wanton sluts
		demanding on Monday morning that a doctor
		fix what they screwed up Saturday night.  It's
		a lie and it's nonsense.

		There is either abortion or there isn't.  Either it's
		a woman's decision stemming from her inalienable
		right to sovereignty over her own body, or it's the
		decision of some type of (almost certainly
		male-dominated) societal establishment.  It's
		pretty obvious, and welcome, that society has
		rejected the latter option.
		
==>Logic and science tell me a fetus 
==>is human.

		It is.  But does that mean it must be allowed to
		develop into a PERSON?

		Some babies are born anencephalic -- what
		medical practitioners call "a no-brainer" when
		there are no civilians around.  Are you suggesting
		that an organism born without a brain should be
		kept alive just because it's human?  And if not,
		why not?

		And if not, then why must a properly developing
		human embryo be kept alive long before it has
		reached the stage where consciousness --
		let alone self-awareness -- is possible?

		A pre-birth homo sapiens may be human, but it's
		not a person, and it's personhood that we cherish,
		because along with personhood comes a life's history.

		It is your history as a human being -- as a life lived
		-- that makes you different from all other humans who
		have ever lived and ever will live, because no
		two histories are or can be the same.

		And although your physical existence may indeed
		begin at conception, your history, your life's story
		begins the moment the umbilical cord attaching
		you to your mother and keeping you a part of her
		body is severed, and you breathe air on your own
		for the first time.

		Until that moment, you are little more than a
		parasitic growth, with no awareness of your
		existence and no individual identity.

		Something fitting that description can hardly
		be called a person.

		A person is a once-in-an-eternity occurrence and
		therefore priceless.

		A glob of unwanted cells is less than worthless.

==>So my big issue is that I view the fetus as an equal player. I think a fetus 
==>is human and should be entitled to human rights.

		But it's clearly not an equal player.
		We confer rights on PERSONS -- not zygotes or
		embryos.  Why should a glob of parasitic,
		pre-conscious cellular matter have rights that
		supersede the right of its host to absolute
		sovereignty over her own body?

		If we grant rights to undeveloped human
		organisms, what other rights should they have?
		Should a zygote be vested with the "right"
		to have its host refrain from, say, smoking,
		or drinking alcohol, or eating unhealthy food,
		or engaging in any of a number of activities
		that carry a risk of negatively impacting the
		zygote's development?

		Most sane people, I humbly submit, would answer
		no, and who can blame them?

		If you answer yes, then who should enforce those
		rights.  How should we punish expectant mothers
		who insist on smoking two packs a day, or drinking
		herself to sleep every night?

		(I know!  Let's force her to give birth to a damaged
		or crippled kid.  That'll teach her!)

		We should do all in our power to improve life for
		every person born, but that doesn't mean it's logical
		or desirable to extend our concern to blobs of
		tissue growing inside some people's bodies,
		long before those blobs have entered, and thereby
		begun to affect, the world.

		That's what it says here, anyway.

		Regards.