🚀 go-pugleaf

I'm cross-posting this because I think it will generate a useful
flame or two.

>>Forgive me for injecting reality, but the Right-To-Life people would
>>never allow it. I mean, if they fight for the potential life contained
>>in a fetus, you'd expect that they'd fight for the lives of condemned
>>criminals and suicidal teenagers.
>
>Untrue... for example many Right-To-Life people are pro-war.
>
>What makes most people against abortion is religious arguments and the fact
>that they can't think clearly about it because it is connected with sex.
>
>"Right-To-Life" people are often the LAST people to be genuinely concerned
>with life.
>
>Alan J Rosenthal				decvax!utzoo!utcs!flaps

WHOA!
	This thinking is more typical of the seven-o'clock news than it
is of educated people ... at least those who should be educated.

	Let's take this an item at a time.  Taking it all at once is
answering a gross distortion with noise.

	As far a a fetus being a ``potential life'', it is exactly the
point of most of the anti-abortion movement that it IS a life.  The
modifier ``potential'' is irrelevant.  Get THAT discussion to net.abortion.

	As far as condemned criminals, many pro-life folks DO fight against
capital punishment.  And many don't.  The belief that a person, by choosing
to be a danger to others, may force the community to decide between his life
and those of his victims is not the same as the belief that an innocent child
ahould not be murdered in its mother's womb.  Flames on the wording to
net.abortion, please.  We're talking what people BELIEVE.

	As far as the prevention of suicide ... is THAT why the Catholic
Church, which seems to end up spearheading the anti-abortion movement,
operates at least a half-a-dozen Covenant House centers for runaway or
abandoned kids in various cities?  Is that why other religious bodies place
so strong an emphasis on community?  A person who really DOES feel in touch
with the people around her will not destroy herself.

	As far as being pro-war ... there are always ideologues in every
crowd who feel that someone or another would do better with a different
government.  Many times they are right.  A few of those ideologues get to
thinking that they could not possibly make things worse, and try to go
to war.

	This DOES NOT MEAN THAT DEFENDING YOURSELF, YOUR FAMILY, OR YOUR
FRIEND comes under the heading of ``murder of innocents''.  Some people feel
it does.  Others feel it does not.

>
>What makes most people against abortion is religious arguments and the fact
>that they can't think clearly about it because it is connected with sex.
>
>"Right-To-Life" people are often the LAST people to be genuinely concerned
>with life.

May I remind you that how we live our lives is a valid concern of religion?
It seems that over the last few hundred ``enlightened'' years, we are denying
the right of people to live their lives according to their beliefs.  And over
the years, sex has been a valid concern of religion.
						  ****If this enlightened
age seeks to reduce religion to a dusty bookshelf of decaying volumes, then
it should not have the right to attack religion on the basis that religion
is what enlightenment has made it.****
				    Conversely, if religion is to be a living
force, a way of life worth retaining, it must be free to challenge ideas
whether those ideas are considered enlightenment or not.

	Most of rhetoric I have heard from the anti-``pro-life'' folk concerns
how it is unfair to subject people to responsibility of carrying a child.  It
seems unsurprising that these same folk don't want religion reminding them
that they may have other responsibilities as well.

	As to being the last people to be genuinely concerned with life: well,
I think that people who spout enlightenment are often the last people to
demonstrate it.  And people whe scream that they must not have their freedoms
impinged upon are among the most enslaved ... they cannot live with things
happenning in their lives that are not of their own choosing.

	This last group scares me.  We (for I am a great example) are among
the least resilient and least resourceful people ever to have lived, and our
civilization may not last if we don't get our individual and collective acts
together.
-- 

	from Mole End			Mark Terribile
		(scrape .. dig )	mtx5b!mat
    ,..      .,,       ,,,   ..,***_*.