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- Xref: sparky talk.abortion:36203 talk.religion.misc:16101
- Path: sparky!uunet!sun-barr!news2me.ebay.sun.com!exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!hernes-sun.Eng.Sun.COM!emarsh
- From: emarsh@hernes-sun.Eng.Sun.COM (Eric Marsh)
- Newsgroups: talk.abortion,talk.religion.misc
- Subject: Re: The fundamental question of abortion
- Date: 12 Sep 1992 15:47:18 GMT
- Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
- Lines: 45
- Message-ID: <lb4486INNm30@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
- References: <1992Sep12.133845.13714@cs.rose-hulman.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: hernes-sun
- Keywords: abortion
-
- In article <1992Sep12.133845.13714@cs.rose-hulman.edu> luebeckd@nextwork.rose-hulman.edu writes:
-
- >It has occurred to me that the fundamental debate over abortion is really
- >about whether one says that a pregnant womb contains an unborn, but
- >living, child or a fetus, which is just tissues.
-
- >If everyone could know that a womb contains a living unborn child, then it
- >would be obvious that abortion is a form of murder, and few would condone
- >it.
-
- >On the other hand, if everyone knew that a womb contains only tissues, or
- >some other matter that is not a life, then few would really care if
- >someone did have an abortion, beacuse there was nothing there in the first
- >place.
-
- >Nearly all debate on abortion degenerates into this fundamental question.
- >Can this question be adequately answered?
-
- The scientific evidence is available for all to see. The real matter
- at hand is how one interprets the data. I've been debating this issue
- for several years now and during this time I have managed to examine all
- the salient issues and put together a coherant framework that
- is pro-choice. When debating this issue with pro-lifers, I have
- never seen any arguments put forth that are consistant with the
- scientific facts that support the concept of a z/e/f having the attributes
- we value (and generally label as "personhood") sufficiently to bestow
- "rights."
-
- In the final analysis, the evidence is there for anyone to examine.
- The real issue is, how well does a given philosophical system deal with
- this, and other evidence? I think that if we all tried to examine
- the questions involved logically, there would be a great many less
- pro-lifers out there. The problem is, most pro-lifers base their
- beliefs on religious systems that are in turn inconsistant with the
- scientific evidence pointing to the nature of the universe. Given
- that these people ultimatly do not have a philosophical system based
- on reality, the evidence, in turn, ultimatly matters little.
-
- So what do we have here? When you boil it all down, we have a group
- of people that are trying to remove the rights of people based on
- a set of beliefs that do not square with reality.
-
- Its very human of them, you know?
-
- Eric
-