NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #23/NN_1992_23.iso/spool/talk/abortion/42009

Internet Message Format | 1992-10-11 | 5.8 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Steven Arnold)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: In Suzanne's Defense
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 12 Oct 92 02:24:37 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (News Account)
Organization: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO  80523
Lines: 115

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Ray Fischer) writes:
|> [e-mail] (Steven Arnold) writes ...
|> > [e-mail] (Ray Fischer) writes:
|> >|> [e-mail] (Martin Guerrero) writes ...
|> >|> >Approximately 98% of abortions in America are done for social reasons.
|> >|> >Now do these social reasons take precedence over destroying human life?
|> >|>
|> >|> Sanctimonious hypocrite.  Why don't you give all of your money to save
|> >|> the lives of people who are starving?  After all, getting an
|> >|> education, reading t.a., watching TV, and the like are also just
|> >|> "social" reasons.  Do _your_ social reasons take precedence over human
|> >|> life?
|> >
|> >This is a particularly ignorant posting from Ray...he must have smoking
|> >some bad dope or something...
|>
|> Never touched the stuff.  Stopped molesting children yet?

    Of course!  I mean, no!...

|> >    Ray, neither Martin nor I nor anybody else proposes that we all are
|> >responsible for the health and safety of all other human beings on earth.  But if
|>
|> There where do you get the notion that you are repsonsible for
|> preventing abortions?  Sounds to me like you're proposing that you are
|> responsible.

    Governments are responsible to protect the rights of life, liberty and
property of their people...ALL of them, regardless of age.

|> >I particularly bring a human being into this world, THEN I am responsible for the
|> >life and safety of that person.  You've been involved in this argument for a long
|> >time; you should know better than to say something like what you said above.
|>
|> Well then, you'll doubtless agree that if you weren't responsible for
|> bringing a particular life into the world, then you aren't responsible
|> for its life and safety.  I hadn't realized you also were pro-choice.

    Not legally responsible, perhaps, but morally responsible to try.  I
don't think government should FORCE me to write in the defense of the unborn, but
I believe it is my moral duty to do so anyway.

|> >|> >The being that exists at conception is exactly the same being that turns
|> >|> >out to be a forty year old musician, a seven year old child prodigee or
|> >|> >whatever.
|> >|>
|> >|> Unmitigated bullshit.  To suggest that there are, or ever have been,
|> >|> embryonic pianists is too ridiculous a claim for even this forum.
|> >
|> >    Martin is right.  You have missed his point entirely, whether
|> >intentionally or out of ignorance I cannot tell.  Beethoven at 30 was the exact
|> >same individual human being (biologically speaking) as Beethoven at a month after
|> >conception.  The earlier Beethoven had the same potential to be a great musician
|> >as the latter Beethoven.  If you deny this you're simply denying known facts.
|>
|> Nonsense.  There is pratically nothing a zygote has in common with a
|> 40 year old adult.

    Wrong.  They have exactly the same genetic potential.  What will a
40-year-old be like?  Depends on the genetic makeup he or she inherited at
conception.  Every bit of human growth -- down to the smallest wart, capillary or
ganglia -- is there because of the genetic makeup inherited at conception.  The
differences between a newly-conceived human being and a 40-year-old adult are
peripheral and non-essential; the similarities and commonalities are fundamental
and basic.

|>  One of the most obvious differences is that there
|> is a roughly billionfold difference in mass.

    Mass is a purely peripheral issue.  Bulk is not required for personhood.

|>  There is also a very
|> significant 40 years worth of environmental influence and experience
|> involved.

    I'll have more experience 40 years from now than I do today if I live;
but I'm Steven Arnold now and I'll still be Steven Arnold then, the same being.

|> To infer that the proto-Beethoven zygote had the makings of the 9th
|> symphony in it is flat out wrong.

    Sorry, your statement is what is flat-out wrong.  If Beethoven had had
dog chromosomes instead of the ones he actually inherited, he wouldn't have been
a musician; that's a personal guarantee.

|>  Environmental influences count for
|> a lot.

    Sure they do.  They count for a lot, but they do not make the person.
Different people growing up in completely different environments are nonetheless
still persons.  No matter what environment a human being grows up in, he's still
a person.  No matter what environment a dog grows up in, he's still a non-person.

|>  Beethoven's music may well have (and quite likely did) come
|> from his upbringing and his environment with only a small part of it
|> facilitated by his genes.

    His genetic makeup causes the possibility of being a musician to EXIST in
the first place.  His particular STYLE and FORM of music come from environmental
influences.  Which is more important: the fact that you can create music at all,
or your particular environmentally-programmed musical inclinations?

|> And a last observation:  identical twins have different fingerprints.

    So?

|> Ray Fischer                   "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth
|> [e-mail]                 than lies."  -- Freidrich Nietszsche
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                   So, Ray, are you really convicted that this
                     proverb is true?

Steve

gore Clinton in '92