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From: saquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Abortion
Message-ID: <6975@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 21-Feb-84 17:30:23 EST
Article-I.D.: watmath.6975
Posted: Tue Feb 21 17:30:23 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 22-Feb-84 02:41:55 EST
References: <212@ihnp1.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 76

.PP
Before answering your question, let me say that I believe you misinterpreted
what I have said about the role of emotions in this whole topic.  What I
pointed out was that the ethical system that each person,
(no matter which side they are on) uses to define what is "right" is based
on emotions, some believe that it is a worst crime to kill something which
might be human, others believe that the repercussions of not killing it might
be worse than the actual killing.  Which attitude we choose to base our
opinions are based on emotions.  By saying this I am not ACCUSING any side
of being emotional, I am just noting that this topic has an emotional basis,
and this fact should be acknowledged.
.PP
I did say, however, that the pro-choice
view needs to resort to emotions more than the other side, (which might
be more honest in a way) and the reason for this is very simple: the direct
"wrong" done in an abortion lasts a relatively short time:
from the pregnancy to the abortion + the time the people
involved in it feel guilt and sorrow over it, while the "wrong" done by not
having an abortion lasts much longer: at least the whole pregnancy + the life
of the child and parents.  (The indirect effects, i.e the effects on society
as a whole last the same amount of time for each side).  Therefore there is
a lot more material to work on from the pro-choice point of view than from
the pro-life, especially since the victims in the pro-life case are not
around any more, while the victims in the pro-life are.
.PP
The pro-life side has done what it can to use all that they have in their
favour, from the abortionists nightmares to the mothers regrets, but they
mainly have two strong arguments: the first being that killing is horrible,
the second that the method of thinking that leads to the acceptance of such
killing is dangerous.  The public at large is usually not as interested in
the second argument, so the first one is the one that they have to use to
gain "votes", and it happens that this argument is emotional.
The pro-life movement has realised all
this so to counteract the other side's arguments,
they need to make their pitch stronger which leads to the high level of
emotionality that they are often accused of having.
.PP
Your question is a very good one, and it is the best question
that pro-life people can ask pro-choice people because it is the 
hardest to answer for many reasons: 
the first one is that in order to answer it, we
first need to define the concept of "person".  This is something
that has been attempted by many people but for which there are
not really any satisfactory answers.
.PP
The only answers that can be done are all arbitrary, development of
brain cells, etc and are very dangerous if they are defined in
non-physiological terms since these definitions imply that other
people which are now considered persons, can possibly end up not
being persons any more, so discussing this implies discussing
the ethical issues of euthanasia and infanticide.  I will talk about
infanticide later on and its relation to abortion, so I will answer
your question indirectly, although I don't believe you will be satisfied
with my answers, in which case we should continue our discussion then.
I don't know whether I am up to talking about euthanasia, but I guess I
will have to since I commited myself to writing something on "deformed"
embryos.
.PP
However, if you will notice, the rest of the discussion is based on the
premise that accepting abortion is accepting that it might at times be
better to kill what might be a person rather than letting that person
live.  Part of the pro-choice movement is based on this premise,
the other part base their decisions on scientific definitions of personhood.
I, along with many people on the pro-choice side, believe that birth is a
good delimitation of when it stops being acceptable to kill someone.  This
opinion is not based on the belief that personhood begins magically at
birth, but rather on the belief that many of the arguments for abortion
loose their strength at birth, and that the repercussions of extending
those arguments after birth are too dangerous to live with.  I will
expand on this when I talk about infanticide.
.PP
Are you satisfied with this tempory non-answer?
.nf
			Sophie Quigley
			watmath!saquigley
.if