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From: das@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: Let's play a little game...
Message-ID: <630@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 8-Aug-84 02:03:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.630
Posted: Wed Aug  8 02:03:12 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Aug-84 01:34:23 EDT
References: <911@shark.UUCP> <9283@gatech.UUCP>
Organization: UCLA CS Dept.
Lines: 99

> "What is the fundamental difference between a born member of the human
>  race and an unborn member of the same race, that is so large that
>  terminating the life of one would be called murder, but the termination
>  of the other life would not be called murder?"

California's murder statutes make killing a fetus murder *except* in the
case of abortion performed in accordance with the Therapeutic Abortion Act
(or whatever it's called).  Other states no doubt have similar laws.  So
it appears that there is widespread agreement at least that no one has the
right to kill a fetus *without* the mother's consent.  Now, *IF* a woman
has a right to abort a fetus she is carrying, then I assume all would agree
that certain other people (presumably physicians) should have the right to
to kill it if she authorizes them to -- otherwise it would be a vacuous, even
dangerous, right.  The point here is that for the sake of determining whether
there's a right to kill a fetus, the actual agent of the abortion is
immaterial; if a woman has someone kill a fetus she is carrying, then she
bears the (shared) responsibility for killing it.  So the focus of the
question can be narrowed to the woman's decision and the conflict of rights
between her and a fetus in her body:
  What is the difference between a human that she has just given birth to
  and an unborn human she is carrying, that would forbid a woman from killing
  the born human, but would allow her to kill the unborn human at some stage
  of its development?

It's the old where-do-you-draw-the-line question again.  Now a born human can
be cared for by any one of billions of people, so if a woman doesn't want her
baby, her desire not to care for it doesn't conflict with the baby's right
to live, since she can put it up for adoption.  If it's unborn, let's see:
  If the fetus is developed enough so that it could be kept alive outside of
    the mother's body (whether in an incubator or another woman's womb), and
    the mother doesn't want it, must she consent to a medical procedure which
    might be more dangerous to her than an abortion?  Must she bear the
    cost of the procedure above the cost of an abortion?  On the analogy of
    adoption, she probably would not have to support the fetus once it's no
    longer in her body.
  What if there's a 50-50 chance that the fetus won't survive if it's removed?
    If abortions were forbidden, and the removal procedure posed little risk
    to her at this stage, may she ask to have it done, or must she carry the
    fetus to term, or at least to the point where the removal procedure is
    safer for the fetus, but riskier to her?
  What about IUDs?  A hard-core right-to-lifer would either outlaw them or
    require that the fertilized ovum be removed and saved for implantation
    in another woman or (once the technology gets there) a machine.  Does
    a one-celled human being have the same right to life a born infant has?
  Who pays for the care of the fetuses and children which would otherwise
    have been aborted?  One can't argue that the right to life absolutely
    outweighs costs to society -- if that were the case, we'd pay for an
    ambulance at every street corner, extensive safety systems in every
    industry, etc.

I don't believe in an absolute right to life for every conceived human being,
a right which outweighs *every* other consideration that does not
significantly endanger another human's life.  Social convenience sometimes
*does* take precedence -- we *don't* forgo the nonessentials of life (most
cars, airplanes, nice restaurants, radio, TV) to pay for perfect universal
health care.  We make a tradeoff at the level of a whole society on the basis
of convenience.  Does this scale down?  Can one woman decide that the burden
o carrying a fetus to term outweighs its right to live?  (Depending on her
environment, "burden" encompasses everything from mere inconvenience to
loss of income, rejection, or in some cultures, endangerment of her life.)

I'd be a hypocrite not to say yes.  I don't work just long enough to earn
enough to live on and spend the rest of my time volunteering in hospitals or
hanging around bars hailing taxis for people too drunk to drive, and I don't
contribute everything I earn above the minimum I need to live to life-saving
causes.  By making my life pleasant for me, I probably failed to save a child
from starving somewhere.  If I saved one child through contributions, I could
have saved another through more.  I've traded the life of a child for my
convenience.  Most of us have.  Is it different from abortion because the
child is unknown to me, and I let it die through inaction?  Isn't it worse,
because the child was sentient?

I don't believe rights are absolute (if I did, then this would belong in
net.religion); we trade rights for convenience.  Because we know we're not
perfect judges of others' sensitivities, if it's not overly inconvenient we
will extend rights if we think they'd be appreciated.  We kill animals for
food, because it would be too inconvenient not to.  We (at least Americans)
don't torture them for the most part, however, because we think they feel the
pain as pain.  We don't kill born humans because they (or people who know
and maybe love them) want to live, and there are few circumstances where
we recognize the killer's desire to prevail over this want (self-defense, for
example).  A non-sentient fetus is known by nobody, including itself, and
does not experience nasty stimuli as pain as we know it.  For most people,
a desire to kill it would be mere wanton destructiveness, and not worthy
of overriding its rights.  For one person in the world, though, there's a
more substantial reason, enough of one in my eyes to allow an abortion.
If a non-sentient fetus is developed enough to experience pain, then I'd
still unquestionably agree to a right to an abortion, provided it were done
to inflict minimal pain.  Once the fetus is sentient, the mother's convenience
may sometimes not outweigh its rights, but who sets the guidelines for
acceptable reasons and judges the validity of a woman's reasons?  In the
absence of any societal consensus, we let the woman herself decide, which is
not as self-serving as it seems -- the fetus's case is pleaded by hormonal
and socially-induced maternal feelings, so as many women have argued, a
decision to have an abortion is rarely as capricious as some make it out to
be.

I think the Supreme Court decision of 1973 set a reasonable balance.  Sorry
to be so long-winded.