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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!oliveb!olivee!oliven!hawk
From: hawk@oliven.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.abortion
Subject: Re: Infliction of beliefs, specifically abortion
Message-ID: <387@oliven.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 1-Aug-84 20:04:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: oliven.387
Posted: Wed Aug  1 20:04:40 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Aug-84 00:21:22 EDT
Organization: Olivetti ATC
Lines: 43
Followup: net.abortion

[Followups have been routed to net.abortion {I think}]


>  Lets say that you, Rick, and I are visitors from another world.  (I have
>  a reason for starting off with this.)  We come to Earth as friends on a
>  Holiday.  We decide to go mountain climbing, and during the excursion, I
>  happen to fall and damage both my kidneys.  You, being the good friend
>  you are, rush me to a hospital where the only living physician on ET
>  biology informs you that the only way to save my life is for you to donate
>  one of your kidneys to me.  Its no big deal to us, your kidney would grow
>  back in a few months anyway, but I don't have that long.
>
>  Now, clearly, my life depends on you donating your kidney to me.  But for
>  whatever reason, you decide that you don't want to even though it would
>  mean my life.  Now, we have a situation where my right to life is directly
>  dependent on you giving up your right to control what happens to your own
>  body.  In this case, which right prevails?  My right to life, or your
>  right to control what happens to your own body?

In this case, 1) I have a moral obligation to donate a kidney, but 2) you have
no right to demand this action from me.

The problem with this analogy is that it is confusing positive and negative
rights.  [philosopher's sideline:  a positive right is a right to have
something done, while a negative right is the right not to have something done
to you.]  Your right to my kidney would be a positive right, a fetus's right
not to be aborted would be a negative right?

How 'bout this example?  

You and I are again creatures from another planet and have encountered one
another while mountain climbing.  I fall, and damage my kidneys, and due to
the biology of our people, when you brush against my open wound while reaching 
over to help me up, a symbiotic attachment occurs (as in Siamese twins).  The
only way to disconnect us is through surgery or upon of our deaths.  It will
now take you months instead of a couple of days to climb back down the
mountain so that you can reach a surgeon.  Now, my right to life has become
dependent on your giving up control of your body.  Do you have the right to
shoot me?  After all, I could not survive alone and you didn't ask to have me
attached to you.
-- 
   hawk                                     (Rick Hawkins @ Olivetti ATC)
[hplabs|zehntel|fortune|ios|tolerant|allegra|tymix]!oliveb!oliven!hawk