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- Path: sparky!uunet!spool.mu.edu!news.cs.indiana.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!rnd!smezias
- From: smezias@rnd.GBA.NYU.EDU (Stephen J. Mezias)
- Newsgroups: talk.abortion
- Subject: Darcy misses the point: Keeping it out of the legal system.
- Message-ID: <33079@rnd.GBA.NYU.EDU>
- Date: 22 Nov 92 15:11:02 GMT
- References: <32840@rnd.GBA.NYU.EDU> <32847@rnd.GBA.NYU.EDU> <1992Nov22.002829.17328@rotag.mi.org>
- Organization: NYU Stern School of Business
- Lines: 41
-
- In article <1992Nov22.002829.17328@rotag.mi.org> kevin@rotag.mi.org
- (Kevin Darcy) writes in response to my argument against abortion
- regulation because it would have discrimnatory effect, violating the
- principle of equal protection under the law.
-
- >> Women: Financial support.
- >> / Enforced bodily support.
- >> Consequences
- >>Sex --> pregnancy --> of Forced Birth
- >> Policy
- >> \
- >> Men: Financial support.
-
- Darcy follows this with:
-
- >I find this a particularly non-fruitful line of argument. The most you
- >can hope for, Stephen, is to convince Jim that men should chip in enough
- >EXTRA support after the fact to compensate women fairly for the consequences
- >of their pregnancies. A few dozen $K, perhaps, spread out over 18+ years.
- >
- >Why should this necessarily have any effect on his pro-life stance?
-
- (1) I have already achieved what you claim is the most I can hope for:
- In his initial response Jim tentatively suggested that his abortion
- program might justify some transfers of wealth over and above the
- status quo from fathers as compensation to the women forced to carry
- pregnancies. Actually, I'm hoping for more than this; it is my intent
- to present a rationale for not enacting these policies: See (2).
-
- (2) My argument is not about how to compute just compensation for
- women who are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies. Rather, I believe
- that this is the type of decision that does not belong in the legal
- system. The government has no business placing draconian limitations
- on the behavior of legal persons in order to protect /z/e/f/s. This
- is the point of illustrating how the consequences are discriminatory
- and that they violate the principle of equal protection. I also don't
- think that using scarce state resources to price the psychological
- trauma, loss of a loved one, lost career advancement, etc. that
- accompany forced pregnancies is very sensible policy.
-
- SJM
-