NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/talk/abortion/57954

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-25 | 5.3 KB

Xref: sparky talk.abortion:57954 talk.religion.misc:27560 alt.atheism:27011
Newsgroups: talk.abortion,talk.religion.misc,alt.atheism
Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!purdue!yuma!longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu!sa114984
From: [e-mail] (Steven Arnold)
Subject: Re: Christian Pro-Choicers
Sender: [e-mail] (News Account)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 00:54:17 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
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Organization: Colorado State U. Engineering College
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In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Gordon Storga) writes:
|> <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Steven Arnold) :
|> ><[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Gordon Storga) :
|> >|> <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Suzanne Forgach) :
|> >|> >                                                 There are plenty of
|> >|> >non-religious reasons available for being pro-life, so that no one need
|> >|> >lean on any mystic, unseen, unexplainable, religious idea to be so.
|> >|> >I'd say most prominent would be all the photographic, videographic, and
|> >|> >sonographic images now available to anyone brave enough to look.  What
|> >|> >they all show us is a child of great beauty and grace, the future of
|> >|> >the human race, something of of great value.
|> >|>
|> >|> What those videos and sonograms show is a fetus which barely resembles a
|> >|> human being, let alone a child.  A fetus is an ugly thing, with veins
|> >|> and organs visible through the skin, a head much too large for it's body,
|> >|> webbed digits, eyes on the side of it's head (sealed shut), with a pulsing
|> >|> conduit of flesh sticking out of it's stomach.  Let's put it this way, if
|> >|> an adult walking down the street had even half these characteristics I
|> >|> doubt you'd be referring to them as "beautiful and graceful".
|> >
|> >    And because the unborn child, in your VERY humble opinion, is "ugly," it
|> >does not and should not have a right to life.
|>
|> Bzzt!  Wrong!  I was not attempting to assign life and death values based
|> on looks alone.  I was merely pointing out to Suzanne that a fetus is ugly
|> by almost any standard of physical beauty you care to name.

    So you admit that your comments regarding the appearance of the fetus
had nothing whasoever to do with the issue.  Where you could have said, Suzanne,
the appearance of the fetus is irrelevant, you instead elaborated at length on
YOUR opinion of the fetus' appearance.  You countered sweet sentimentalism with
sour sentimentalism, and added nothing to the debate but heat.

|> >                                               Gordon, in all this time, you
|> >haven't changed.  You still have that singular ability to unfailingly miss the
|> >point, to throw mud, to bring up red herring non-issues.  You're really a master,
|> >and your talent is wasted on t.a -- you ought to be making real money on
|> >Crossfire or something.
|>
|> Thanks, I'm looking for a job right now.

    Well, if you get it, feel free to invite me on! :)

|> >    Gordon, very old people are ugly in some people's MOST uninformed
|> >opinions.  That doesn't make them non-persons.  Some people think Jews are
|> >ugly; some people think Scots are ugly; some people think blacks are ugly;
|> >heck, some people even think Native Americans are ugly.
|> >    Don't use such a pitiful argument again.
|>
|> Yo Steve, check the top of this post again and you'll notice that Suzanne
|> was using appearances as a basis for her being pro-life.  She cites the
|> "great beauty and grace" of a fetus as a reason for being pro-life.  She
|> is the one you should be reprimanding, not me.

    At best, you were countering bullshit with bullshit, which does not move
the discussion forward, but does create enmity.  At worst, you really thought at
the time that your opinion regarding the unborn child's "ugliness" had something
to do with the issue, in which case the post was not merely pointless and
aggravating, but actively foolish as well.  But you deny that was your intent,
and I'll buy that, because I don't believe you're stupid.  Nevertheless, the post
was still pointless and unnecessarily aggravating.

|> But I doubt you'll respond to this post.  Many pro-lifers have been
|> ignoring my responses lately (Suzanne, Nyikos, Chaney).  I can only
|> assume they have no argument.

    Of course I'll respond to any of your posts I think make a point of
sufficient merit to deserve a response, as well as to posts that are so
greivously misguided that they must be publicly corrected.  You've made some of
both.
    Non-response hardly implies you've made unanswerable arguments, and the
assumption seems to indicate something about how you view your position in
general: you exaggerate the strengths of your arguments beyond recognition, and
you completely ignore their weaknesses.
    My original impression was that you seriously believed that your opinion
of the unborn child's beauty mattered, and I was deeply disappointed that you
would make such an argument.  I see now that your post was still bad, but not
quite that bad!....

Steve