NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/talk/abortion/58352

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-28 | 11.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!das.wang.com!ulowell!m2c!nic.umass.edu!noc.near.net!hri.com!spool.mu.edu!olivea!sgigate!sgi!wdl1!bard
From: [e-mail] (J H Woodyatt)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: Christian Pro-Choicers
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 26 Jan 93 23:28:24 GMT
References: <bob1.727034914@cos> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Abiogenesis 4 Less
Lines: 244

Please allow me to stick my wick in here uninvited.  I have quite a
lot to say below about this sick, twisted distortion concerning the
Holocaust that seems to be so prevalent among the anti-abortion-rights
contingent here in t.a.

If you're in no mood to see yet another slam of the pro-`life'
Holocaust/legal-abortion analogy, skip past this right now.

[e-mail]
(Steven `Mr. Red Button Analogy' Arnold) writes:
# [e-mail] (Chris A Lyman) writes:
# |> Of course, when we discuss legislation or public policy that abridges or
# |> curtails a woman's right to control her body, we should get ourselves as
# |> emotionally riled up as possible.
#
# Legislation forbidding many abortions does not curtail or abridge a
# woman's right of ownership over her own body.  Such laws govern and
# dictate the method by which she waives that right and to what extent.
#
# Laws forbidding abortion (except in the case of rape) merely require
# the woman to not kill the person she caused to be in her womb.

Got to love that word `merely' you stuck in there Mr. Arnold.  Makes
it sound like taking a woman's right to control her reproductive
system away from her is a trivial detail -- a sort of minor
inconvenience to be dismissed out of hand as making a mountain out of
a tiny little zit.

Bad news, pal -- any law that says that women, and not men, only women
implicitly waive their rights to act on potentially life threatening
physical health conditions by the simple act of engaging in consensual
sexual intercourse defintely *do* abridge women's rights to control
their bodies.

# |>  Forget the 9th, 10th and 14th Amendments,
#
# Every time an abortion is performed we forget the 14th amendment.

Heh.  Maybe you need to read the 14th again.  It's been posted here
enough times.  Ask me, I'll mail you the whole Constitution if you
need it.  The 14th has nothing to say about fetal personhood.  The due
process clause does not apply to fetuses.

# As for the 9th and 10th, it is reasonable to assume that they were
# included to make it clear that states could add other rights beyond
# those found in the Bill of Rights; in other words, the purpose was to
# make it clear that merely because the federal government had
# established certain rights, this did not imply that states couldn't
# guarantee additional rights.
#
# You really have to stretch seriously to read a right to abortion in
# the 9th and 10th.

What a maroon.  No one's telling you that between the 9th and the 10th
alone you find the right to abortion.  What we are saying is that the
9th says there are rights retained by the people that aren't
enumerated in the Constitution, and the 10th says that if the
Constitution doesn't grant a power to the federales, then the states
may have it, unless the power is prohibited to the states, in which
case the people alone may have it.

What that means is that, should there be a right to abortion not
enumerated in the Constitution, the people will retain it, and should
that right to abortion be recognized even though it isn't enumerated
in the Constitution, the people retain the power exercise that right
should the Constitution forbid the states from denying it.  See the
14th's equal protection clause for details about how the Constitution
denies states the power to deprive women of their liberty.  You're
invited to examine the 5th, 13th and *especially* the 4th for more
tips on where to find Constitutional support for the right to abortion.

Do we have to spell this out every time?

# |> forget Griswold vs. Connecticut, forget Roe vs. Wade,
#
# Let's!

This is what yanked my crank, Mr. Arnold.  Forget Griswold vs.
Connecticut?  Do you honestly mean to suggest that the Supreme Court
erred when it recognized that individuals have a right to be free from
state interference in their decision to use contraceptives?

Do you REALLY think it's a good idea to allow the states to ban
contraceptives?  I can't generate enough invective to express my
disgust with such a mentality.

# |> forget the hundreds
# |> of hours that medical, legal, pastoral professionals and others have
# |> expended in research, meditation and writing on this issue.
#
# Medical research cannot tell us when the baby becomes a person.  It
# can tell us that from conception on we are dealing with a living human
# being who will eventually grow into a full-grown adult human being.

Great.  I note you never did respond the *last* time I shot down this
puny `argument of potential' tactic.  And the bad news for you is that
it's *NOT* clear that from conception on we are talking about a
distinct organism that can be isolated from its mother.  Fact: it's
fairly obvious even to laypeople that it simply isn't.

# Denying personhood to the unborn child requires an assumption that
# human governments can have a right to decide, based on some criteria,
# that some living human beings are persons while others are not.

Heh.  `Living human beings' eh?  Get a grip.  Almost no one, not even
the most stupid reactionaries among the Christian cryptofascists,
thinks that *all* human organisms are persons.  Almost *EVERYONE*
excludes gametes from personhood.  There is no question that they are
human organisms.  There is no question that they are not persons.  The
same should be true for zygotes, embryos and fetuses, except for the
progress made by anti-abortion zealots in spreading propaganda.

Denying fetal personhood requires nothing more than the simple
commitment to the idea that an individual human organism should not be
considered a person until it can be considered physically distinct and
isolated from its mother.  It requires no assumptions about what
powers government must and must not have.

[Steven Arnold's self-flagellation deleted]

-----

# |> Let's just repeat after Peter Finch in "Network":  "I'm mad as hell,
# |> and I'm not going to take it anymore!!!"
# |>
# |> Since we're talkin' emotionally painful or visually repulsive
# |> pictures, let's turn to page 310 in the new edition of "Our Bodies,
# |> Our Selves" and see what the aftermath of a fatal illegal abortion
# |> looks like.
# |>
# |> Or, we could build a case that the availability of safe, legal
# |> abortion has certain affects on society and public health, positive
# |> and negative, and whether these affects, if negative, are compelling
# |> reasons to place restrictions on abortion.
#
# Come on.  Even if, say, killing Jews were somehow beneficial to
# society, we wouldn't have a right to do it.

Ye gods.  Drag the Holocaust out for making flimsy analogies every
chance you can, eh no?  You're dissing history every time you and your
ilk do this, Mr. Arnold.  Stop it.

# |> Since I don't remember you participating when I last wrote this,
# |> I'll be happy to explain.  The Holocaust was the result of a
# |> totalitarian government policy.
#
# So is abortion.

Bzzzt.  *FORCED* abortion is the result of totalitarian government
policy.  So is forced pregnancy.  At the MOMENT, we have neither of
these policies in effect in the countries we are posting from.

You simply cannot defend the assertion that the policy of the U.S.
government with regards to abortion is `totalitarian' -- somewhat
tyrannical, maybe, but *YOU* certainly aren't working to improve
matters here.

# |>  It was systematic and deliberately cruel.
#
# The deliberate cruelty aggravates the crime, but the fundamental crime
# was the killing of innocent people.  It would have been wrong even if
# there was no cruelty involved.
#
# |>  The total number of
# |> abortions in the U.S. is the result of an _aggregate_ of decisions of
# |> individual women.
#
# The number of rapes in the United States, also, is the result of an
# _aggregate_ of decisions of individual men.

Does this little observation tie in at all with your silly Holocaust
analogy?

# |>  It is in no way systematic or deliberately cruel.
#
# So abortion is the soulless and cold killing of millions, while the
# Holocaust was the hateful and viscious killing of millions.  Somehow,
# I'm not comforted.

Wrong.  The Holocaust resulted in the systematic and deliberately
cruel genocide of millions of *PEOPLE*.  Legal abortion simply has
not.  Fetuses are not people.  Even if they were, their deaths as a
result of abortion would be neither systematic, nor cruel.

# |> The only attribute that the Holocaust and abortion share is that the
# |> numbers are real big.

Heh.  I wouldn't even be that judgemental.  I'd say that the numbers
are merely in the same order of magnitude.  There is almost no
similarity to be drawn between legal abortion and the Holocaust, and
those who would try to make such an analogy distort the issue of
abortion rights and do terrible injustice to the memory of the
atrocity of the Holocaust.

Mr. Arnold *SHOULD* be deeply ashamed.  But he isn't.  It's appalling.

# Another similarity is the refusal of people to recognize the
# personhood and humanity of "inferior" races and unborn children.  In
# both cases, the reasons for the refusal were arbitrary.

There's no such thing as an `inferior' race.  Distinctions of `race'
are completely arbitrary.  It is utterly ludicrous to deny that
individuals distinguished only by meaningless differences in physical
features lack the quality of `personhood' solely because of said
*meaningless* differences, whereas it is equally ludicrous to suggest
that a fetus at eight weeks of gestation has any *meaningful* quality
at all that demands the recognition of its `personhood.'

# |> Imo, the Holocaust is not an analogy to anything.  It simply is what
# |> it is, an expression of hatred and bigotry.  It is a monument to what
# |> happens when an entire society surrenders to the Big Lie that all
# |> problems are caused by that different sort of person over there.
#
# The Holocaust was the killing of millions of people because someone
# deemed them inconvenient.  So is the abortion holocaust.

You are demonstrating monolithic ignorance of both the issue of
abortion rights *and* the history of the Holocaust.

The Big Lie that Chris Lyman was really referring to is the Big Lie
that race is an important distinguishing feature among individual
people, and that exterminating those `races' deemed to be `inferior'
is an appropriate means of effecting human development.  It stands as
a gruesome reminder of where the philosophy of social Darwinism
eventually leads.

The true horror of the Holocaust was not that so many people were
exterminated because they were `inconvenient' (history shows that the
victims of the Holocaust were found by their captors to be quite
convenient for the purposes of slave labor), but rather because their
genocide was deemed by the State to be the natural destiny of their
race, and that it was a necessary requirement for the `triumph' of the
race of their persecutors.

There is no comparison between the Holocaust and legal abortion.
Don't make it, Mr. Arnold, or you will continue to broadcast your
ignorance of both issues.


--
+---------------------------+  I wasn't expecting it.  When Danny Elfman
| J H Woodyatt              |  sang the words, `goo goo ga choo,' Sunday
| [e-mail] |  night, I cracked.  Some horrors are too
+---------------------------+  large to shade out.