NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/talk/abortion/58423

Text File | 1993-01-28 | 17.3 KB | 355 lines

Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Path: sparky!uunet!charon.amdahl.com!amdahl!rtech!decwrl!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: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 01:46:03 GMT
References: <bob1.727034914@cos> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Nntp-Posting-Host: jenkins.lance.colostate.edu
Organization: Colorado State U. Engineering College
Lines: 342

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (J H Woodyatt) writes:
|> 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.

    J.H., you just don't seem to get it.  I don't care what the woman does
with her reproductive system.  I don't care, understand?  I just don't want her
killing the child she put in her body.  That's all.  That's it.

|> 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.

    It has nothing to do with women per se.  It is a fact of life that only
women get pregnant.  Sorry, J.H., I didn't make that rule, OK?  If men could
cause themselves to become pregnant, I'd oppose them having abortions, too.  You
can either call me a liar, which is a wretched debate tactic, or you can
acknowledge that I don't have anything against women, only abortions.

|> # |>  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.

    In your incredibly humble opinion.

|> # 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.

    Sure sounded like it.

|>  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.

    Surely you don't mean to pass off this drivel as Constitutional
scholarship?  Neither the founding fathers nor the guys who wrote the 14th found
a right to commit abortions in the constitution.  Abortions were illegal for a
long, long time after those amendments appeared in the constitution.  No writer
of the constitution put any right to abortion therein; it was created out of thin
air in 1973.  Even intelligent liberals, like Michael Kinsley for example, will
admit that much.
    Sure, all women have a right to liberty.  They also have an obligation
not to use that right to hurt anyone else.  To create a new individual by a
voluntary act and then kill that individual is not, and never has been, a right
under the U.S. Constitution.

|> Do we have to spell this out every time?

    You can repeat your flawed line of reasoning a few dozen more times if
you wish; it's nonsense all the same.

|> # |> 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.

    Wah.
    No, I don't support banning contraceptives, except abortifaecents.  Now
go take your bad attitude and temper tantrums and suck eggs, OK, JH?

|> # |> 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.

    JH, you have a truly incredible capacity to hear endless evidence to the
contrary of your dogmas and completely ignore it all, as if it didn't exist.  I
can quote doctors who disagree with the above drivel until I turn blue in the
face.  I daresay you can't come up with even one quote stating that an individual
member of the human species is NOT created at conception.  Yet you remain
immovably convinced of your arbitrarily arrived-at, arbitrarily held, fixed in
stone nonsense.
    And no, I didn't see your post the last time you allegedly shot down the
argument of potential.  Why not run it past me again?

|> # 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.

    Gametes are not human individuals.  YOU get a grip, dipshit.  Find me ONE
quote that says that gametes are individual members of the human species.  Find
me ONE quote that says that conception does NOT mark the beginning of a new
member of the human species.  Please, I don't want to hear from you again till
you have those quotes, JH.

|> 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.

    This is a completely arbitrary standard.  Being separate from the mother
involves no necessary changes in the being itself.  You are simply making a
totally arbitrary assertion that separation --> personhood, JH.  If you can make
arbitrary assertions like that, why can't everybody else?  Answer the question!

|> # |> 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.

    No, sir, I won't stop it.  I'll push it and push it and push it and
push it until you have a heart attack or burst a blood vessel in your brain,
but I won't stop it until you show me precisely WHY the anaolgy is incorrect.

|> # |> 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.

    Perhaps you're right here.  It isn't really totalitarian to ALLOW
abortions -- it's just unjust.  Tyranny seems to involve action somehow.  Well,
let me step back and say that the U.S. government is acting unjustly in not
preventing the murder of unborn children.

|> # |>  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?

    Your assertion that the analogy is silly is arbitrary, and I will
therefore ignore it.

|> # |>  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.

    Arbirary assertion: fetuses are not people.  Arbitrary counter-assertion:
fetuses are people.  Back to square one.
    You are so stubbornly dense sometimes that I just have a hard time
grasping the full extent of it, JH.

|> # |> 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.

    Yeah, I should be terribly ashamed for disagreeing with you, JH.  God,
you aren't only stubborn and dense, but self-righteous too.  You should really be
on display somewhere.

|> # 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.

    And distinctions of development aren't, of course.  You really see just
only what you want to see, don't you, JH?  But that's a trait very common among
stubborn, dense, self-righteous people.

|>  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.'

    I think it is reasonable to say that there is a fundamental difference
and an important distinction to be made between having the potential for
intelligence and not having said potential.  You deny this?!
    Furthermore, I assert that there is no meaningful and necessary
distinction between being who live in the body of another and beings who do not.
You'd seem, bizarrely in my opinion, to want to contradict that, too.

|> # |> 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 other Big Lie is that differences in development are important
considerations in determining the existence of human rights in a given
individual.  Are the mentally handicapped persons in your humble opinion, JH?
What about newborns?

|> 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.

    I believe a similar thing is occuring when the state decides that some
human individuals should not have a right to life.  Sorry you disagree, JH -- but
not very.

|> 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.

    JH, I shudder to think what would happen if a stubborn, dense,
self-righteous ideologue like yourself ever got hold of real power.  Would
you be equally an asshole, except this time able to do something about it, to
everyone who disagreed with you?
    Well, you have no power over me.  I'm going to rub the salt into your
open sore, JH, until you learn manners.

Steve