From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Wed Mar 04 1998 - 16:18:05 MST
>Not in America. In America, abortion is legal on demand right through nine
>months, in fact, right up to having the baby 2/3 out of the birth canal on
>its due date. No legislative process was involved in this, no consensus,
>no will of the people, just top-down imposed death worship by five
>unelected judges, stripping all sovereign rights that individual states
>constitutionally have in this matter.
While I have some sympathy for those who argue vocally on this
matter--as I have argued similarly against the even more barbaric
and useless form of child abuse called circumcision--I do not have
any respect for those who use outright lies in their arguments.
You know very well that the above statement is false, or else you
haven't even read Roe v. Wade, and are therefore unqualified to
comment upon it (and it was 7-2, not 5-4).
That decision--wich is still the controlling law of the land--says
that in the /first trimester only/, the state may not interfere
with a woman's choice to abort; in the second trimester, a state
may place limits on it; in the third, any state may ban abortion
entirely, and many have. There are some states who have not
banned third-trimester abortions, but even there they are extremely
rare. They are certainly not available "on demand" anywhere.
As long as I'm posting in this thread, I might as well get my
opinion out there: if you ask me, it is profoundly insulting to
the wonderful qualities that make humans unique and precious--
reason, achievement, passion, creativity--to grant similar legal
status to a lump of undifferentiated cells that cannot be in any
way argued to have those properties. Do I think that there is
some point along the development of those cells at which they
begin to take on those properties worth protecting? Certainly.
I even have little problem with those who would say that it
happens at some point before birth: but choosing conception as
that point is scientifically absurd and insulting. If you want
to argue about the precious value of life, then do so rationally;
learn some real data about the gestation process and argue about
when things like suffering, creativity, or volition might become
possible. You undermine your argument by choosing such an
arbitrary and meaningless point as conception.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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