From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Aug 08 2001 - 17:39:53 MDT
Adrian Tymes writes
>> What do you mean "right"? Do you mean there should not be a legal right
>> for that organism to come into being (I agree)? I don't know what else
>> you could mean here.
>
> I mean the "basic" right or "natural" right which some view it as one
> duty of the law to encode. For instance, the famous American right to
> free speech (even if it has been poorly implemented by American law
> recently, IMO).
I've always had a lot of trouble with this. It seems to me that we have
human beings, and many other parts of the physical universe. These
"natural rights" appear from my vantage point to resemble God in the
sense that many people talk about them but no one has any evidence
that they exist.
> Actually, I was criticizing a view slightly different from yours, which
> holds that there should be the maximum number possible of beings
> *regardless of all other considerations*, which is the viewpoint I see
> a number of so-called "pro-life" arguments holding.
I know of a few religions that enjoin their members to be as prolific
as possible, but all the "pro-life" factions that I've seen are merely
people who affirm that one millisecond after conception, the number of
souls in the universe magically increases by an indivisible unit, and
that it is wrong to kill the resulting fetus. You and I probably agree
that (a) it's the decision of the mother, or family, not other people's
business, and (b) if bringing that being into full life is going to
inconvenience its parents, then I do not critize their decision because
I make a lot of selfish decisions myself.
> Make no mistake, it is the cost I object to, not the new life itself.
> If pregnancy and raising children were cost free, this would be a
> nonissue - but that is far from the case today.
Yes.
Lee
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