From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Thu Aug 16 2001 - 09:54:45 MDT
lcorbin@tsoft.com (Lee Corbin) writes:
>Adrian Tymes writes
>
>> Some say that, whenever faced with [the] choice, the only ethical
>> decision is to raise the embryo - but I disagree, and I suspect most
>> people on this list also do.
>
>Some people do not wish the embryo raised because they selfishly
>don't want it to compromise their lifestyle. That is their complete
Does it need to compromise their lifestyle? There doesn't appear to be
any shortage of people trying to adopt most kinds of babies. Many of them
would probably be willing to pay mothers who would otherwise have late-term
abortions to carry the fetus until it is viable and then let them adopt it.
I suspect the only obstacle to this is the government.
>> The mere potential future existence of an organism does not, in itself,
>> grant the potential organism any right to live, especially if its life
>> would detract from the quality of life of previously existing organisms.
>
>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.
What I would have meant if I had written "right to live" is an agreement
among most members of society that the organism's life should be protected
from some class of threats, and that people should commit to spending more
effort fighting any one infringement than would be justified by the harm
associated with that one infringement.
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter McCluskey | Free Dmitry Sklyarov! http://www.freesklyarov.org/ http://www.rahul.net/pcm |
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