[Peace-discuss] Re: [UCprogressives] Re: Pro-choice [wasRe:
letter to my former comrades]
Esther Patt
epatt at uiuc.edu
Tue Nov 16 09:49:46 CST 2004
Should the government have the power to force you to make a
medical decision that threatens your life? Should the
government have the power to force you to make a medical
decision that threatens your health? Should the government
have the power to force you to make any medical decision at
all? Folks who oppose abortion because of their religious or
personal moral beliefs often confuse, as Carl does, a
personal, moral decision with the question of public policy.
Carl may believe that a woman should be willing to die, lose
a kidney, undergo major surgery, increase her risk of stroke,
or any number of other risks rather than stop a zygote or
embryo from developing into a fetus and ultimately a baby.
If he were the one who was pregnant, I would support fully
his right to make that decision without government
interference.
The public policy question is whether government should force
every woman who becomes pregnant to carry to term because
some people believe that a zygote is a human being. Most
people in the U.S. are pro-choice because they do not want
government to have that power.
Esther Patt
Proud to be Pro-Choice
---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 09:34:52 -0600
>From: "Ken Urban" <kurban at parkland.edu>
>Subject: Re: [UCprogressives] Re: Pro-choice [wasRe: letter
to my former comrades]
>To: <cge at shout.net>, <ppatton at uiuc.edu>
>Cc: prairiegreens at lists.groogroo.com,
peace-discuss at lists.groogroo.com,
ucprogressives at lists.groogroo.com
>
>There are enough REASONABLE people who disagree with the
Pro-Life's
>ideas, both scientifically and spiritually/emotionally, that
they cannot
>be discounted. We need to DEBATE the issue and CONVINCE
people one way
>or the other, not legisislate it.
>
>He's an analogy: I'm a vegan; I believe that all life is
equally
>sacred, either created by God or evolved by Nature the same
as we.
>There is a large body of scientific evidence that humans
evolved/were
>created to be herbivores. Should the government outlaw all
meat
>eating? I won't mind, but I'm not even proposing that, I
think it's more
>important to CONVINCE people, and set an example for others.
>
>I think that government should not be the driving force of
individual
>morality. It should not behave immorally by executing
people, or
>starting wars. The death penalty and war are societal level
actions, an
>abortion is a personal level decision. Extinguishing
fisheries is a
>societal level problem, eating a fish dinner is a personal
decision, so
>protecting fisheries (non-human life) is not the same
enforcing
>veganinsm on all.
>
>Outlawing abortion will not change the mind of the
reasonable people
>who disagree, it will only force them to use extra
governmental means to
>do what they feel is proper. (We men need to be especially
careful
>here!)
>
>Ken
>
>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
>Ken Urban
>Assoc. Prof., Computer Science
>Parkland College
>
>Office: B129A
> (217)-353-2246
>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
>
>>>> <ppatton at uiuc.edu> 11/15/2004 9:12:28 PM >>>
>>
>>I agree that it's quite worthwhile to consider the elements
>of choice and
>>personal responsibility in this debate, Ken. But your
>conclusion ("it's
>>wrong for the government to forbid abortions") depends on
an
>unstated
>>premise: namely, that abortion does not end a human life.
I
>can't think
>>of many cases where you would think it wrong for the
>government to forbid
>>the taking of human (or indeed a good bit of non-human)
life.
>>
>>Regards, Carl
>
>Carl-
>I agree with you that a woman's right to control her own
body
>is not, by itself, a sufficient argument that abortion
should
>be allowed. I think the central issue is the question of
the
>humanity of the fetus during the first and early second
>trimesters of pregnancy, when most abortions are performed.
>The question we need to ask is what traits do humans
possess
>such that killing them is wrong. Given an answer to this
>question, we can then ask whether first trimester fetuses
>possess the needed traits. I think it is especially
>instructive to imagine what traits a non-human (such as an
>intelligent machine) would need to have before we would
>consider destroying it to be murder. I would like to
suggest
>that the valued traits include self awareness, higher
>cognition (the ability to anticipate the future is of
>particular importance, since killing a person thwarts all of
>their future plans), the ability to learn and use a
language,
>and the capacity for emotional experience. Note that I am
>not suggesting that a person must possess all of the valued
>traits, just some of them. A person suffering from aphasia
>(the inability to use language, usually due to damage to
>Broca's or Wernicke's area of the cerebral cortex), for
>example, can still anticipate the future and experience
>emotions. A person suffering damage to their cinguate
cortex
>may exhibit a loss of emotional affect, but can still talk
>and think. Developmentally disabled people still exhibit
the
>valued human traits to a degree, and often possess "islands"
>of surviving normal human cognitive ability for particular
>tasks. All of the valued traits that I have mentioned
depend
>on the functional integrity of the cerebral cortex. Many
>states recogize the special importance of the cerebral
cortex
>by defining death as the irreversable cessation of cortical
>function. The cerebral cortex is a late developing brain
>component. At the end of the first trimester of pregnancy,
>the cerebral cortex is little more than a sheet of
>proliferating cells. The entire body of the fetus, at this
>point, is smaller than a newborn baby's brain (size matters,
>because it is a rough indicator of complexity). An
organized
>cortical electroencephalogram isn't detectable until late in
>the second trimester. I'm pro-choice because I don't
believe
>it's reasonable to equate aborting a first trimester fetus
>with murdering a fully formed human person. It's more like
>removing the feeding tube from a brain-dead patient.
>-Paul P.
>____________________________________________________________
______
>Dr. Paul Patton
>Research Scientist
>Beckman Institute Rm 3027 405 N. Mathews St.
>University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana, Illinois
61801
>work phone: (217)-265-0795 fax: (217)-244-5180
>home phone: (217)-344-5812
>homepage: http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ppatton/www/index.html
>
>"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the
mysterious. It is
>the
>source of all true art and science."
>-Albert Einstein
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