[Peace-discuss] Re: [UCprogressives] Re: Pro-choice [wasRe: letter to my former comrades]

[Alfred Kagan]

Personally, I don't think this discussion is productive.  We can't 
debate theological points.


At 9:34 AM -0600 11/16/04, Ken Urban wrote:
>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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-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu